I’m new to the Serious Sam titles. Just getting that out there. That being said I recognize the IP as being outlandishly humorous. At times even possibly overly sexist. But that is for the masses to decide. Other than that Serious Sam Double D is a side-scrolling shooter. And there you have it. It is both side-scrolling and a shooter. So it nailed that. But the rest of it? The comedy? The gaming mechanics?
Internal Conflict
I want to like this. I really do. I can see why some people would. I just can’t seem to. It has that “something indescribable” missing from it to make it great in my opinion. It might have to do with my lack of attachment to the title, but even then I don’t feel that I would like the previous games in the series if they were to follow the same vein in a different game model. The main thing I loved were the bosses and the mini bosses. I thought those were fantastic. They had me reminiscing about past conquests in the Metal Slug and Contra titles. But then I was stuck there. I found myself wanting to fire up a Metal Slug game just because something about those titles clicked for me. Something I was missing in Serious Sam Double D. That is not to say others won’t find something here.
Form and Function
A key mechanic in Serious Sam Double D is the ability to stack weapons. Basically gluing one weapon to another. Up to six of these can be fused at a time. Without this function I could see how overwhelmingly difficult the game would be, and the method of weapon linking adds a sort of “anything goes” type of fun to the title. I feel that this could have been done away with and replaced with just ridiculously extravagant single weapons. Things that would put the BFG 9000 to shame. But without this weapon merger function Serious Sam wouldn’t really have something to set it apart from other titles in the genre. At the time of writing, Serious Sam Double D is sitting at $7.99 on the Steam storefront. If you are a huge fan of the series and need something to hold yourself over until the next major release, I could see how this would be appealing. Otherwise I’m not sure if this is a great jumping off point to get a new player interesting in Serious Sam.
