Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter

Voted as one of the best games of 2001, Serious Sam was a true nuts-and-bolts shooter. No brains, no finesse and no real story line – just 100 per cent brawn, a sprinkling of humour and a whole lot of giblets. You know you’re in for a gun-fest when the arch enemy is called Mental and your task is to fight off the invading alien horde. As brainless as the action was, for its time it was on the cutting-edge of technology and its gun play was held in very high regard (and on some fronts it still is).

For its 2009 makeover, Croteam has injected some Serious 3 engine technology otherwise being used to put Serious Sam’s third outing together. While on paper the engine is impressive, we couldn’t help but feel the treatment was a little too vanilla.

It didn’t dare to do too much to the original material, and as such lines are angular and your field of view isn’t particularly busy, and incidental effects are few and far between. New models and animations for its various whacked-out enemy forces help things look marginally current, but the gameplay hasn’t shed its retro ‘floaty’ feel.

While co-op multiplayer is fun for a couple of hours too, it just doesn’t offer the depth or creativity of execution the original content deserved.