The latest re-release of Serious Sam, this time with gloriously shiny and smooth HD graphics is really not for me. I get that and I understand why, it's for people with an existing relationship, people who all ready love Sam and his never ending armies of cannon fodder bad things. I’ve had my shoe on the other foot, I downloaded Doom and played it for the first time in 15 years last year, giggling like a pervert at a manga convention. My son, who’d never experienced Doom before came over to the computer to see why his Dad was being creepy and I quickly stuck him in the seat and insisted he play the game from start to finish. Half an hour later I noticed the computer chair was empty and found my son outside on his skateboard getting physical exercise. How dare he! I screamed obscenities at him from the protective shade of the house, but he shouted back that Doom wasn’t very good, it was an old man game, repetitive, boring and he suspected the enemies in it were all actually 2D. I slammed the front door to keep his poison from my ears, but it was too late, ‘old man game’?

When my illustrious editor sent Serious Sam for assessment I had a quick glance at Metacritic and noted that all the user reviews on the front page had given it a solid 10 out of 10 with many people using witty repartee such as, “Seriously, this game is a classic”. When I think classic I think simple but effective design, endearing character quality and addictive gameplay. Something that keeps you coming back like Super Mario Bros or hell even Pac Man. Games that anyone of any age can pick up and find enjoyable for extended periods. After an hour of Serious Sam I put down my controller and scratched my stubbled chin (it grows fast). What game were those guys talking about? Surely not this one.

After a few hours you become immune to the onslaught of increasingly acid induced bad guy designs

Serious Sam features hero Sam “Serious” Stone taking on the alien forces of the overlord known as Mental. Enemies include cyclopean monsters, chicken legged robots, animal skeletons and a legion of headless men wielding various weapons, and that's only in the first episode. It’s a very basic first person shooter in which you pick up weapons, armour and health by running over them. The game is funny… ish, but more grimace level than laugh out loud. Serious Sam really stands out in that it gets monstrously difficult extremely quickly as you’re assaulted by an absolute ton of enemies, rather than Doom's claustrophobic corridors and lifts, Serious Sam has many wide open areas that feature enemies charging from all directions at once forcing you to spin and shoot practically non stop for onslaughts that can last as much as ten minutes at a time. Often enemies spawn out of no where right at your back or right in front of you. It gets to the point where every single pick up in the game, from a new gun to the tiniest sliver of armour or health is suspect; picking up a tiny health pack could easily spawn an army of rocket shooting robots. In similarly classic shooter fashion the developers have stuck a quick save button in, the Y button on the Xbox controller. You’ll need to use it a lot as the save points are few and far between. There’s no cover, no perks or abilities, heck you don’t even reload in the game, you just keep shooting till the ammo’s gone. Now what game was the first to have reloading animations I wonder?

The levels look far slicker than the original game with a liberal dose of HD paint

I completely understand how this game was a classic two decades ago. It’s fast, frantic and challenging and filled the gaps in a post Quake, pre console shooter world. But today? The character designs look like they were done by a six year old after a huge bowl of fruit loops and several hours of cartoons. The audio is hideously repetitive, if you are sick of Sam’s parody tough guy quips after the first ten minutes you might want to mute the sound for the rest of the game because you’ve heard them all. On the plus side the graphics look pretty decent for a twenty year old re-release, partly due to the HD job on, shadow and water effects in particular looking noticeable now-gen. This is probably the aspect most likely to have old fans splash out 1200 points to play the game again.

One of the typical open spaces filled with dozens of enemies that define the Serious Sam experience

As an experiment I paid my son $5 to play Serious Sam and give me his impressions. After twenty minutes he put down the controller and said, “Why are you doing this to me again?”. As I suspected, without the history there isn’t much to really dig out of Serious Sam. If, like my relationship to Doom, you’re a sad old person with fond memories of playing the game on a rattly old 486 back in the day then go ahead and add an extra star to this review, you’ve earned it man. But for everyone else, the Serious Sam virgins of the world, there’s not a lot to get out of it without the nostalgia. Buy it if you have a burning desire to know the history of FPS games and what people were playing way back when, or alternatively if you’ve despised every single innovation in the FPS genre for the last twenty years then Serious Sam will delight you.