A new look at the Serious Sam franchise. Well worth your time and money!
I wasn't very impressed when I first started seeing the Serious Sam Indie Series, including Double D, and I wasn't sure the whole "gun stacker" concept would go over well. Thankfully I was wrong. I played Serious Sam 3 a few times at PAX, and purchased Double D as soon as I got home without really looking too much into it aside from a couple short game-play videos. If you are a fan of the franchise and side-scrolling shooters like this then you will likely get sucked right into this game like I did.
It starts out a little slow, just like the other games, but before too long you'll acquire the gun stacker and a few other weapons to start stacking together. You can have up to 6 weapons stacked together at a time, and up to 6 different weapon configurations to switch between on the fly. You can also acquire up to 4 of the same weapon, for at least most of the weapons available in the game, so the possibilities are vast.
The first weapon you have is a machine-pistol that requires no ammunition but doesn't prove very useful later on. Throughout the game you will find tommy-guns, shotguns, laser-guns, rocket launchers, grenade launchers, chainsaws, and flamethrowers. You will also get a nice deployable jump pad early in the game that turns out to be really entertaining if you know how to use it right.
The game takes place after Mentals' supposed defeat, and follows Sam "Serious" Stone through three more time periods: starting off in ancient Egypt, moving to the Jurassic era, then finishing up in 79 AD Pompeii where there's a large volcano conveniently about to wreck the whole region. Each of the three regions has a large boss at the end, with some other mini-bosses throughout. The boss at the end of Pompeii is of course a much larger (an understatement, by the way) and stronger end-boss. Oh, and it's accompanied by hordes of minions, because what's a Serious Sam game without a big baddie to fight and an army spawning all around you at the same time?
Overall, though not very long and considering it's a new take on the franchise, it still stays true and it just pure fun. Now, I am the kind of person that will take time to explore the levels for secrets and easter-eggs, and some times go out of my way to find bugs or exploits. I've found a bit of each, but never anything game-breaking. There were times when something would glitch into a wall, or a large enemy (such as a red biomech) would spawn under a lava pool, and I could just watch it slowly die. There were some boss fights where I could stand in a specific spot and just destroy it with very little threat to myself. Like I said these aren't really game breaking, I still had to pay attention most of the time for enemies spawning on my face and such, but that's about it.
I've mentioned the game is short, but there is a good deal of replayability, like getting missed achievements, finding all of the secrets and extra weapons, things like that. There are also a number of different challenges to play as well, which will give you a good deal of extra game time.
The only truly disappointing aspects of Double D (to me anyway) would be how short it is, and that I never really had any huge hordes of enemies coming at me at any given time. There were hordes, yes, and some times it got a bit difficult, but on the normal difficulty, as long as you have decent reflexes, you won't have many problems making your way through the game. With Serious Sam, I expect to have some serious challenges. When I was playing Serious Sam 3 at PAX, I was playing on Normal and getting absolutely destroyed. That's the kind of experience I want, and that I'm thrilled I'll be getting with 3. With Double D though, the game is still really fun and quite unique, so I still say it's well worth your time and money.