Roses Are Red, And So Are The Glasses...

This post isn't about the supposed insurmountable pressure of the almighty backlog and how to overcome the guilt and depression it seems to paralyze gamers with. But I will mention that what I have done recently was to make a list of all the game purchases starting from the first time I had to install Steam. A couple of games on the list are Serious Sam The First Encounter HD and Second Encounter HD.

I actually still own the physical copies of both those games. I am a huge fan of the first two Serious Sam games and remember enjoy the heck out of them many years ago. So naturally when they did a HD makeover I had to buy them.

Actually, I didn't have to buy them. But I did, and this past weekend I decided to install them and give them a go.

Lately I have really been craving a single-player FPS experience. I've been playing Battlefield 4 and Rainbow Six Siege online, but I had a hankerin' for a game with lots of guns that I can just shoot people in the face. All from the point of view from my face! Because of that I did buy FEAR Platinum on GOG while on sale for only $2.50! But more on that in a bit.

I knew when I started playing SSFE that is wasn't a long game, but that it's more like backwards running simulator 2001. So I loaded up the cheats and just went to town. For the first three hours or so I was really enjoying the game. It's old school shoot shit and blow shit up with little story or dialogue, and, the remakes do look much better than the original classic versions.

But around the third hour something happened. I realized that I was kind of getting bored. It was at that point that I started keeping track of how much longer I had till the final level. Then I got to the final level, died and had to repeat a section that took about fifteen minutes to complete. It was at that point that I lifted the white flag and declared the game complete. I then promptly installed SSSE and didn't even make it to the second level before giving up and uninstalling the game.

Both Serious Sam First and Second Encounter are great games, but my taste in games has evolved the past 16 years since I played them. Realizing this I decided to play some FEAR because my FPS thirst wasn't quenched yet. Besides, I didn't like the game much before, maybe I'll appreciate it now. What a mistake that was.

I hated FEAR when it was first released and I absolutely hate it even more today. It has some nice lighting and particle effects, and the horror aspect is well done, but that game is super overrated. It looked ugly back then and it looks even worse today. The gameplay is dull, the story is ok, and worst of all, it's boring as shit. FEAR is a pile of turds and I hate it.

So after playing two Serious Sam games and forcing my eyes to look at the shit that is FEAR I came to a few conclusions -  games that we remember fondly as being super great, are not as good today as maybe they were during the time we originally played them. Not all games are like that, but for me the Serious Sam games are. I also learned that if you hated a game with a passion and thought is was horse shit, chances are it's still a pile of steaming horse shit.