Serious Sam 3: Jewel of Nile (Expansion DLC)

 
Jewel of the Nile is apparently only a 2 hour long expansion pack and it was on sale for a dollar so might as well play it even though I didn't think SS3 was amazing or anything, but maybe the expansion pack has better levels?

It's only got 3 levels so I'll just break them down

The first level starts off on a bad first impression. It's this open square arena type thing with a building in the middle and a bunch of locked doors. You kill a wave of enemies and then....nothing. So we just walked around in circles for like 10-15 minutes trying to figure out wtf to do. Checking every nook and cranny. We eventually went over to the obscure side area in the map and found a stairwell to a basement that lead to a room with a big locked door. Ok so you have to find the key for sure. Another few mins of doing basically nothing and guess what, found a key inside yet another trailer storage container thing. Just why? Why do they design levels like this. What were they thinking? I dont think the cutscenes were working properly in co-op because my partner could see some fly over cutscenes showing him where some keys were ,but I never saw any so it was just a mess. Once we got the key we couldn't even figure out what to do with it and it turns out theres a generic little square altar area where you have to put the key, but it kinda just looks like a unimportant random bench. Really not off to a good start! Well after that stuff is out of the way the pacing got a bit better. atleast

The expansion adds a few new weapons and even brings back enemies from the original games. It brings back those big green guys with 4 arms that shoot green balls from the original game, they look awesome here. New guns added is the Sniper rifle just like from the original game, and the laser gun also from the original game . So its cool that its bringing back classic stuff. But other than that nothing really new.

But yeah I don't know that first level is not too impressive its just flat and yellow and nothing really happens besides walking around and checking every obscure corner for a key and then it spawns waves of enemies. It's all yellow just like the base game, atleast the place is surrounded by water which looks good but why couldn't they make the expansion levels just completely different than the base game? Like take place in Winter time or in the jungle or something you know? its just more of the same yellow shit.

Level 2 starts a lot better, its more of this linear kind of city level at first where it throws you through a gauntlet of all sorts of enemies positioned on rooftops and haryps. You go through city streets and in between ruined buildings and the gameplay is pretty fun for awhile, no bullshit or frills. It's decently challenging and it has a good mix between small enclosed street locations but also big open wide fields. Then the level sort of takes a turn for the worse by making you go inside these multiple different Tombs to complete various puzzles and trials to progress the level. These tombs are more of the same annoying stuff from the base game but atleast this time it adds something different by unique puzzles. One of the puzzle is like a jumping platform thing where you have to flip switches to move the plaforms int othe right places to jump on them, it was kind of fun to figure out during co-op play. Another puzzle is pretty easy, just this water thing where you have to flip the right switches to fill up the water to grab a item. The other puzzle is this giant maze of switches and black stone walls that you have to figure out how to move them around. I personally didn't even touch this because multiple people flipping switches here is just a confusing mess so I kinda just stood around and waited for my co-op partner to figure it out. Not very thrilling gameplay. I appreciate that they were trying to add somthing different than just shooting but meh I think I personally would just prefer constant balls to wall action and well paced well designed levels..


Then the last level is this big open area Dam type level where it throws every possible enemy at you in droves and you have to navigate around the level until coming across a Jetpack. This part is sort of a mess, the sky has a really low invisible wall where you can't fly very high that is inconsistent and changes sometimes, you kinda just fly all over the map trying to figure out where to go. You find this one place that seems really obvious that its where you go, a giant tunnel wall that you open, but it turns out its just an optional secret? That was weird. Well it turns out the actual place where you go is this tiny tucked away valve you have to interact with that opens up a pipe you can walk through. Mind boggling. Took us like 15 mins flying around before we found that. Just very meh level design and pacing, why can't these fucking guys design reasonable levels like they did in The First Encounter?  Well anyway you go through that pipe and it gets rid of  your jetpack and then you actually come across Green land for once, instead of all yellow! that was a nice change of visuals to see.  From there you have the classic 'last level formula' the Sam games always does, giant long linear 'bowling' strips where it throws hordes of enemies at you and its just a war of attrition. This part is fucking hard, you eventually go out into some big open area with old buildings and it spawns all sorts of helipcotors that just fuck you up unless you kill them ASAP as well as throwing hundreds of enemies at you. This part was super intense and me and my coop partner had to have our backs against the walls playing super carefully so we dont  waste all our lives and have to do it all over again, it was kinda fun but also went on forever.

And after all that you come across the last boss which once again is designed like shit, theres no ammo in the area other than boxes of C4. It's a giant version of the Mancubus thing from doom 3, its like they just blew the asset up 600% and edited it a bit. It looks cool but yeah. So you cant really hurt him unless you kinda walk right up to him with C4 and wait for it to show a placing C4 highlight, what the fuck? Who has time to experiment with that when you have limited lives on the line and can fail so easily and have to do the entire 1 hour+ map again? well guess what, of course we failed the fucking map cause the bosses are always designed like shit and it spawns billions of regular enemies and helicoptors that fuck you up if you dont kill the boss within 40 seconds. So we had to redo the whole map, except fuck it we just put it on easiest difficulty and speedran back to the last boss and killed him like a joke.

So yeah its only 3 levels and they're mostly bad or more of the same shit. I don't know why these guys cant really design good maps, the Sam games have everything going for them besides good level design..

6/10