

When the aliens come a-calling, they do so in big, fat waves, often scores at a time. To wit, the action is either feverish or non-existent. But the second and third, where most players will be, expose one of the most apparent flaws in the game. The final two are, in a word, nightmarish. The first is most definitely easy, with very few real threats throughout. In Serious Sam, you're given the option of five: Tourist, Easy, Normal, Hard, and Serious. Take, for example, the difficulty levels. This is a hard and, in many ways, an uneven game. But don't let the procedural simplicity fool you. To that I can add a fourth: Grab every power-up you see. Doubters need merely consult the game's official strategy guide, which I now present truthfully and in its entirety: 1. In any case, the latest installment stays true, for the most part, to the FPS style of yore. And familiar instances of twisted humor too, though sadly not quite as much of it as in earlier Sam games. Welcome to Serious Sam, an unapologetic kill-fest seasoned with a heaping helping of gore.

You opt to test it out, sauntering on over to the bloated carcass of a Satanic pigdog and pounding it into meat blobs. You'll put an eye out." Walking around the next corner, you spot an item that will continue to serve you well much later in the game, even after you've located and grabbed an assortment of more modern weapons. And there you stand, a giant eyeball in one hand, a dying beast in front of you, and the audacity to coolly quip, "You ought to be more careful. So you stand your ground when it next attacks, clawing and pounding away until, quite without warning, you rip out one of its big, disgusting eyeballs. If you must fight this freak of nature – and you most certainly do – you'll need to do it with your bare hands. You look around, trying to figure out what the hell you're supposed to do now, when out of nowhere you're pounced upon and beaten to a bloody pulp. Moments later, said chopper takes a hit and Sam is bounced unceremoniously out the door, where he plunges onto the roof of a war-torn low-rise.
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Lamenting his impending assignment – which, in typical series fashion involves viciously dispatching alien mutants in the Egyptian desert – Sam notes he should be "doing blow off a stripper's ass right now." So much for political correctness. In Serious Sam's introductory cutscene, aboard a chopper hovering over the upcoming battleground, we get a taste for the sensibilities of our anti-hero, "Serious" Sam Stone.

For many, that's just the way it should be. Save, die, load, repeat every few minutes. Endless streams of brain-dead monsters sprinting straight at you like they're training for the Olympics. You see, the latest Serious Sam is built on precisely the same principles that were mercilessly drummed out of gaming land so many moons ago. Or had we? Judging by the anticipation and very early reaction a dozen years later to Serious Sam 3: BFE, an FPS throwback if there ever was one, maybe not. We'd clearly moved on to new and better things. Where was the originality? The realism? What about a shooter that taxed our brains as much as it taxed our trigger fingers? By the turn of the millennium, the truly wanton FPS was on its death bed and the rise of the thinking man's FPS was nigh. But too much of a good thing can sometimes wear people out, and eventually the criticisms began rolling in.
