Serious Sam - 1st Encounter - PC

Platform: PC (other versions of the game avaliable on GBA, PS2 and Xbox)
Company: Cryoteam, Godgames
Current status: Full game out in America and Europe
Where to obtain: Your local game shop if you're lucky or an online shop.

May be a bit of an old game but it's still enjoyable, a never-ending shoot-em-up and killing everything in sight, good to unwind. It's fun, fast and intense, read on.

Graphics:
Alright, graphics aren't so good but we are talking an old game here, blood splatters around the place, bullets fly out of your guns as you fire (though they're not left on the floor afterwards), the enemies are done well graphically speaking, a lot of variety between the different kinds of monster, the weaponry you can muster is also quite impressive, I admire the designs of the guns, from conventional weaponry to the large end big guns, whose power comes at a cost. Though I must say the environments still look very good even at this graphical age, huge and well planned out, not to mention visually impressive.

Sound:
The music isn't too bad, there's an almost constant background presence of music that's calm and in-keeping with the setting (Egypt), and when enemies are around the music speeds up until you finally kill them all. The sound effects are good to an extent, not the weaponry though, for some reason they just doesn't sound all that good when fired. The sound from Sam's one-liners is good, some of the things he says are good, not quite on the level of Duke Nukem but still good fun, that in addition to one of the sounds from one particular enemy, the Kamikaze, just superb.

Gameplay:
Well, it's just run run run, shoot shoot shoot really, any old FPS does the same thing, just need to get used to a large amount of enemies attacking you at once, there is little to no puzzles in the game, if there is its just a series of pressing buttons in a certain order, but still very simplistic. The most important part though, it's fun, there doesn't seem to be any point to it than having a lot of fun through killing hordes of monsters.

Storyline:
There is a storyline, but it's extremely weak, basically fight your way through a large amount of enemies to the end of the level so you can travel back in time to save humanity, but really there isn't much of a storyline in all, you'd do just as well without knowing it.

Overall scores:
Graphics 6/10
Sound 7/10
Gameplay 8/10
Storyline 2/10

Total 7/10

In conclusion, though there's not much in the way of graphics or storyline the biggest part of this is the fun aspect, it's a good way to have fun or relieve stress, had a bad day? Then blow up enormous numbers of monsters with a minigun!

I hope you found this review helpful and informative.