Any of you young whippersnappers remember Serious Sam? I'm talking about Croteam's 2002 first-person game that hailed unapologetically from the "thousands of enemies running at you constantly oh god kill them NOW!" school of shooter design. If you don't, you missed out; that was a mindlessly fun, exciting game.
Well, if you did miss out on the Serious Sam games--or not, but you remember them fondly--you're in luck: Croteam and new New Jersey dev house Devolver Digital are bringing an HD-ified remake of the original game to Xbox Live Arcade this summer. Publisher Majesco released a side-by-side comparison to give you an idea of the improvements being made to the graphics here. I'll let you figure out which one is which.
I'm not usually a big fan of quoting press releases, but this one was written amusingly enough that I will give you the publisher's pitch.
Serious Sam HD is not your mother’s generic, large-scale, orchestral scored, Space Marine-themed epic FPS with dialog that pretends it’s an RPG...instead, Serious Sam HD is a grab you by the jibblies run and gun, twitch FPS: BIG guns, TONS of enemies, 4-Player Online Co-Op and stunningly superfluous HD graphics that rival retail boxed games. You've waited forever but Serious Sam is back from the nether with its award-winning game play that will remind you why you play FPSs in the first place.
Eurogamer reports the game will run 1200 Microsoft Points ($15) and that a PC version will be released later in the fall via both retail and download channels.
