erious Sam is a high-speed, high-action, first-person shooter that taxes players' reflexes and cool by thrusting them into a game where confrontations often include over 50 enemies on the screen at once. Players take the role of special-forces veteran Sam "Serious" Stone. Earth is under attack by an unstoppable foe, and Sam Stone is sent back in time to an ancient Egyptian city where he hopes to find the lost technology needed to defeat the threat.
The game has both single-player and multiplayer modes. In addition to the traditional LAN and Internet multiplayer options, SS also supports two to four players in split-screen action on a single computer. Not everyone is going to have the controllers needed to make the split-screen mode work, but it is a cool option for those who do. Cooler still, though, is the return of cooperative mode, a setting that lets players join forces against the computer-controlled enemies. A staple of the second generation of first-person shooters, cooperative play has pretty much gone the way of rooms and halls with all square corners. Until SS.
The Egyptian city that is the battleground for the game is not only beautiful, but contains lots of huge outdoor "rooms." With so many FPS's set in dungeons, tunnels and sewers, it is great to get out and kill things in the open air under a bright sun. Despite the size of these "rooms," the players will seldom feel lonely. The simple act of picking up a box of shotgun shells or some other goody is usually all that is needed to trigger a horde of uglies who proceed to descend on the character in waves.
Forever "Aaarrrrgggaaaaahhhhhhh!"
This is a first-person shooter the way that the gods and id intended them to be. Plug in, turn on and kill. Kill lots and lots of things. Heal, reload, restock and kill again. To play SS is to wipe away a decade of fiddling with the FPS formula. It is as if Half-Life had never been released. There are almost-modern touches, like the two-handgun action and the cut scenes and the jumping from ledge to ledge, but overall the game that SS will most remind players of is Doom--and pleasantly so.
For instance, take the monster AI in SS. There isn't any. When the monsters see the players' characters, they charge. If they have any ranged weapons, they shoot them as they come. If they don't, then just run harder. My favorite monsters are the headless suicide bombers who simply charge, screaming, "Aaargaahhh!" for however long it takes them to get to the character. Somehow sighting them with the Tommygun as that scream gets louder and louder as they come closer and closer ... it just doesn't get old.
Obviously, SS can be criticized for making no sense. "What are all these shotgun shells doing here, 3,000 years before the shotgun was invented, when none of the monsters carry them?" might seem a valid question, for instance, but the answer is "Who cares? Look over there for the secret passage to that health powerup." The game is about beating the monsters and solving the secrets and the levels. It has no pretensions to anything else.
Serious Sam is a game for those days when the world has you annoyed and you want to give some back. It is challenging in all the right ways, and it is yours for only 20 bucks.
-- Eric
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