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| Serious Sam: Xbox Review |
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| by Jason "Rodzilla" Rodzik |
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| Posted on November 11, 2002 |
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Combining both The First Encounter and The Second Encounter, Serious Sam: XBox is a gigantic game. Croteam estimates that at normal difficulty, the game will take over seventeen hours to complete from start to finish. Not only does it feature hour upon hour of playtime, but totals over ten thousand enemies in the entire game. There are a total of 36 levels in the game split into five different episodes, consisting of every level from The First and Second Encounters. Some of the levels had to be split up to fit in the XBox's memory, but the change is unnoticable. Episode I is half-way through The First Encounter, Episode II is the end, and Episodes III, IV, and V are each a third of The Second Encounter. You'll find a boss at the end of each episode, sans Episode I.
You start out the game by watching a cutscene that introduces the story to you, with Earth under attack and Sam being the one who saves the world by going back in time to defeat Mental(Full Story). You quickly collect several weapons(there's fourteen in total) including dual colt pistols and a shotgun. You start the game with three lives, and gain a new one with every 100,000 points as well as by finding 1-UPs hidden around levels. You can rack up points for almost everything - collecting items, killing enemies, and -- new to the console version of the game -- treasure bags and chests and multikills. You score extra points for multikills by killing atleast two enemies in a single shot. The more enemies you kill at once, the more bonus points you get. You also get 10,000 points for treasure bags that are scattered about, and 50,000 points for finding the rare treasure chest, of which there are 193 in the game.
Along your path to defeating Mental, you'll encounter Croteam's eccentric sense of humor. Whether it be in one of the many hillarious cutscenes, or in one of the 200 secrets in the game, including a secret hall of fame showcasing community members and rooms where "bigheads" can be found, you'll be laughing all along the way. In addition to cutscenes, secrets, and jumping mutant plants, Sam will deliver entertaining one-liners, showing his not-so-serious side.
One of the many strange things you'll encounter are phone booths amidst the fray. These are your save game points, and are usually located just before/after large, difficult battles. Whenever you run out of lives, or turn off your console, your last save game point will be where you start from again. However, the abundance of lives makes these next to useless, aside from when you decide to take a break to refill your caffeine supply. By the final boss battle, I had well over 160 lives. Because of having so many lives, the stress of trying desperately to stay alive in the PC games is completely eliminated. All that's left for you to do is sit back, take aim(optional), hit the trigger, and have fun. One of the nice little features included in the game is temporary invulnerability upon respawning. After dying, you get five seconds before respawning should you choose not to immediately get back in the action. Once you respawn, you get three seconds of invulnerability to prepare for current threats. This is very helpful should you spawn in the center of a circle of kleer skeletons...
One of the gripes I have with the save game system, however, is that you cannot save wherever you want to. The only reason you'd really need to save is if you want to turn the game off, and it would have been nice to have been able to save the game where you are instead of wherever the phonebooth is. Other than this, however, Serious Sam was a blast to play from start to finish, with all of the stress of the PC versions being completely eliminated and replaced with even more humor from Croteam.
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