Plenty of shooters divide their development into two teams; one for the single-player campaign, and one for the multiplayer. Sometimes this involves using two entirely separate engines as well. This raises the question as to why developers don’t just release the single and multiplayer components of their games as two entirely separate products. Devolver Digital hasn’t quite taken things that far with Serious Sam BFE: Jewel of the Nile, but they’ve come pretty close. The single-player and co-op mode of Serious Sam BFE released on XBLA as a fifteen dollar download, while the multiplayer versus mode came as a separate download, also priced at fifteen dollars. Is Jewel of the Nile worth the price of admission? Well, for people who absolutely loved Serious Sam, it is.
The developer says that the game was divided into two downloads due to file size limits on XBLA, but regardless of why, this worked out well for buyers because the single-player campaign is a good deal at fifteen dollars. It also included an online c-op mode, and split screen local multiplayer to sweeten the pot.
Jewel of the Nile adds in a multiplayer versus mode, which provides the classic array of Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, Last Man Standing, and Team modes. The game focuses on old school gameplay, so these matches are based on fast-paced action, rather than tactical thinking. There’s even a match type for One-Hit Kills to put players to a true test of speed and accuracy.
The selection of modes and maps is decent, however, there is very little activity on the servers at the time of this writing. The game has been out for two weeks, and it is very difficult to get a full team match going. A community may develop in time, but that doesn’t seem to have happened as of yet.
Along with the versus mode, Jewel of the Nile adds in three new single-player levels. These can be played as soon as the content is downloaded, but they are designed specifically for experienced players, and offer a big challenge. They give out a large arsenal of powerful weapons early on, and put Sam up against some of the most dangerous enemies right away (Along with some new faces).
Experienced players will enjoy the difficult fight, but these new missions are a little too tough at times, forcing players to backtrack all over the level taking on waves of powerful enemies. Because the game uses scripted encounters to trigger these waves, players can find themselves getting bombarded by extremely fearsome opponents in very large groups.
Combine this with an autosave feature, and the game could leave players stuck in an unwinnable situation that requires them to just restart the mission from scratch.
Jewel of the Nile is a chancy purchase for gamers. The main game offers hours of single-player content, plus a very exciting co-op mode at a good price. Jewel of the Nile has a much shorter single-player campaign, and a multiplayer mode that still hasn’t found its feet in terms of a community. For those who just can’t get enough of Sam, and want to help build that player base for the multiplayer, Jewel of the Nile can be downloaded now. It is also available for PC at ten dollars.
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