Serious Sam: Bogus Detour (PC) Review

After the cerebral and puzzling The Talos Principle, we had thought that perhaps Croteam had left behind the goofiness and delightful absurdity of the Serious Sam franchise. Clearly not however with the release of Serious Sam’s Bogus Detour.

As the name suggests, while this is a new entry in the series it’s not meant to be the big new AAA-level entry, instead existing as a fun new experiment for the studio and partner developers Crackshell. A top down twin stick shooter, Bogus Detour is a mix between Metal Slug 3 and playing as Fish in Vlambeer’s Nuclear Throne.

The setting is delightfully retro, and the developers have taken strong inspiration for a number of 16-bit titles in putting together its art style. Enemies are varied and distinct from one another, and in one Level you can be fighting killer frogs, specialist futuristic police forces (the Nuclear Throne source material shining through again, perhaps?), biomechanical horrors and more.

Your equipment to deal with all of these is just as varied, starting out with simple dual pistols before moving up to shotguns, tommy guns, laser weapons amongst others. Certain enemies seemed to be for specific guns, but my only real complaint is that some of the early guns were fairly useless by the later stages. My personal favourite was the laser gun: long range, high rate of fire but also doesn’t skimp on power. Enemies explode into pixelated guts, which remains long after they’re dealt with, evidence of your trail of destruction. It’s fun, dumb violence that often plays more like a puzzle than a shooting gallery.

All of this action is set in a series of Levels around the Mediterranean. Your to do list is simple: murder your way from A to B, picking up key cards along to way to open up new routes. The levels, which have multiple paths through them, are long, too long and the guide about where to go next could see some improvements. As they are so large they can be difficult and sometimes tedious to navigate, you can spend a long time trying to work out what’s the way forward or backwards. You have three lives to finish the Level, and while this wasn’t usually an issue, it meant I wasn’t as keen to experiment and try new tactics. Checkpoints and respawn points are fairly far apart too, so dying means waiting a while before you can get back into the action. Taking some cues from Hotline Miami and its instant restarts could have helped to keep you in that mesmerising flow state for longer.

The long Levels aren’t necessarily an issue except that the save system could do with a major overhaul. I’m having less patience with games that don’t respect their players’ time these days, and it’s frustrating to have to leave a game twenty minutes in and not have a permanent Save file to come back to. Once in the Level you have checkpoints, but if you leave the game you have to start the Level all over again. A simple suspension point or quick save option would go a long way to making the entire game experience much more welcoming and approachable.

Apart from the campaign, there’s an online versus mode for up to twelve players, and a survival mode. I would have liked to see local co-op, but as a PC title I can see why the developers prioritised online play.

Bogus Detour has also been designed from the ground up to be mod-able. I think that with the solid core of the game, new weapons, stages and the ability to do total conversion mods, it’ll be a game I keep installed to see what wacky ideas may come from the community.

In the end the worst that can be said of Bogus Detour is that it’s not original.

Almost every mechanic and element of the game can be found in many other titles. Whether this really matters is up for debate. The central shooting, movement and visual make-up of the game are spot on, but it’s unfortunately let down by its cumbersome level design. Still, with a few small changes such as addressing the save system it could be much better, and future mods could make Bogus Detour, or at least its core technology, an essential part of any gamer’s collection.