Guns, chainsaws, flamethrowers, lasers, and rocket launchers — what could be better? How about stacking them all up on top of one another and shooting them at the same time. Not enough for you? Well lets also drape some tits over a chat window, toss in a few pies, and a whole host of ridicunormous boss mobs. That’s right a game so crazy I had to invent a word to describe it. It’s time to review Mommy’s Best Games’ Serious Sam: Double D, the first in the Serious Sam Indie Series.
Gameplay
Serious Sam: Double D (which I will henceforth be referring to as SS:DD) is a fast paced twin stick 2D side scrolling action platformer. If you’re familiar with this compilation of genres, then you’ve got a pretty good idea of the basic mechanics involved here. That said, there’s a generous handful of fresh ideas tossed into the mix that is sure to keep you entertained.
First and foremost is the obvious gun stacking feature. It’s literally what it sounds like, you are mounting guns on your guns. In fact, we are putting up to five guns on our gun for a scintillating six instances of hot gun on gun action at once. The objective is to build combos that are most well suited for various instances throughout the game. If you’re locked in close quarters combat, you’ll probably want a few chainsaws stacked up with a flame thrower rather than the splash damage of a couple rocket launchers and a grenade launcher. Unless, of course, you enjoy blowing yourself to seriously little bits and pieces.
Next up is a jumping device that is tossed and then stepped on to propel Mr. Serious to otherwise unreachable hights. This feature was actually pretty compelling for a few reasons. First off it added an element of difficulty that was probably necessary. Double jumping, would have likely over simplified a lot of the game, particularly in instances where the enemy onslaught is melee only and vertically challenged. The device is used pretty constantly throughout the game, even before you have it yet, so that you have new places to explore on later playthroughs.
The rest of the game’s noteworthy features come from its level designs and additional gameplay options. The environments, in typical Mommy’s Best style possess considerable branching between the start of the level and your goal. The result is a plethora of winding and weaving routes that can be taken through every level. Chances are you may even play through the game a few times before stumbling through the same way twice. Oh, and did I mention the tons of secret areas? Some are present only as jokes with hilarious references to the outside world and the occasional strip joint.
The games options are pretty damn full featured. There is of course the option for difficulty modes ranging from “Chilled” to “Serious.” I initially picked up the game at Chilled level and played through about half a level. It was quite chilled indeed, so I cranked it up to serious and played through nearly all the levels. Now when they mean Serious, they don’t really let you know just how serious they are until the later levels at which point Sam’s got half a level chasing after him as he’s sprinting to the exit at full speed. I actually wasn’t able to beat the game on this level, failing miserably at the gauntlet before the final boss consisting of about a billion enemies for poor Sam to take on. So to finish the game I decided to turn down the difficulty a bit.
This brings me to one of the bummers of the game, it doesn’t seem to have the option to change difficulty during an already in progress game. So I had to restart fromt he beginning a few short steps from the end. Fortunately, this wasn’t that big a deal since the gamehas another pretty baller option, game speed. I cranked that bad boy up to 200% speed and flew, and let me tell you something, I was playing on chilled but it was frantic as hell at that speed. The point is, you have a tremendous amount of versatility with regards to how hard the game is and how it feels since the speed directly alters the pace of every aspect of it.
Update from the main man Nathan Fouts:
You can jump back into any level at any time. When you do this, you bring your whole arsenal with you. So if you are in the last level and it’s too hard, you can back up, and pick Continue->Choose Level from the main menu. Then pick a level and the new difficulty. All your guns go along with you. This helps when finding more secrets.
In addition to the normal story mode of the game, there are also a varied assortment of challenge modes. These combined with the ability to go back through the levels individually once completed gives you a lot of opportunity to explore the game well passed its stories completion.
Drawing from their past games, Explosionade and Weapon of Choice, Mommy’s Best Games has put together an incredibly solid and well built game. The controls are superb, the level designs are spot on, and the weapon system could only have been created by an evil genius on awesome-enhancing drugs.
Audio/Visual
The visuals of SS:DD are some of MBG’s best work yet and pulled the Serious Sam series into the flat world of 2D games in a fantastically compelling way. The various themed maps each possess unique feels with lots of assets to make a nice populated world. The background art is also lovely, with a huge Egyption sculpture or an enormous volcano parallaxing in the background. The character sprite is well done, and the animations are smooth and translate well to the higher speeds of the game. The enemy designs are pretty far out there. For example the stack of flapjacks with vuvuzelas crammed into its every orifice and forks for legs – yeah that happened. The big monsters on the other hand, are ridiculous to a whole new level. They are huge, colorful and outrageous. There are times when I would have to pause the game just to collect my thoughts on what I had just spent time fighting, and wondering if it was real or if I had just stroked off into a mild delirium for a second.
One of my favorite aspects of the visual effects was the developer’s use of the camera. It would zoom in and out smoothly. Not only did it help to communicate visual information by limiting or expanding focus, but it also was able to communicate a sense of scale when appropriate. At times it would be really zoomed out and show you either a really large monster, or the scale of the conflict you’re actively engaged it.
And just on the off chance that you are a bit squeamish around blood, you can turn it different colors in the games extensive options inteface. If you find that you are also squeamish around albino and alien blood, well you can make it rain donuts out of every gun shot wound as well. That’s right delicious, delicious donut blood, Mmmmm.
The sound effects of the game are well suited, there is nothing that jumps out and slaps you in the face antagonistically — even the vavuzela monsters weren’t tremendously annoying to hear, almost to a flaw! The music was really good, it would actively ramp up as the battles would and start rocking out while the goo is flying. It all added up to a pretty great experience for the ear holes.
Summary
While it won’t deliver stunning state of the art 3D visuals or an epic score, Serious Sam: Double D is an absolute delight to play. The game is available now on Steam for $7.99 with an additional 10% off if you act fast. Serious Sam: Double D is highly recommended to Serious Sam franchise fans, twin stick fans, action platforming fans, and well any kind of fan for that matter so go have a look and bring eight bucks with ya just in case.