Weve been
playing the Croteams Serious Sam beta for a while now--according to Gathering of
Developers, the game will ship March 15and weve finally caught our breaths
enough to offer a bit of a preview.
When the Serious Sam demo was released, it caught almost everybody by surprise. Nobody
really expected a team of Croatian game designers to offer a first-person shooter capable
of matching the graphics or gameplay that
good olAmerican boys were wringing out of the Quake III and Unreal engines. But the iconoclasts at Old Man Murray raved about
the demo, and soon hipsters on bulletin boards everywhere were spreading the word: Serious
Sam was a throwback--a big, beautiful, no-holds-barred shooter that featured frantic
action and the most jittery gameplay since Doom.Whether you find
that a good thing or a bad thing will determine how you feel about Serious Sam, which
places an absolute premium on action at the expense of just about everything else. At
least so far, theres no real story. Though a text introduction lets you in on the
backgroundapparently Earth is under siege by a bunch of monsters from another
dimension, sent here by Tah-Um, some sort ancient immortal whose motivation for destroying
earth is that he just likes to do stuff like that. Earths scientists have in the
meantime discovered an ancient artifact called the Time-Lock, which will send
one personand only one--back in time. Doing this--for reasons never quite made
clear--will apparently fix things up. Sam Serious Stone, renowned alien
fighter, is the only man for the job. Thats about it for the story--there are no cut
scenes to develop it, and Sams character and background remain as inscrutable as The
Marines in Doom. Oh, occasionally hell make a cutting little remark about his
opponents, or whistle the theme from Raiders after dodging a rock, but thats about
it. Dont expect the kind of plot you get in Deus Ex or No One Lives Forever. Better
yet, dont expect any plot at all.
Thats because
Serious Sam is really about kicking ass and looking good, and in those areas it succeeds
spectacularly. While gameplay is hardly revolutionaryessentially you go around
blowing everything up with an arsenal of weapons right out of Doomknife, pistols,
shotguns, chaingun, missile/grenade launcher, plasma gunit somehow feels
different from other first person shooters. I think thats because theres a
certain rhythm common to most FPSsyou go into an area, shoot it up, beat a
boss or so, and collect power-ups before heading into next areathat you just get
used to after playing a hundred or so of the damned things. In most, you know when youve
cleared an area. Serious Sam upsets this predictable rhythm by throwing wave after wave of
creatures at you. Just when you think youve finally killed off those plasma-throwing
monsters, the game will spawn (since these bad guys are from another dimension, they drop
in out of nowhere) a whole new set of truly badass freakish hard guys. And these waves of
creatures dont come in ones and twos. Nope, in Serious Sam youll be confronted
with dozens, sometimes hundreds of monsters at the same time. The first time youre
trapped in a room with hundreds of demon-frogs, or running and gunning while pursued by a
massive flock of hacked-off harpies, youll know what I mean about a different
kind of feel. As for the creatures, there are a lot of different kinds of them, theyre
scary and colorful, and they have very different strengths and weaknesses.
The game looks damn good, too. It takes
place in ancient Egypt, and the Croteam team has done a terrific job of recreating the
periods architecture. Most of the games areas are hugemany of them take
place outside or in very large, open, areas. Even better, everything is really brightforget
those monochromatic palettes of yesteryear. While creature models arent quite as
brilliant as the architecture, they still look good, and their originality more than
compensates for any shortcomings. And if youre into lens flare, you gotta get this
game.
According to Gathering of Developers,
Serious Sam will sell for just $19.99. Thats a remarkable price for any game, let
alone one that looks as promising as this. One caveat, thoughthe game seems to be
subtitled Serious Sam: The First Encounter. And while we remember plans for the game to
take you through Ancient Egypt and several other worlds, our beta appears to end in Egypt.
And our press release from Gathering of Developers mentions that there will be more
to come from Croteam and Gathering of Developers. While this is just speculation, Im
speculating that those other worlds planned for but apparently missing from the first game
may well show up as expansions. Serious Sam may be short but sweet. Thats OK with
me, thoughIm only halfway through the beta, and Id pay twenty bucks for
that. Throw in another half and multiplayer, and this may turn out to be the best gaming
deal of the decade.
Rick
Fehrenbacher |