Serious Sam: The First Encounter HD Review

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Serious Sam: The First Encounter HD Review

Post by Steve Farrelly @ 06:16pm 01/12/09 | 13 Comments

Croteam have released Serious Sam: The First Encounter HD for PC, serving up the most visually impressive Sam you've seen yet, alongside the famous online co-op option of the first outing and everything else you may remember.

In fact, that's really only the game's biggest flaw: it's exactly the same as the first game, only in HD. No new additions whatsoever. However, in saying that, there are likely people out there who've never played a Serious Sam game before, leaving this as a damn good place to start. For Xbox 360 owners, the Xbox Live Arcade offering isn't far away, either.

Click here for the full PC review.

serious sam: the first encounter croteam

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shrapse
Posted 06:36pm 01/12/09

Pretty steep price coming in @ $20US

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d[o_0]b
Posted 06:47pm 01/12/09

paving the way for ss3 apparently?

totally worth $20 just for the 16 player co-op :D

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Steve Farrelly
Posted 07:18pm 01/12/09

esp cause our dollar is pretty strong against the US atm

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Fireblood
Posted 07:28pm 01/12/09

Yeah never played it myself to be honest....so may have to give it a go!

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Snots
Posted 09:05pm 01/12/09

I loved the original game in coop. Hope this is a good bug hunt too.

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d^
Posted 09:47pm 01/12/09

What a great game.

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bionicman1024
Posted 03:48pm 02/12/09

Respectable review. I'm not sure about your opening comment about older games being less playable later on, since I played through a lot of my old favourites like Wolf 3D, Doom, Redneck Rampage, Blood etc., and they're all testaments to superlative game design, and all still play fantastic - actually, I think I enjoyed playing them even more now than I ever did.

I think goldeneye was always a difficult game that was compounded tenfold by the ever-problematic twisted nightmare that was the N64 controller. If you were referring to the games' visuals, I personally find it easy to appreciate the artistic effort that has gone into any game, whether it is a Commodore 64 title or the latest PC stuff, to me it runs deeper than merely the technical advances. I'm certainly not averse to some good eye candy, I suppose it's an old argument, but I think sometimes in the mainstream too much stock is put into how attractive games are for looking past the fundamental inherent weaknesses sans something like CoD MW 2

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Steve Farrelly
Posted 04:18pm 02/12/09

Nah, I also had issues with frame-rate etc with Goldeneye, and a handful of other games. There are some games that, through ease of control and their base tech, such as Doom and Wolf, which hold up now - I think a game like Goldeneye was transitional in gaming moving forward - leaps to 3D etc, which is why it suffers now, hence my stance on certain games being considered for the HD-remake, because more often than not their controls etc are also updated for new platforms

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Spook
Posted 04:22pm 02/12/09

the n64 controller was AWESOME.

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Decepticon
Posted 05:10pm 02/12/09

"Pretty steep price coming in @ $20US"
Are you serious? With the leading Australian dollar, 20 USA dollars is only 21 Australian dollars you stupid retard.

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tspec
Posted 02:42pm 04/12/09

So, can this actually be purchased as physical media? Gone to at least half a dozen different stores, no one has it. Will buy it over steam if that's my only option but would rather buy the physical media if it's available.

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Dan
Posted 03:09pm 04/12/09

tspec: Unfortunately it's only available on Steam at present as the retail version appears to be delayed. I'm also not sure if they have an Australian distributor for the game at all.

I think CDV games (the publisher of the PC retail ver) are presently distributed by Madman Interactive in Aus, but I haven't heard anything from them regarding Serious Sam HD.

International game retail sites are saying anything between December 10 to Jaunary 1st. So if you want to play it now, I'd be hitting up Steam.

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tspec
Posted 03:40pm 04/12/09

Yeah, got a LAN on the 12th/13th Dec so sounds like the safest bet will be steam.

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