Serious Sam X-Box vs PC

[James]

My roommate picked up Serious Sam for the X-Box so I've been playing it a bit for the last few days. I'm a huge fan of the PC version so I'd been looking forward to X-Box version, if only to see how it translated. New cutscenes and goofy stuff seemed enough to catch my eye, and I'd like to just see how it all turned out. I'm only a bit over halfway in at this point, though, so take my opinion as half baked if you will.

Buy the two PC versions. They're both cheaper and better.

X-Box Serious Sam isn't hideous, but it's nowhere near as great as its PC predecessors. Enemies require a good deal less damage to dispatch and there seems to be fewer of them per level. Fewer, more easily killed monsters means I'm up to my ears in ammo at almost all points in the game. To add to the lack of difficulty, you get an extra life every 100,000 points, with many levels easily scoring a good million + each. Over halfway in and my current life stock is a hair over 100. Still easier yet, when you come back to life you don't lose a single bullet of ammo.

Disclaimer- I played both Serious Sams on PC on Normal skill level, same as I'm playing it on X-Box. It may toughen up significantly on hard, I haven't checked.

A big problem I had with the Egypt levels, and it seems to have cleared up nicely now that I'm in South America, is that enemies blended into the background way too easily. This is a game totally designed with the PCs superior sharpness in mind, the lower resolution of the tv screen isn't helping it any at all.

Boiling what I've said down, the game is too easy and visually unclear in it's first half. That's the bad. There's a nice bit of good in here too, so it's not a total wash.

Though you can't save at any point, the phone booths from Serious Sam: Second Encounter make an appearance throughout the levels as save points, with many missions having 2-3 of them. They disappear once used, but the general ease of the game means you can wait a bit if you're in an exploring mood. Dying has no consequence, after all, so unless the real world calls there's no particular reason to use them immediately.

The Serious Sam games have always been a blast and a lot of that shows through here. When the monsters start pouring in the game can really get you moving fast and killing at high speed. The simplicity of the controls means there's a spare button or two handy, and they used this so that you can map whatever your favorite two guns are to the two spares. This helps offset the common problem of too many console FPSes where you're trying to find just the right gun in the middle of a heavy firefight, whereas on a PC you can just tap the 7 (or whatever) key.

I didn't think I'd like the Sam redesign at first, but the more I play the better I like it. It's fitting the game very well, making him less and less of a Duke clone and more his own character. It also fits in nicely with some of the goofier cutscenes.

An unexpected positive is that now that I'm in the latter half of the game I'm finding new levels, stuff that isn't simply a port of old areas from the PC. Of course, I've also noticed that a ton of stuff was left out, but seeing as I've played it already (twice) I'm not viewing it as a negative. Don't know how much new stuff I'll find, but now that I've seen one totally new area my interest in actually finishing the game has returned.

Final note on the visuals- it doesn't look as good on a tv screen, but that's to be expected. Lower-res textures can't be fixed by the slight increase in polygon count. I've always preferred stronger texturing to more polygons, but it's not an unforgivable flaw.\

Final verdict- pretty decent. Hope they use this as a learning experience for the all-new Gamecube game they've got in development. They've got loads of talent on PC, there's no reason to think they can't adjust to console a bit better once they've got a bit more experience in them.

James

[DacaZ]

Thanks for those impressions. I was very curious about this myself.

[MonsterMash]

The rest of your impressions are fine, but complaining that the game is too easy when there's two more (harder) difficulty settings is just stupid. If you think it's too easy, play hard mode.

Myself, I've been playing it co-op, and normal seems about right for that. We haven't hit a game over yet, but since there's two players sharing the same life pool, we've gotten somewhat close. Maybe after we get a bit better I'll turn it up to hard, but it's fine right now. And it is tons and tons of fun. Co-op also surprisingly runs just as well as one player.

Heh, anyway, the real reason I'm posting: James (and anyone else who might own it) does your Xbox have trouble reading the disc sometimes? Mine either works well (the loading is nice and fast and zips past the last quarter of the bar) or really piss poor (the loading stops about a centimeter from the end and waits a half minute; the game jitters and pauses at random spots; and twice I got a "Damaged or Dirty" error message.) I'm exchanging tomorrow for another disc that will hopefully fix the problem... Is this a problem with other Sam discs? I haven't had any trouble with other games. Or is this the sort of thing that happens when Xboxs start to die?

[MechDeus]

The rest of your impressions are fine, but complaining that the game is too easy when there's two more (harder) difficulty settings is just stupid. If you think it's too easy, play hard mode.

He was stating that it had been toned down. In short, not even the hardest difficulty level would stand up to as it was previously (which is really the best way to play co-op on PC).

[dyomides]

It's not your disk, it happens to me all the time too.

D

[Despair]

Thanks for the impressions

I will definately check it out, once the current flood of games ends

[Mfkzt]

Originally posted by MechDeus
He was stating that it had been toned down. In short, not even the hardest difficulty level would stand up to as it was previously (which is really the best way to play co-op on PC).

You can't use a mouse in the Xbox version, so they had to dumb it down.

[James]

There may be harder difficulty levels but I wasn't comparing PC Hard to X-Box Hard. I was comparing Serious Sam as I played it on PC (Normal) to X-Box (Normal again). I might jack it up to Serious difficulty if I play it again, but the odds of me doing a second playthrough are pretty low.

As for the loading, this sounds like a classic symptom of a dying X-Box. The Serious Sam I'm playing loads right up with no problems at all. Nice and zippy, and it usually finishes up a sentence or two before I'm done reading the level intro.

James

[Chojin]

Can't say anything said has been all that surprising.

[Melf]

Can you say "a $25-$30 purchase?"