[h1]Are YOU serious?[/h1]
[b]It’s a quippy and fun arena shooter with various nice and unique environments. While some encounters drag on for a little too long, you can’t stay mad too long with all the satire and... seriousness of it all.[/b]
Sam gets isekaid by [strike]The Serious Sam Fanclub[/strike] very wise sages in need of someone to save the world. Will Sam reach Mental and stop his evil plans of taking over... worlds or something?
The plot is of course very serious and integral to the entire experience – it is in NO way just a series of end-level cutscenes that are just satire skits, poking fun at anything they can or making loose references to pop-culture. In all seriousness however, the game is pretty funny, you will have a chuckle or two.
Each world has its own flavor, and most have some kind of a humanoid race of people who you’re supposed to help. They mostly serve as background cutscene characters or just randomly get obliterated by a rocket. They do try to bring you some goodies from time to time. I also like the dynamic between Sam and Nettie. I like how I’m just doing my job, and I have a supportive Serious version of Cortana always by my side. Although I feel like there is some more sass in her on the loading screens.
Now, the game is an arena, mostly projectile-based FPS. You can avoid most of the enemy fire by skillfully strafing around. Some enemies do have hit-scan weapons, so they should be your primary targets on higher difficulties. The most important things in this type of shooter are to stay on the move, pick and prioritize your targets wisely, and try to use the environment to your advantage. There are turrets and vehicles that will be of huge help on your journey as they not only provide infinite high firepower, but also have their own health, providing you with a kind of separate health bar. There are also pickups, boxes, and numerous secrets awarding you with weaponry, overheal/overshield, ammo, and points for which you can get additional lives.
The game features a good selection of weaponry – it’s fun to learn what weapon is best for specific situations, enemies and range. The two shotguns deal high damage but have a slow fire rate and bad range. Uzis and the minigun are good damage dealers with good fire rate and range, but burn through ammo very quickly, requiring restraint. There are also heavy–hitters like the parrot-based drone strikes and serious bombs, annihilating everything around – there are not a lot of them though. There are even more guns, mostly pretty well balanced – the rocket launcher felt a little disappointing though, as its splash damage radius is rather small, and it just doesn’t deal that much damage in general for a slower, projectile-based weapon.
What felt weird in the game was the lack of equipment transition between levels and deaths. While I can understand resetting your stuff in-between worlds, each individual level resets your life count back to three – I guess the point is to award additional points for them at the end of the level and that’s it. You do retain your weapons after death, but your ammo, health and shield count may be completely different, sometimes making the section that you just died in with full supplies even harder.
Throughout the game you will encounter hordes of different enemy types, all with really cool designs. There are monsters chasing you, monsters gunning at you from afar, flying monsters, all kinds of monsters really. While they repeat in different worlds, each world has a rooster of its own, unique foes as well. Unfortunately, some fights seem to really drag on, with enemies coming seemingly endlessly and in repeating patterns. Each world also has a boss, with some specific mechanic – sometimes you protect catapults attacking the boss, sometimes you need to remove a healing source from them or shoot a golden gong.
The game is still getting updates – over the years they added the ability to sprint, rocket jump and to use combo, dual weapons. The recent 20th anniversary update also added a lot of Steam community features, including achievements and trading cards.
Graphically it’s a common case of “it aged a little bit, but it holds up with its unique aesthetic”. The worlds are unique and interesting, never keeping you in a similar place for long. Enemies have really cool designs too – horned tank-devils, clowns juggling bombs, fu.cking Kleers, bigass cyclops monsters – it's all very fun to shoot at.
The music is alright. Although it sometimes borders on repetitive, every two or so levels introduce a different track. The pieces are also good to differentiate if you’re actively in danger or chilling. Weapon and enemy sound effects are pretty unique and also serve as valuable audible cues.
Overall, it’s a fun shooter to disassociate with and to look for funny secrets. However, for some people some specific encounters may probably drag on too much and the general constant shooting may become a little boring. But, man, it’s a game with its own identity.
