Review

Serious Sam Double D

Serious Sam is one of the craziest FPS franchises ever to grace a PC. This classic series created a formula that mixed wacky weapons, an insane number of attacking enemies, high difficulty, and random humor into one solid package. You can’t mention greats like that Doom guy or Duke Nukem without adding Sam Stone to the list. Croteam is developing a new title in the series called Serious Sam 3: BFE. To celebrate the return of the series Devolver Digital announced the Serious Sam Indie Series, a group of games made by talented indie developers. The first one to be released is Serious Sam Double D, developed by Mommy’s Best Games. They developed a run and gun game reminiscent of Contra. Although it isn’t in the first-person perspective, it does retain the “seriousness” of the series!

Mommy’s Best Games (MBG) has done an excellent job of taking Sam Stone out of a FPS and placing him into an indie action title. Gamers will take control of Sam and work their way through levels filled with a plethora of things to shoot. Using a mouse to aim and shoot and a keyboard to platform, jumping into this title should be easy for almost anyone. The story follows Sam as he…well…it has something to do with time travel. You know, it doesn’t really matter. The story is really just put in place for gamers to have a reason to go shoot things. You’ll shoot things in places like Egypt, prehistoric Nova Scotia, and Pompeii. You’ll shoot the staple Serious Sam enemies like the decapitated self-exploding Headless Kamikazes (with bombs for hands) and the walking tank-like Biomechanoids. You even get to shoot new enemies like the Chimputee, flying monkeys that shoot exploding bananas, or the Femikaze, bikini-clad female kamikazes who use their bomb hands to hide their chests (I guess that’s where the double d came from).

Double D plays like Contra with a lifebar. Gamers will have to platform their way around levels, usually moving from left to right, until they reach the end of the level. During their trek they’ll have to face enemies that spawn out of thin air like in previous titles in the series. Healing items and ammo crates are littered everywhere (some of which will spawn randomly as well) to help keep Stone alive. Each level is packed with secret areas and hidden items. Even though they were rewarding, finding these items posed their own threat to the player. The dangers such as the instant spawning of large enemy parties usually accompany the discovery of a new weapon or item. Of course, you could uses these traps as opportunities to test out the newly acquired items! I had a great time making my way through levels looking for secret paths and weapons to add to my inventory.

Unfortunately the more crazy Serious Sam staple weapons are left out of this title (oh how I miss my giant cannon ball-shooting gun…). MBG makes up for that with a new item called the gun stacker. The stackers allow you to stack one weapon on top of another for a completely customized arsenal. The more stackers you have, the more weapons you to can stack on top of each other at a time. Using the stacking menu system is operated by turning the scrolling wheel on the mouse. You can scroll between several different weapon sots, like most shooters. You’ll also be able to order your weapons according to your own personal preference. For instance, if you want to have your shotgun be the first available weapon, you just move it to the first slot. If you want to customize it with a stacker, you would move the secondary weapons into the same slot as the shotgun. You can stack up to nine different weapons on top of each other in a given weapon slot giving you a pretty wide range of possibilities. Just think, it’s possible to have four chainsaws stacked on top of a shotgun in the first slot and have four grenade launchers, two rocket launchers, two flamethrowers, and a machine gun stacked/connected together all in slot two. You can see how this system can lead to some serious fire power! This is a good thing because you’re going to need every weapon in your arsenal to fight off Mental’s Horde!

Serious Sam games have always been hectic affairs. This game is no different. Enemies come from all sides. Some explode on contact. Some explode upon death. Some shoot things that explode. Gamers will have a hard time trying not to succumb to all the life draining explosions. With that being said, I never felt cheated. Even with the difficulty slowly ramping up and more enemies on the screen than I can count, I never felt overwhelmed. Giant bosses would fill the screen. Some enemies would literally rain down rockets from above. Others had tons of health that needed to be whittled down before defeat could be possible. Even so, you’re given the tools for the job. MBG did a great job of making a tough game that isn’t throw-your-keyboard-at-the-wall frustrating.

Double D is defiantly a good game. It isn’t too hard on the eyes either. Sam sports nice, colorful 2D graphics that pop out at you. The characters and environments also have a decent amount of detail added. It reminds me of the indie title on Xbox live called Weapons of Choice, also developed by MBG. Weapons of Choice looked like a good flash based browser title. Double D is like that, although more refined. It won’t win an award for best graphics of the year, but it’s far from having poor visuals!

Serious Sam Double D is definitely worth the price of admission. It’s a fun run and gun style game packed full of silliness which is not found in most titles. Also, the new gun stacker mechanic was a genius way of differentiating Double D from similar titles. I hope to see more titles stea…borrowing this idea in the future. There are secrets to be found and challenges to be unlocked as well as varying difficulty settings to choose from. These factors help when it comes to Double D’s replay value. Throw in the price and you can’t beat it. Serious Sam Double D is worth a purchase unless, of course, you have some strange aversion to shooting things!