Serious Sam Double D XXL

Mommy's Best Games licenced Serious Sam from Croteam. Instead of the usual FPS gameplay, they have gone for a side-scrolling shooter but it definitely captures the Serious Sam style. Serious Sam is a Duke Nukem-style character so he is a macho, womanising character. Duke Nukem already has a side-scrolling game (Manhattan Project) but this is a faster paced game.

The levels are based in three locations; ancient Egypt, prehistoric, and Pompeii moments prior to the volcanic eruption. Sam fights Mental's hordes as usual but there’s a few new enemy designs. There’s the classics: Headless Kamikazes, Gnaar, and Biomechanoids, and the new; Chimputees, Vuvuzelators (look like a stack of pancakes), and the Femikazes (tall, female Kamikazes). There’s bosses and minibosses to fight along the way. You don’t really need to deploy different strategies to take them down though, it’s just a case of aiming, shooting, and backing away/jumping if necessary.

In the levels,there are often branching paths and secrets to find. Like the main games, enemies spawn in, and sometimes you are against massive hordes whilst in a contained room. You aim with the mouse, and can jump. Shortly in the game, you find a deployable jump pad which can be used for yourself or against enemies to divert them to the air. It teleports back to you so you can repeatedly deploy it.

There’s many weapons to find and you can find multiple instances of the same weapon. You start off with a basic gun, but then there’s the Tommy Gun, Flamethrower, Shotgun, Chainsaw, Grenade Launcher, Rocket Launcher, Laser Gun. There’s a “Gun Stacker” mechanic that allows you to place weapons on top of each other and fire them at once. It obviously looks ridiculous but it’s a ridiculous game. You only need 2 or 3 configurations really. I went with a stack of standard guns, a stack of heavy guns, then a stack of chainsaws and flamethrowers for a short range option. You don’t need to reload. There’s a crazy amount of pickups, so you are constantly picking up health restoration, ammunition and cash.

There’s regular checkpoints and a quicksave system so it never gets frustrating even in the more difficult sections. The game will take up to 3 hours but there’s challenge missions to unlock.

The Steam game Double D XXL comes with the original game and an updated version which you can select when you launch the game. In the updated version, there’s voice acting, some more levels, and this also has a shop where you can modify your guns. I played through both versions.

I enjoyed my time with the game, but I thought it would be better if you were forced to use different strategies against the enemies to force you to switch loadouts.