Played on:
Windows
Some considered Serious Sam, the silly first person shooter released a couple of years ago, to be a cheap knock-off of other games in the genre. It actually turned out to be a pretty good game, as its hordes of monsters, wacky game events, and budget price made it both a critical and retail success. Well, Serious Sam has its own knock-off now: Will Rock by Saber Interactive.
While gamers will generally love a great imitation of a great game, a mediocre imitation of a great game simply doesn't work. While the $18-$20 price certainly helps the case for this game, it still leaves a bad taste behind. It also leaves us with the question question: "Why didn't I just play through Serious Sam again instead of buying this?"
Will Rock uses their own custom-made Saber 3D to power its visuals, and while the engine was used fairly well to create huge levels and show lots of monsters, it offers little more. Most of these huge levels are barren of details since monsters are likely to fill up the screen at any time, which was a bit disappointing. At least the frame rates were generally very good, which is absolutely necessary in a game as frantic as this. [I've made a correction regarding the use of their own engine - thanks to the few who emailed me regarding this.]
Even though the game requires DirectX 9, we don't actually get any of the cool DX9 features that are showing up in other games. Of course, a game with a budget price might be excused from this, as most games today still don't support these new features. The whole package was pretty sound and stable, as I suffered from zero crashes or other instability problems. At the very least, this game seems like it was tested pretty well.
So far, one patch has been released for Will Rock, which adds a few basic things to the multiplayer mode (a dedicated server, a chat system while in-game, etc) and a few AI fixes that mostly seems to stop monsters from getting stuck on objects. The game could probably use a couple more patches to add some new multiplayer gameplay - more on that later.
[Edit: another reader, Joey Holman, wrote in to let me know that a quicksave is available, just not listed in the menus. F6 to save, and F9 to load. Why these keys can't be re-bound in the menus, though, is beyond me. ]
All of the usual FPS controls are here, and they are all configurable, but it's a barebones setup - just enough to make most people happy, but not quite all the options that would make everyone happy. For me, what I was supplied with worked quite alright.
Will Rock is a pretty decent looking game that won't win any awards, but works for a fast-paced shooter. The levels all follow a greek mythology theme, and you will pass from one huge temple to some underground complexes, back out into large, open areas very often. We do find a lot of repeated textures, but it's a bit unavoidable here - the buildings and other architecture in this game are truly massive.
The weapons start out boring and quickly get pretty interesting, and the special effects are much the same. The later weapons do include some cool effects, like the crossbow that shoots fiery bolts - they will cause enemies to burst into flames and eventually burn down to ashes. The acid gun is particularly gory, as it causes enemies to expand and "pop" in a mess of green.
The monsters all look great, and considering how many of them get thrown at the player, this balancing act between speed and eye candy must have been pretty difficult for Saber Interactive to follow. There aren't a huge range of monsters overall, but on each level you're guaranteed to see at least several types - many times all at once. Will Rock isn't astounding to look at, but I would put it right on par with Serious Sam and several of today's more expensive shooters.
Will Rock follows the Serious Sam method of throwing a ton of monsters at you, giving you a truckload of ammo, and letting you have at it - minus the realism. Sure, there's some story about archaeology and Greeks, a girl named Emma and something with Zeus. Blah, blah, whatever; this game is about blowing stuff up.
Will rock includes of the elements that made Serious Sam fun, except this time it's just not as much fun. The cheesy one-liners that Will throws out are even worse than Sam's, and the little gimmicks that pop up in the levels to surprise you... well, they're not as surprising. Generally, this game just isn't as entertaining overall.
The hordes of monsters that come after you mostly follow the Greek theme as well, and you will be expected to deal with multiple types of monsters at once. They're all very dumb, though, and while most of them have a projectile they can throw at you, they never try and predict where you will be - they only fire directly at where you were at that moment.
