Serious Sam's Bogus Detour | #1 Knee Deep in Sand - Serious 100%

Channel:

an0n

Subscribers:

1,320

Published on April 17, 2023 12:00:34 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLHAb8v6EnE

Game:

Knee Deep (2017)

Duration: 33:44

343 views

12

You've probably heard music from this game.

Bogus Detour was yet another attempt at creating an "indie" Serious Sam game to fill the space between main releases. Most of those "indie" Sam titles were horrible at best, but this one was *almost* good.

Almost. It's not good.

There are a few mistakes that make this game unbearable. These things are so obvious and out in the open that I can not fathom how could they make it into the final release. Then I remember that it's Serious Sam we are talking about, a series that is doomed to only have bad games released under it's name till the end of times, a series that has a community whose collective IQ is lower than room temperature (in celcius), and that the "brightest minds" of this community (CT asslickers) got to playtest this game. I'll be explaining these issues throught the series, because explaining them all under one video would mean a giant wall of text and nothing to write about in the next episodes.

This game was barely marketed and sold poorly. The devs actually wanted to come back to this game and fix few things, but Devolver didn't allow them to (probably because it's a Sam game and we can't have a good Sam game ever again). A big shame really, this game has lots of potential, artstyle is amazing, so is the music, the movement and shooting are tight and responsive, it has great enemy variety and some cool mechanics, only a few tweaks and this could be a great game.

First big bad thing about Bogus Detour is that it uses a lives system. Now, a life system itself isn't a bad mechanic, I don't hate every game that has it, it certainly has it's uses in games with short and easily replayable levels. Except Bogus Detour's levels are EXTREMELY long, even longer than levels in mainline Sam games, which means you'll be replaying the same, tedious beginning parts of the levels over and over again just because you made one mistake or you didn't know what's coming. What's bizarre is that the game has a built-in checkpoint system and it works just fine, the only issues with it are that you have to exit to main menu in order to load and you have only one slot per game. Why wouldn't they just roll with the regular checkpoints and have lives in a different gamemode? It would've made much more sense and it would've made the game much better.

Second dumb thing is the perk system - the scourge of modern gaming. For some reason we can't have simple games that you can pick up and play anymore, now we have to grind experience for everything in order to unlock things that we should have on by default. The perks in this game come in 3 categories: Essential, Gimmicky and Useless (not refering to in-game categories). These have to be the worst upgrades I've ever seen in a videogame, 60% of them shouldn't even be in the game since they give you nothing and are essentially just a waste of XP, there are some that change the way how to play, but picking them up is also pointless, then there are those that you absolutely NEED for survival, like extra health and armor.

You gain experience by killing stuff and finding secrets, and I do mean *killing*, because if an enemy dies by infighting, environmental hazard, or anything not done by you, then you are not getting anything. This is why my movement is weird around Marsh Hoppers - they die on contact with anything, including themselves. You will often see me farming enemies from teleporters, these are finite and each spawned enemy gives XP, and I want as much XP as possible, because Serious difficulty in this game is horrendously hard (and because I suck at top down games). I only pick up one upgrade in this video and it's the flashbang, it is very useful and absolutely essential for next level.

Other Statistics