Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter is a re-textured, remodeled remake of the PC original, now pushing nine years old.  This is a silly, silly game.  But that’s always been part of the appeal of it.  It plays like every other FPS on the planet, with all sorts of running around and shooting enemies with deadly weapons.  It hails from the Doom era of FPS design: huge rooms full of tons of dudes.  Pick up a certain item or cross a certain invisible line and more enemies spawn.  Shoot those enemies and continue onto the next room or area until all fifteen levels are completed.

The gameplay is about as straightforward as an FPS can get.  Serious Sam has no sneaking segments, it has AI that’s as dumb as rocks, and most of the rooms are just huge open environments on a flat plane.  It makes up for this by filling the areas with tons of things to shoot at.  Strange, weird little things, like kamikaze bombers, hairy ape-beasts with faces in their chests and massive scorpions with miniguns.  The game features no regenerating health bar, either.  This is old-school stuff, with health packs, ammo pickups and armour that needs to be managed.  Thankfully, the quicksave option has been brought over (mapped to Y).

Graphically, it’s all better than I remember it, with lots of shadows on the levels, better textures and models.  Nothing all that amazing, but Serious Sam is easily above the bar when it comes to Arcade titles.  Even in the huge, open areas, with dozens of stupid little kamikaze guys running towards me, it ran solid with no pop-in.  Croteam locks the title at 30 frames per second, which feels good, but it would have been nice to bump it up to 60 for the extra silkiness.  Enemies leave behind appropriate bloody messes on the walls and floors, as well as plenty of gibs.  Not quite ludicrous gibs, but just about!

The game sports single player and co-op, but no deathmatch.  Just as well, since I never remember anyone playing that last mode for more than a few seconds.  Co-op only supports online play, with no split-screen.  But it has support for four players on all the levels, on any customized difficulty setting, and this is truly the way this madness was meant to be enjoyed.  The major focus of the game is still score attack, with harder difficulties rewarding more points, and an emphasis being put on exploring to find all the enemy spawn points and hidden secret areas.

I’m glad to see Croteam didn’t just dump the original title onto Xbox LIVE and be done with it.  They really put in the effort to improve the looks of the game, bringing it more or less on par with what I’d expect of a current-gen title.  The gameplay is still a major throwback to the mindless shooters of yore, but really, which of those did it better than Serious Sam?  The asking price of 1200 MSP is fair, given the amount of effort that went into updating the title.

The trial download deserves special mention, as it’s the level from the original Serious Sam demo.  It isn’t part of the single player story and takes a half hour or so to play through, giving a good taste of what the game has to offer.  Everyone should at least play this demo, just to find out how much fun being Serious really is.

“We have always admired the love and support fans have shown Croteam and the Serious Sam franchise,” said a shy, unassuming spokesperson for Devolver Digital. “This is a fantastic way to get gamers involved in Serious Sam HD and give our fans a chance to contribute to the game itself.”

So how does one enter their finely-crafted line for a chance to hear it in Serious Sam HD? Simply log on to Twitter and send a brilliant quip to @devolverdigital between July 15 and July 30. Croteam themselves will comb over all the entries and choose the winning line, and Devolver Digital will announce it to all of their followers in early August.

“I never get any thanks for the wonderfully poetic and emotionally layered lines I write for Sam ‘Serious’ Stone,” said an overworked and underpaid writer at Croteam “So guess what? Let someone else take a crack at it and see how hard it is. These witty remarks don’t write themselves you know.”

So break out those whet stones and start sharpening that wit, as we’d love to get some of that renowned Canadian humour into the game. If you need any help, feel free to leave a one-liner or two in our comments below, and we’d be glad to rate it for you!

Developed by Croteam, the creators and developers of the original Serious Sam series, Serious Sam: The First Encounter HD is a re-tooled and re-vamped version of the original game in beautiful high definition. The game will also feature a new version of the CroTech engine used to power the original franchise. And for those dying to know, the four-player online co-op will remain intact. There goes more of my summer nights!

“We are really excited to update our hero and recreate Sam in stunning high definition for Xbox LIVE Arcade players,” said Roman Ribaric, CEO of Croteam. “The fans have lobbied us hard to do this, so we are stoked about bringing Sam back as big, bold and bad as he ever was.”

Enjoy these early screenshots from the game!