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06/06/00: Serious Sam Test Review
(You can get the test from the Croteam site. It is 47 meg.)
Summary:
Good points:
> Very good, enormous open level.
> Some great visual effects, esp. lens flare.
> Good textures and lighting.
> Hardcore action based combat.
> Varied and amusing monsters.
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Bad points:
> Fatal bugs with mouse buttons as movement.
> Control and feel is a bit vague and sluggish.
> Monster selection is incoherent.
> Some visual bugs, esp. Voodoo3 slowdown.
> Simple building designs and 2D layout.
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Introduction:
Serious Sam is a determinedly un-serious FPS game that's just come into public view with the release of the first technology test - a test which is impressive as a taste of the game, and merits serious attention. The ethos of this inhouse-engined game is focused on unrealistic Doom-ish arcade action set in a variety of exotic locations - it's the developers' intention to return to FPS games' roots in hardcore action. More information, screenshots, story, and engine information, along with various download locations, can be found at the Croteam site.
General analysis:
Installation, set-up, and running:
The test installed fine, and setting up controls and settings was easy via clear, conventional menus. There is an acknowledged Voodoo3 compatibility problem, therefore the test ran rather slow in places - a severe hinderance in some of the combats - and humiliatingly had to be played at 800x600, "Normal" quality setting. Unfortunately, with the simple geometric shapes of the buildings and the clear lighting, this low resolution produced noticable stepping.
Levels and design:
There are two Egyptian themed levels: A huge single player level, and a smaller "technology test" level. The SP level is vast, open, linear, almost entirely 2-D, mostly set outdoors. It takes the player through a series of temples, courtyards and plazas. Buildings and structures are generally huge and monolithic, but simple in design, being built out of basic shapes with few exterior details. Pillars, palm trees, and gold lion statues are dotted around outside, inside the buildings are more pillars, torches, and ornate braziers, though again very simple room designs. There are lots of distant structures and buildings outside the level boundaries, giving a strong sense of place - it would have been nice to "noclip" to see how far the level extended (there are other ways to do this if you are cunning...). The level sticks to the strong Egyptian theme throughout, with consistently attractive, high quality sandstone, hieroglyphic, and mural textures, and bright, sunny lighting - the sourced lighting inside can look confusing though. The technology test level is two buildings connected via an arch-shaded path, with various rooms and artifacts to show off the engine's effects. Well worth checking out as some effects are impressive, especially the bizarre floating object above you at the start of this map. Taken together, the maps show the engine's capability for both huge open areas (like Unreal), and polygon pushing (pseudo-curves like Q3A).
Graphics and sound:
Plenty of modern FPS effects - the technology test shows them all off, but in the SP level there are detailed textures (like Unreal but with only one sort of surface detail), smooth fogging, coronas, portals, decals for explosions, shots and blood (the latter being variable in quality). Explosions and blood are pretty cool, and decals and corpses fade away soon. Water is high quality, similar to Unreal's on the surface, but with a good "swimming pool" effect underneath. The sky is a normal skybox, simple but effective - more crispness on the surrounding mountains would be good. The highlight is the intense sun and excellent accompanying lens flare, with properly directional shadows from scenery, but not monsters. Items bounce and spin a la Q3A, with glittery effects, however with the general surreal arcade feel and the bright levels, this seems much less out of place than in Q3A. Sounds vary but are generally good and clear. Some monster sounds are very distinctive which heightens the feel of combats, the bulls, skeletons and kamikazes especially. The music was good throughout - a cool ambient muzak that fits well with the relaxed looks of the level, that appropriately changes cheesy thrash metal in some heavier combats.
Atmosphere and theme:
The level had a strong, distinctive atmosphere, with the combination of huge outdoor areas and very bright, clear lighting with lens flare, giving an unusually strong sense of place - it actually feels like you are walking around ancient courtyards in a blazing sun, despite the vagueness of the enviroment. However, there is noticable disparity between various aspects of the game. For example, there is little coherence between the groups of monsters and their enviroment: The styles of monsters are too disparate - some fit with each other, some don't - and most of them seem out of place in the Egyptian enviroment. The skeleton, bull, Harpies and maybe the scorpion fit in best. Also, given the silliness of many monsters and the whole game ethos, it's strange the weapons are so standard - something more original or humourous would maybe be more appropriate.
Enemy:
12 diverse fantasy/sci-fi monsters are included in the test: Remote control beheaded human troops with various weapons (exploding kamikaze troops being particularly amusing), walking (or flying) mouths like Doom's Demons, a skeletal Fiend-like demon, magic bolt firing Harpies, a fast, behemothic bull-ish creature, a giant chaingun equipped scorpion-centaur, and a towering rocket armed robot. Enemy are easy to kill and most of them do little damage, but they usually appear in large numbers. A few of them (skeleton, bull, kamikaze) are faster than you which is unusual - and those 3 enemy do more damage than average. The large robots are the most dangerous with their powerful rockets. Model and skin quality vary: The humanoids and bull are just right, skeleton and walking mouths are a bit cheesy. Scorpion and harpies are fine though more detail on the former would be good, while the robot looks pretty childish. Oh yes - your character has wears a white vest, blue jeans, and bright red Converse trainers. Mmmm, serious...
Weapons and items:
A standard, cliched FPS selection here: Pistols, Shotgun, Double Shotgun, Rocket Launcher, Chaingun. The weapons are generally powerful, quite Doomy for the shotguns while the chaingun is the best all-round weapon though it guzzles ammo. Rocket launcher is slow to start but fires rockets in rapid sucession. A zoomable sniping weapon would be good for the large outdoor sections, and more area effect weapons would be good for the hordes. Other items - health and armour - are similarly standard. The highlight is the oddly titled NETRICSA, a personal computer that analyses and details items and monsters as you see them, a useful, friendly tool to have, it also gives gameplay suggestions. It even waits until the combat has finished before telling you it's analysed something. The weapons models are simple, the skins have a reasonable shiny effect on them (not as good as Daikatana's though), but are a bit faded - more detailing and crispness needed.
Gameplay:
Progression is simple, just finding keys or buttons to open doors, with occasional cutscene prompting. There are some secrets to find but the size of the enviroments is offputting for exploration. Combat is: Huge, flat, open areas, VAST numbers of easy to kill monsters (up to 497 in the whole level depending how many you trigger), often appearing in large gangs out of thin air, plenty of ammunition, reasonable health supplies. Thus the style of fighting is circling around enemy, dodging their projectiles and attacks, and picking them off as quickly as possible - and indeed a lot of times blowing the enemy into greasy chunks is great fun. There is little opportunity for tactics nor using the scenery for your benefit. Most areas have sparse enemy initially, but most monsters appear at various points: Sometimes, like picking up items, this is expected, but often you'll be ambushed by a horde of monsters at an arbitrary point. The balance is good - initially the combats are easy, but as you progress tougher monsters appear in greater numbers, culminating in the final stamina-dependent arena combats, with wave after wave of enemy. This gameplay can get repetitive and it's the more varied combats - like the first time you face new monsters, or when proper 3D attacks are used - that stand out. Monster infighting is curiously lacking, pity as it could be fun with the large gangs.
Control and feel:
Not as solid nor precise enough for this type of gameplay. The feel is quite vague due to the head/weapons bob, wavering gun sights, and bouncy jumping. It's more like the sloppier feel of Q3A than the more precise feel of Quake, UT or Daikatana. Running speed is just about adequate, but again with the style of combats and large areas, quicker would be better. Jumping is fairly high vertically but short horizontally - air control is present, as is slope jumping and double jumping, but these are of little use in the open flat areas. Underwater movement is strange, you rock from side to side as if you were in a boat, and getting out of water was awkward too. Damage indication is okay, but more kickback would be better (aside from the bull...). Your weapons give plenty of kickback to the smaller monsters which is fun, though rocket jumping is ineffective.
A major, fatal, problem for myself is when mouse buttons are bound to movement (my usual config), the control is unplayably buggy: Often the buttons will stick, sometimes locking me in reverse, pressing them quickly in succession to switch from forwards to backwards rarely works, and most times they need to be pressed repeatedly to start moving. This was hugely detrimental to the combats and made the final ones simply unplayable (I managed to finish via a cunning, deviant way - email me if you can guess how =)). My friend SCRAD had no problems with his conventional setup.
Bugs and technical problems:
Fairly few for a technology test, it seems. Aside from the nasty Voodoo3 and mouse button movement bugs, there were some graphical glitches where small sections of textures were replaced with errant brightly coloured textures. This occured mostly around steps, doorways or trim, and got much more noticable the longer I played the demo - including some areas which were "clean" before. Also, the fogging underwater disappeared briefly when looking back from the water tunnel.
Necessary improvements:
This is mostly for the benefit of Croteam...
1. Fix mouse button controls when mouse buttons are bound to movement functions, ensure there is no backwards/forwards motion lockup, ensure that buttons can be pressed in rapid succession without causing any pauses or other problems. (As a personal note, if this is not done, then I will not be able to buy this game as I will not be able to play most of it.)
2. Improve physics and general control feel to give more smoothness, responsiveness, and damage feedback. This is very important as an intensely action based game such as this requires perfectly precise control - you can get away with sluggish controls in a slower game like Half-Life, but in this game the controls need to be as responsive as possible.
3. Add a head bob / gun bob / sight waving control option, or better, remove head bob, gun bob, and sight waving entirely. Again, very important for the feel of the game to ensure as much precision in combat as possible.
4. Increase movement speed, longer jumping, and maybe quicker weapons switching. Again, for the feel of the game, to make the players motion more suitable for the action focus, and to make the large open enviroments easier to move around.
5. Fix Voodoo3 incompatibility issue obviously (duh).
6. Improve weapons models and especially skins: more details and richness. These may well be improving already during development.
7. Use different detail textures in different surfaces. The detail textures do a great job of giving the textures more depth, but having just one sort doesn't look right, especially on gold statues (which should be shiny or tarnished), or palm trees (which should be grainy or fibrous). See Unreal for having varied detail textures.
8. Increase detail on some monster skins, especially skeleton, scorpion, and robot. In general the models could do with improvement to match the general standard of models in games today, and for some, a more detailed look is needed.
9. Solve any graphical bugs such as the texture problems mentioned.
Conclusion:
The test shows a lot of promise for Serious Sam. Instead of trying to follow the mundane pseudo-realism-story-driven paths that have become fashionable since Half-Life, it feels fresh and is returning to FPS roots with both pride and a very impressive engine. Given this is "just" a technology test, and that the game looks like it will have a large variety of unusual enviroments, as well as more effects from the engine, this *could* be an excellent game for those who like this style. However, aside from the disparity of styles within the game, weapons, and monsters, there are - especially for me - some serious bugs to be fixed first, and the feel of the game will need to be improved to match it's combat focus.
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