'Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter' Review (9/10)

Seriously! The Serious franchise is, in my opinion, one of the absolute best (FPSes) for LAN parties hands down. Sure there will always be room for CS/UT but there's always been love for multiplayer co-op and Serious Sam HD does not disappoint! As a virtual remake of the absolutely fantastic first game in the series (circa 1999), the remake had quite a high bar to live up to. But thankfully, Croteam didn't mess with the formula -- they just upgraded the graphics and so, it's pure brilliance!




There's not a whole lot to say about the game or the franchise that couldn't be quickly gleamed from the wiki. It may very well be that current co-op multiplayer games like Left4Dead and Killing Floor have their ancestry traced back to Serious. Mind you, neither L4D nor KF come close to the sheer chaos and ruckus that is Serious Sam. To be fair I've not played through enough of 'Serious Sam: The First Encounter' (the original release) nor the (content-wise) identical 'Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter' but from my time playing through 'Serious Sam II: The Second Encounter' and the bit of this most recent release if any measure, it's going to be an absolute riot!

The remake however is both gorgeous and humbling. The Serious franchise has always been about crazy draw distances (ok maybe not quite to Oblivion levels but that's no small order) and having crazy numbers of baddies on the screen at any given moment. I'm running a relatively new/old 8800GT at the moment and the performance is exactly where I expect: [seriously] awesome. With all the settings cranked to 'ultra' the game fluctuates between 15 and 50 fps but with a little tweaking I'm at  a solid 50+.

The game isn't without it's downers though

• There's a bit of consoleitis with respect to interacting with the menus and such but it's definitely tolerable (and to be honest, it might only be noticeable because my system is starting to show age).
• There's a third person view, but it's a fixed distance (i.e.., no zoom). Granted, when you get close to walls, it automatically switches (intelligently) to first person view.
• The game - like Prototype - doesnt support audio sampling rates above 44.1kHz. Attempting to start the game up results in a nice XAudio2 error (clicking Cancel, results in no audio in-game). It's more of an annoyance rather than a problem as the workaround is easy and they appear to be working on it.

Although it's not a problem per se, I do wish the game had less "story" and more "omg monsters go go go" to it, but I imagine it'll grow on me. That being said, the "problem" with the game really fall under "minor and/or nitpicky" so all is good!

Bottom line: a solid 9 out of 10 and for the price, a definite steal!