Having procured Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter (SSHD:TFE) through Steam on sale for $6.75 (normal retail price $19.99), I installed it today and played through the Karnak demo level, which gives you brief showcase of the weapons and enemies to be found here, and a small part of the main campaign. Firing it up was theoretically a foolhardy move because I don't fully match the official minimum system requirements. As gamers have realized over the years, most official system requirements are blatant falsehoods barely sufficing to load the game. I give you my brief impressions.

(*Although this sounds more advanced, the 8500GT's gaming performance has been reported to be closer to the 6600GT 128MB. It was mainly released as a cheap DX10 card for running Vista's Aero interface and some benefit for HD movie playback)

A somber-looking Sam greeted me at the main menu. To be sure, I kept various graphics options low at the start, but I was still surprised that this thing played...and when I say played, I mean gave me, depending on the on-screen action, 30-50fps on my now-venerable box (game played at 1280 x 960, screenshots resized to 640 x 480). Gaining courage, I raised some of the options and my frame-rate dropped to the 20's at their lowest. This, I decided was a happy medium to operate in. So regard my remarks about the graphics in the light of this statement. Most people with computers obtained in the last 2 years should be able to smoothly run this baby with most settings at high levels and it should surely look prettier than it does on mine.

SSHD:TFE is powered by the Serious Engine 3, which is touted as developer Croteam's answer to the other current-gen engines on the market like Unreal Engine 3 (Unreal Tournament 3, Bioshock, Gears of War, Mass Effect) or Cryengine 2 (Crysis). Going by the screenshots of the game I've seen and my own play experience I doubt its future in this regard because putting things straight, Serious Engine 3 appears underpowered when compared to these graphical monsters. It looks more like the engine that powered the generally disappointing Serious Sam 2 and given TFE's Egyptian setting is less colorful than that one. The one significant improvement is that Serious Engine 3 supports the massive level sizes and enemy counts of the engine powering first two SS games.

Now if you're one of those people that likes shooters but for some mysterious reason haven't played the Serious Sam games, I'd seriously advise you to check this out because SSHD:TFE is a complete recreation of the first Sam game, which was in its time one of the most fun shooters to play. “In its time” is the key phrase here because the SS franchise is as stripped down as it gets in the shooter genre. No nanosuit, no psychic abilities, no bullet-time, no power-ups, no skill upgrades, no story, no AI sidekicks, no creepy little girls, nada. You get the guns and you get the monsters to use them on. The Sam games deliver plenty on the meat-n-potatoes of shooter gameplay. Loading yourself up with hundreds of shells and rockets and thousands of bullets (and some Duke Nukem style one-liners), by the time you get through this game you will have, depending on the skill level, laid waste to half the population of China in terms of monster count. The monsters are varied and colorful, running the gamut from small green frogs to screen-spanning bosses; the series mascot is the headless kamikaze figure which runs screaming at you (where from?) with bombs in both hands. Running through an SS level is a great way of relieving post-office stress in a short burst.

For the people that have already played the First Encounter game in the original avatar, this is a harder sell because the level design and gameplay are identical. In fact sometimes I really find it hard to believe this is an updated engine. The limitations of Croteam's art team show up badly in the re-skinning jobs, most of which look like a layer of glossy plastic slapped over the original model. The animations, which worked comfortably with the original models, have not been improved to gel with the new style. There are a few new touches in the form of Quake 2 style “pain skins” and ragdoll physics. Palms and grasses now sway in the breeze but those exposed to Crysis' fully-realized jungle will not marvel over the greenery here. Skies look more high-res (though not dynamic, why?), water has lovely refractions, explosions look nicer and the sight of blood and body-part strewn courtyards is pleasing. This is about the sum of the graphical improvements I have seen. Is it worth spending your money yet again for these? Your call.

Apparently Croteam will also remake Serious Sam: The Second Encounter (SS:TSE) in the new engine. TSE, with its varied and colorful levels and fun weapon additions, is one of my all-time favorite shooters so I'll definitely consider the prospect of getting the updated version of it and in some not-too-distant future playing it with all bells & whistles. But honestly I can't see many other players feeling enthusiastic enough for these remakes to make them profitable for Croteam. They should definitely consider releasing some all-new level packs in the style of those games (perhaps pick up some community favorite maps) to get more interest in them. As for Serious Engine 3, given that the old-skool massive monster count shooter is a practically extinct genre, it definitely doesn't seem to me a horse that can compete head-to-head with the currently available champions.

Update: This is after shifting to my shiny new computer (Core i5 @2.66Ghz, 4GB DDR3 and a 1GB MSI R5850 Twin Frozr II) and playing through the entire game. Yep, it definitely looks a LOT better than on my previous PC, mainly in the secret level Moon Mountains with its foliage cover and waterfall, definitely better than my very preliminary experience with Unreal engine powered Borderlands. Texture overhaul is definitely uneven, with a fair number of textures looking like they were taken untouched from the previous game, and my caveats regarding the enemy animations still holds. The implementation of the physics engine is a little dicey (the scene where the massive final boss Ugh-Zan breaks through the pillars is especially underwhelming in this regard) Still, when through most of the game you're looking at two dozen werebulls and 50 odd headless kamikaze charging full speed at you, massive dust-clouds in their wake, do you really care?