The Stack

I have just obtained one of the most glorious things in Serious Sam: the SBC Cannon. Don’t ask me what SBC stands for. The point is, it’s a cannon. Not in the modern “vulcan cannon” sense, but in the sense of a cast-iron tube, rounded at one end and open at the other, used for launching cannonballs. The only abnormal things are that the cannon is handheld, and the cannonballs are somehow much larger than could possibly fit inside it. It’s hard to judge, because you can’t exactly stand next to them after they’ve been fired, but I think the balls are almost as tall as the player character.

Once fired, the cannonballs quickly fall to the ground, where they roll around like billiard balls, careening off walls, crushing anything in their way. Then they blow up. The explosion doesn’t seem to do much damage, if any at all, but at least it’s pretty. Firing cannonball after cannonball at a distant but rapidly approaching horde of monsters is not only the most efficient way to clear them, it’s also the most satisfying. It’s just joyously kinetic.

All in all, it’s a good example of the Serious Sam design philosophy: that fun gameplay is more important than plausibility. For that matter, so is gratuitous silliness.