Serious Sam: The First Encounter HD review

Have I stepped into a terrifying time warp, again?  It's Sam, from Serious Sam back for Serious Sam HD, and it's on the 360 so if you're a fan you better sit up and fly right cause this is right up your street.

Story

Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter HD shares its plot with the original release on which it's based. In ancient times, Earth was at war with Mental and Sirian forces - an alien race that left artifacts to be discovered - and in the 22nd century, Mental's forces return to Earth intent on erasing all of humankind.

As a last resort, the usage of the "Time Lock" - an historical device that is able to send someone back through time - is decided. Meet Sam 'Seriou' Stonr, the man tasked of doing the time warp to take the fight to mental forces and change history.

Your challenge is to progress through the game to search and locate the communicator in order to begin your time travel back to save all of humanity. Hordes of crazed weird beings  need shooting though, so you best get to it.

Gameplay

Simplicity is the key to this game. You start off with a gun and must shoot the weird crazy bad guys charging at you with no heads (it's okay, it's not gruesome or anything) with a bomb in each hand. Once they've been despatched, you progress on and more, bigger baddies come. To counteract the increment in baddy size, your weaponary and arsenal grows too.

The simple gameplay requires you to get from your starting position to an artifact and ultimately to a passage way - be it through a door, temple, pyramid or underwater - to your next location.

No fancy pants objectives here, the most testing of scenarios sees you push a switch or 2 to unlock a door. That's not detremental to the experience though, as at no point does this game take itself seriously.

Bad guys range from the above listed, to replica massive walkers reminiscent of Star Wars with their lasers and such and require more fire power than smaller guys. If I were to compare this game to any other, it woul have to be a similar experience to that of Doom.

Although Doom was designed to be scary, this isn't but the back to basics you and your gun are lone wolf in this crazy ass depiction of a society scorned with a ridiculous alien race may scare the sort of people who watch Most Haunted and actually believe what's happening is 'spiritual activity.'

Standard first person controls are present, left stick move and strafe, right stick look up, down and around. One notable and great option is the ability to 'quick save' - not affiliated to the supermarket chain - by a simple tap of the Y button so if something goes wrong, no annoying checkpoints.

Shooting is satisfying, very regular  and weapons are suitably ridiculous. Movement is smooth but environments do become all too familiar once you get 4-5 hours into the game. All in all, a great way to 'waste an hour on it' gameplay.

4 player online co-op comes bundled with the game, a great addition and really adds something to the experience.

Graphics

Whilst getting a HD boost, this is very similar in style to reboot given to other classic titles (such as Call of Duty Classic). Graphics may indeed be 4 times more detailed (HD) but instead of recoding the game with new, 4 times more detailed skins they've racked the graphics up to 11 and have boosted the standard definition graphics to HD instead.

Whilst this is no bad thing - as it keeps loading times low, frame rates smooth and is in keeping with the original - the game is starting to show its age. Bad guys are detailed mind, especially the big ones and a lot of attention has been paid to the final boses rather than the play area, which is fair play as you're concentrating more on the guys trying to kill you more.

Animation is good, some clunky movements when the camera pans out to watch Sam progress on to the next level or to retrieve an article is present, but overall the rest is mighty decent.

Sound

A step back in time would be the best way to describe it. Banging tunes when the load on screen becomes mental with demonic hordes charging at you, and typically cheesy sounding monsters raging (over 9000 style) at you make this a welcome change to the norm.

Much like Matt Hazard that we recently featured, the lead character fancies himself as a comedian and tries his hand at voice overs at regular intervals to check you're still paying attention.  Most are "facepalm" worthy, but always strike a cheeky grin on all but the humourless.

Summary

A classic title given a 2010 kick in the nutsack and all the better for it. Gameplay is mind numbingly simple, addictive and constantly increasing in difficulty. Taking the game online with a friend is a nice touch and the game is very polished.

Roll on the inevitable port of the Second Encounter, which will kick ass even more. For now though, this is one to check out for sure.