Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter
( Let me get this out of the way: this is all very serious.) That's right, no joking around. Why would I kid about a game I won for free by posting a picture I didn't think was that good? Exactly. Anyway, Serious Sam HD, a game title that confuses the hell out of me. No, not the HD part (I imagine it stands for "Head Detachment"), but the "serious" part. There's nothing serious about this game, and the developers know that, making it quite ironic. But if they put such irony in, then it would be serious, but the g....is this what a paradox is?Agh, too confusing, now my brain hurts. I can't even remember the story. Something about aliens and time travel, or something, and they're doing things that require large amounts of copious text or whatever and something.....fuck this, what man worth his weight in his own testicles cares about story? All I care about is ripping through enemies with my manly manliness! Does this game let me do that? Yes? Wrong! The correct answer is "why aren't I blowing things up right now?", and the question to that answer is "because you aren't playing Serious Sam HD." That wasn't a typo. This game really does let you kill enough enemies to make even the most elaborate bloodbath look like it was performed with a mere sponge.
Only if you have 12 vaginas in your vagina, you mega pussy, you. Unlike some other games that hatefully throw enemies at you just to see you fail (you know what I'm talking about. *glares at that game*), Serious Sam does it to make you manlier. After each and every encounter with enemies that make Earthbound seem conservative, you will find an entire bushel of chest hair underneath your shirt, man or woman. I said that you have the tools to make yourself manlier, and you also have the techniques; there's an intricate dance of dodging and shooting key enemies in each and every horde. Of course, you'll often brisé when you should've grand jetéd, and as we all know, the punishment for failure in ballet is death.
You know what else gets you killed? Stupid stuff like grabbing a random item, auto-saving at the wrong time (save points exist for a reason), or hell, even the controls at times. I could go into the intricacies, like how left trigger is jump or how the d-pad is confusing as shit, but I feel that you can get the general feel for it by playing any other FPS and then switching over to Serious Sam. And while I'm complaining, who designed the final boss? Why do I have to jump through hoops like a jowly version of Shamu? You guys forgot why I was playing the game: so I can shoot the piss out of scorpion centaurs and headless suicide bombers! And do you know why I did that? It was to become a man of such manly proportions that my X chromosome learns some common sense and becomes a manly Y! The majority of this game does that, so I give it the Manliest Game Award for Manly Achievement in Manliness.
Review Synopsis
- Lots and lots of shooting.
- Lots and lots of easy-to-find secrets.
- Lots and lots of deathness.
As you guys know, I don't take rape lightly. It's simply not funny. That's why the only times I've ever compared games to rape were times when THEY FELT LIKE I WAS BEING RAPED. That's why I don't like these guys: they speak of rape like they personally know what it feels like to have their ass violated by seven rednecks. They don't.
Donkey Kong Country
( This was supposed to be Gex, but upon playing that game, two revelations came upon me.) First, I remembered how much I hated Gex 64 back in the N64 days, when I liked anything placed in front of me. Literally, I found something to enjoy in games like Quest 64, Spunky's Dangerous Day, and Mr. Nutz. Second, CUT OUT THE BULLSHIT!!! In a platformer, all I want to do is jump on baddies and jump from platforms and onto more baddies. Don't make me collect 3 permission slips in each level so I can get to the final level, or worse, so I can progress from level to level. Donkey Kong Country understands this perfectly.Donkey Kong won't have any of that "collect all this crap to progress" crap, like you're sating an invisible hoarder off screen or something. Actually, it's odd that I used such phrasing, as DKC is well known for making you collect a bunch of useless crap. That's sort of why people don't like the game so much: all that collecting of meaningless gold, level after level. To those people who hate this game: up yours. Sure, the game specializes in stupid mini-games that all boil down to "how do I rid the screen of all these golden sprites", but that doesn't detract from the game whatsoever; in fact, it makes the quality of this game more apparent. If you didn't play through some of these ridiculously easy mini-games, you'd probably forget that this game features animals of any kind.
That would explain why I found the central gameplay to be a bit generic. There's really nothing innovative about it, since you're just running and jumping like in any other platformer of the time. No, it's EXACTLY like every other platformer of the time, Bubsy included. That's not an insult towards the overall quality of the game; such an insult would be phrased as "the boss design is lazy" or "the underwater levels have this boring sameness about them." But you don't see me complaining about crap like that, do you? Why would I? It's a fun game that's only become better with its transition to the GBA. Let me reiterate the point I've spent an entire blog setting up: THIS IS A GOOD GAME THAT DOESN'T DESERVE THE CRAP IT HAS GOTTEN. I'd give it the Opposite of Final Fantasy VII, Sort of, Award, but I haven't finished this portion of the blog.
Did you really think I could get through an entire five paragraphs on Donkey Kong Country without once mentioning the graphics and music? They're the defining features of this game, and probably why so many people hate it. Actually, I can sympathize with them on this one, stupid as they may be; the original SNES version looked like somebody mated action figures with claymation (NOT ROBOT CHICKEN!!!!), that short-lived cartoon of it looked like crap, and the GBA port looks like they traded all the plastic clarity for vibrant pixelation. Still works, just not that well, like this blog. On that note, let me end this with several really good DKC songs.
Review Synopsis
- The reason it's still good is great production values and a consistent level of creativity.
- The reason why I haven't beaten up all the people who hate this game is because the core gameplay isn't outstanding.
- This game gets the Opposite of Final Fantasy VII, Sort of, Award since it's a graphically pretty game that isn't rated properly but is still decent.
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