I loved the old Serious Sam games. I have played countless hours of Hammerwatch with friends. What's that you say? The Hammerwatch devs is making a game which looks like Hammerwatch combined with Serious Sam?! Sign me up! The game is a top down pixel graphics twinstick shooter thingie. The graphics and somewhat controls from Hammerwatch. The large hordes of easy to deal with 1-on-1 enemies and large levels from Serious Sam. And this is somewhat my issue with the game. The game is rather mediocre in execution. The large levels and slightly spongey enemies makes the game rather tedious. Seriously making me reconsider if I actually liked Serious Sam to begin with. It is EXACTLY what a true to the series Serious Sam game would be as a twin stick shooter, and it's rather dull. Hammerwatch had variety with classes playing differently. Here of course you've got an impressive arsenal of weapons, meaning replay value is not really a thing here. The game might be fun with friends, sadly they have Steam and I got the game on Gog, but Hammerwatch had good dynamics where people filled different roles. In Serious Sam, everyone would play the game...might still be fun. I'm seriously sorry, but you won't miss anything if you pass this like a rampaging werebull missing the player.
Note: I'm basing this off my playing the boxed copy, have not tried out the GOG.com version Back when this was released it was by many dismissed as a bad Diablo clone. And you can see why, it looks and feels a lot like Diablo. The storyline is a bit meh, and the graphics look a bit janky. And apparently by the end the level design gets really uninspired. But one thing I loved about this game which I have yet to see in any other Diablo style game was that it was quite playable with keyboard. Moving with the keyboard and having multiple attack keys (for light and heavy) with combo possibilities made it seem a lot more like a free roaming looting Beat em up light game. Adding in magic, boss encounters, and a large world and it was great to play, at least for a bit. Alas the retail boxed version has issues running on modern OS'es (XP and newer) without some fiddling and rather annoying graphics glitches. The voice acting really does get quite atrocious at times, and loading sections in the "open world" were plenty. Still, it's the only game I've seen which tried to combine Diablo style looting with a Beat Em Up style combo system. For people who want an interesting experience and is willing to ignore some of the low points mentioned above, this is worth your time. For those who want a straight-up Diablo clone, or want a really polished experience or good story and inspired level design, you may want to pass on this. All down to your personal taste.
Almost passed this game by because of the bad reviews myself. But feeling the original really was a rather good game, and seeing it was on sale, I took a chance on it anyway. This review will assume you're at least partly familiar with the original Superfrog. The new levels, while drawing inspiration from the original, tend to drag out a bit long in my opinion. And unlike the original game there's no need to gather enough coins before hitting the exit. The movement doesn't feel quite right either, you seem to jump a bit too high compared to what I remember, and sadly the jackpot machine has been greatly simplified...though this may not be all that bad. That's the bad out of the way. The reason I say the simplified jackpot wasn't all bad is because you need to play it to unlock the original levels. And once you realise you can nudge the wheels, it's dead easy to unlock the original levels. The original levelset feels somewhat smaller and tighter designed. Also the removed coin requirement is present in the original levelset meaning what you have here is pretty much a faithful remake of the original, down to having the original music play in levels. The only differences being 1) The cape is not requirering you to tap the jump button to use, you can hold it. And it works better than the DOS version available here on gog.com 2) The camera will zoom out a bit allowing you a better view of what's around you when jumping and moving fast. 3) The throwable ball can kill every enemy, not just flying ones, this does make the game somewhat easier. 4) The graphics look nicer, though this means something like spikes can blend in a bit too well. 5) The jump physics don't seem quite right So if you're someone who liked the original Superfrog and just want to see a HD remake. This might do fairly well. My advice: Beat the first level, win once on the jackpot. Play the original levels instead, and make sure to keep unlocking at least one level. It'll be closer to what you want
Symphony is yet another of the games which take your music collection and turns it into a game for you to play. A fabulous way to enjoy your music collection. Games like Beat Hazard made a Robotron style game out of it. Rhythm Zone tried to emulate Beatmania/Guitar hero, Audiosurf had some rather good Klax gameplay going for it. And now Symphony takes your music collection and turns it into a neon lightshow of Galaga on crack. The game is shiny, really really shiny, it's very nice to look at. This is however also a problem which Beat Hazard also suffers from. It prevents you from actually seeing what's in the game. The colour scheme fades from blue over purple to red depending on the percieved intensity of the song. The more intense, the faster enemies will move and harder it'll be to survive. This is fine until you take into account the fact that projectiles are red. Not that large and at times fairly transparent too, making for a lot of frustrating deaths from projectiles completely lost in the shower of light. Thankfully there's no lives to go with, but a 5 second timeout is rather frustrating when trying to get a high score on a tune. Also the menu interface is rather clunky and likely not designed for people with a large music collection. But since you unlock weapons with each song completed, there needs to be some space for each son on screen. It's still a bit of an oversight that in order to upgrade your weapons later you'll have to figure out which song it was which gave you the powerup to buy the upgrade. Still in spite of the frustrating deaths, the hit and miss music analysis and clunky interface, the game still delivers a rather intense gameplay experience wrapped in funky visuals. For $10 it's not bad value, and maybe with a few patches my gripes with the game may be addressed.
