Wormmaster Sep 14 2004, 06:23 PM Game: Serious Stan Creator: SPGmike Genre: Action Platformer Description: Aliens have cloned Kyle, Cartman and Kenny, and you must stop them aliens!!! Rating: 66% Review: Serious Stan is a cool Action Platformer with several different levels. Difficulty is something like Medium or little smaller than Medium. It was going to have a sequel, but it didn't get good feedback, so SPGmike didn't make it... Damn. sad.gif Game lacks in the level design. It only has a few stairs and little buildings to jump from roof-to-roof killing those goddamn clones. So, Overall - The game is little fun, but you won't play it another time after beating it, trust me. The boss is too easy, and the game lacks in the level design and the lenght. But it's still a worth of download. It saved me from getting too bored, and still: The game is little fun. + Plot + Sounds - The number of levels (too few) - Level Design - Levels too small - Too easy, Damn it!!! Beamer Sep 25 2004, 12:32 PM Game: Serious Stan Creator: SPG Mike Genre: Action Platformer Description: Evil aliens have made clones of Kyle, Kenny and Cartman. Playing as Stan, it's up to you to destroy these clones, then bring down the aliens that created them! Rating: 48% Review: In mid-2003, newcomer SPG Mike released full versions of both his secret project South Park: Trigger Happy just days after releasing a smaller game called Serious Stan. Needless to say, 2 solid games released within 2 days of eachother was a pleasant surprise - although Serious Stan was doomed to always be overshadowed by SP:TH, for reasons which became obvious after playing both games. Still, it didn't change the fact that the SPG community finally had a new game to enjoy, even if it was a fairly small project. Serious Stan starts off with a short intro explaining the storyline every time you start a new game. Unfortunately, this intro cannot be skipped, but luckily doesn't run too long. The storyline appears to be about 2 floating alien heads who have made clones of Kyle, Kenny and Cartman, and have just released them in drones around South Park to attack the citizens... although not if Stan can help it. Granted, the storyline is paper thin & barely holds the game together, but it's no better or worse than 90% of other South Park games. A bit more explanation to the storyline in a help file or something would have been nice, though. Although Serious Stan was made in 2003, it both looks and plays like a South Park game from 1999. The majority of the graphics are from classic Subwoofer games from that era in SPGaming, and the gameplay itself is fairly "primative" when compared to more recent games. It's hardly innovative stuff, but does provide some rather nostalgic value for pre-21st Century SPGamers like myself wink.gif . The main premise of the game is to run around levels, making your way through various obstacles and shooting down any clones you may encounter. Touching a clone or a certain obstacle will kill you, but luckily - unlimited lives mean that levels can be played over and over again. However, the gameplay has more than its fair share of problems, mainly due to inexperience. For one, when you shoot - you must press the button you want to shoot in beforehand. This makes things VERY hard when you want to shoot while jumping or something. Moving platforms don't actually carry you - you have to jump on them, then move in the direction with them. There are also automated walls which move up & down in an attempt to crush you - however, they also kill you even if you just run into the side. Things like this plague Serious Stan, and a more experienced game maker would know that there are many alternative ways to make these things happen WITHOUT having these errors. Unfortunately, the above-mentioned problems aren't the only things wrong with Serious Stan... the level design is below average at most parts, and the difficulty constantly fluxuates. I personally thought that Level 2 was the hardest level in the entire game. Also, in later levels, SPG Mike started to become somewhat lazy, resorting to having dozens of clones in one area rather than tricky obstacles... Sound-wise, Serious Stan is a little strange. There are only really sounds that play when someone dies, and the sounds that play between levels. This is a little annoying, as there are no sounds that play when your fire your gun, or when you bullets hit a clone without killing them - which can be a pain in the ass at times, considering how small the bullet graphic is. Musically, Serious Stan mainly consists of music from rock bands... it's nothing that hasn't been heard before, but for the most part, it suits the game well. Despite all my criticism, Serious Stan is not a bad game, it was just really rushed. If only SPG Mike had spent a little more time on this game, and had a little more game-making experience before attempting an obstacle-based platform game like this, then Serious Stan might have turned out a lot better. Still, at the end of the day, it's a fun little game to play through, and it's great for a game that was made in 2 days. Junkman Dec 13 2004, 05:51 AM Game: Serious Stan Creator: SPGMike Genre: Platformer Description: Aliens have cloned all of Stan's friends and they're threatening the town. Help Stan fight his way through tons of clones of his friends in order to destroy the aliens behind this plan. Rating: 54% Review: Meet Stan. He's serious and he's also capable of kicking some ass. Named after the badass FPS series which is named Serious Sam, Serious Stan offers you a quick and rather quiet romp through a platformer world with many enemies to gun down. Serious Stan practically looks like and plays like a 1999 South Park game. Whilst the game has some pretty retro charm and reminds us of the numerous South Park games that were flooding the Internet back when South Park was at it's peak, It also has the drawbacks from these games of the same era as well. Graphics usually are simple, the gameplay isn't pretty complicated and there are few surprises along the way. Even though this game doesn't do anything that is really wrong, it doesn't manage to achieve anything that makes it stand above the other games you might find on the Internet. As Stan, you must navigate through the 6 levels of the game whilst jumping from platform to platform whilst shooting off clones of Kenny, Cartman and Kyle. The only complaint I have about the enemies is the lack of any notable differences between the enemies themselves, apart from their health. Some of the enemies in the game couldn't even be killed; either my bullets went straight through them or they just kept taking hits and more hits whilst still staying up and strong. Level design is a bit on the simplistic side, although it does work most of the time. Level 2 attempts to use a different set of obstacles by placing opening and closing gates that you must time your run through without being hit. Although it's a good idea, these obstacles were frustrating as hell. Touching any of these gates, even when they couldn't even threaten you as all, still killed you. It's nice that Mike attempts making original obstacles in his game, but the gates could have been better implemented. Like most SPG platformers, this game uses the default platform engine and whilst there's nothing wrong with using it, it renders the riding of moving platforms a bit awkward, since they doesn't carry you along. You often end up falling in the water then (which do kill you in some levels but can be safely waded through in another level). Graphics are borrowed from a large amount of sources: Chris Pirillo's icons, Mark Hadley, ML Productions and the list go on. The game looks good, although it slightly looks dated by most of today's games since it mostly uses graphics from old SP games made through Klik and Play. Sometimes, the background's color manages to obscure the bullets you're shooting as they're roughly the same color, thus you're unsure whether your bullets actually hit the enemies or not. Sounds effects are sparse although they're well used. There's a random sound clip of Stan and other people at the start of every level to kick things off and help off rendering a South Park vibe. Music is mostly rock/punk music borrowed from various midi sites. Serious Stan is a good game in its right, but it clearly needs more work. The level design is a bit too simplistic to be fully appreciated and there's some careless bugs scattered through the game, dragging the overall gameplay experience down. It occasionally shows up good ideas and we can hope that Mike's future projects will be better, considering they get worked on a bit longer and spend more time in the beta testing stage (which would easily destroy the easily-avoidable glitches). There's nothing bad about this game, but there isn't much to draw me back in either.