Serious Sam: The First Encounter

The Good
Serious Sam: The First Encounter is unlike other first-person shooters that I have played, Quake included. Numerous sequels were made since the first game, and they all feature an ongoing story of Sam “Serious” Stone trying to stop Mental's forces from conquering the universe by traveling back to the past and changing the course of history. The first game takes place in Egypt which is where the battle starts to take place.

If you played first-person shooters from the Nineties such as Wolfenstein 3D and Rise of the Triad, there are some features in those games not found in today's FPSes, such as score, a high score table, and a demo that shows you what to expect in the game. Croteam decided to replicate this in Serious Sam, but although this type of information are represented by icons, not actual words.

The protagonist is equipped with the Neutronically Implanted Combat System Analyzer (NETRICSA). These are normal messages from someone that was in the same shoes as Stone, and these give you useful information about the locations you have entered, new enemies you encountered, and weapons you pick up. It also gives you hints on obstacles you will come across and how to overcome them. I like how your inbox flashes whenever you receive a new NETRICSA message.

The gameplay is a mixture of Smash TV and Robotron 2084. Most of the time you enter this huge area where you see your target destination in the distance, and you must get to it while fighting off enemies that teleport to your location rather than them waiting for you. Just like Robotron 2084, enemies will chase you wherever you go, and you can't proceed to your next destination until you take down all enemies. The battle becomes intense in these areas, and you will often find yourself running out of ammunition, and need to restock before the next battle takes place.

The enemies you meet in the game have different characteristics, and their animations are smooth. The kamikaze bomber, for instance, screams at you while they home to your location, so they can blow themselves up if they get too close. I like how you can tell whether they are closing the distance if their footsteps become louder in volume. There are bosses in the game, and most of them are gigantic. I also like how you can use certain enemies to your advantage. Those wild bulls that charge at you can take Sam to places that are hard to reach, for instance.

The cinematics add depth to the story. They mostly consist of Sam getting a precious artifact from some kind of podium, but the one that I enjoyed most was the introduction, where the story scrolls by while you get a good view of space, with all the galaxies and stars. You can skip the cinematics if you want to.

The music is excellent, and provides many easy listening tunes as you walk through each area. One thing that I admire in first-person shooters is the way the music changes when you are battling a huge number of areas, then changes back to the original level soundtrack once you have cleared all enemies. In Serious Sam's case, the battle music provides quite a beat to it, to the point where you can memorize it all.

Along with the main game, you get a technology demo where you have to walk through a series of hallways, and each room showcases what the Serious Engine is capable of, containing features that were not found in previous first-person shooters such as large view distances and a massive number of models. Some of the effects are quite stunning, especially the ones from the first two hallways. In addition, there is a training mode, but more about that later.

My highlight has to be wandering around Hatshepsut, admiring the graphical trickery the game has to offer, such as the flash of lightning in the horizon and the setting transition from storm to sunshine. Also, making use of the first easter egg where the developers come out of a secret room, and getting the Bio-Mechanoids to blow them up.

Croteam developed a remake of the game, using the third incarnation of the Serious Engine. I won't review this version as I would only repeat myself, but I will say that the graphics have improved, and other minor stuff has been added. The gameplay and soundtrack remains the same, though.

The Bad
There's not much point in trying out the training mode, as it is basically one of the later stages in the game but with a different setting. During the game, even the smaller enemies can run a lot faster than you, meaning that you can't shoot them at a distance without blowing yourself up if it is too late.

The Bottom Line
Serious Sam is an excellent first-person shooter that harks back to the days of Wolf3D and ROTT, while offering stunning graphics and sound. The game also throws in two of my favorites from the Eighties (mentioned above), and there is a certain strategy that is needed to defeat most of the enemies in the game. I played the Steam release which gives me the option of entering a program that allows me to create custom levels, and to create enemies for them. That is a welcome addition to the game, and means if you can't get enough Serious Sam, you can create levels yourself or download them somewhere from the Internet.

The Good
Although often compared to 'Doom', Serious Sam is nothing like it; instead, it's essentially a modern update of 'Robotron 2084' and 'Smash TV', two classic arcade games in which the player fought against overwhelming odds in a series of square arenas. Sam also bears comparison with the cult Doom contemporary 'Rise of the Triad', in that it takes place mostly outdoors, in expansive locations. It shares Triad's surreal sense of humour - the oft-mentioned screaming headless kamikazes in particular - and underdog status, coded as it was by an small, enthusiastic company from Croatia. A low price and no requirement for a 50mb patch set it apart from the FPS mainstream at the time, and the lack of mainstream coverage - it was eventually championed by the website 'Old Man Murray' and nobody else - gave it an in-built cult appeal.

If you approach it as a modern Doom heir you'll be horribly disappointed, as I was at first, but more of that later. Once you accept that it's outdoors 'Gauntlet' in 3D, it becomes easier to bear; the action does not stop, there are some cute secrets (including the programmers themselves), and the music is atmospheric and catchy. On a visceral level, the sheer volume of baddies, of firepower, and the breathtaking size of the environments is unique and compelling, and the sky is beautiful. Really, the sky is beautiful, it truly is. The wispy clouds sit in the pristine blue air, with only the beating sun for company. For a game that has no pretensions at all, the evocation of ancient Egypt is superbly atmospheric, and makes one wish that Sam had been a complex graphic adventure rather than a shoot-em-up (as it stands, the game exists to showcase its custom-built engine, created at a time when everybody and his dog was licensing engines for their own projects).

The Bad
Serious Sam takes place in a serious of large, barren arenas, which are empty until the monsters warp in; although you can see for miles, there's nothing over there to see. It is entirely linear, in that there is a single path for the player to take; furthermore, the monsters appear in a set sequence, and indeed the manual even encourages you to quicksave and quickload often, so as to learn the pattern. To the extent that almost all first-person shooters play like this, it is forgivable; but

The monsters have almost no AI, and don't fight each other, whilst there are no exploding barrels or crushing ceilings to assist you. Indeed there are almost no 'clever bits', the gameplay is simply a test of the player's reactions. By a third of the way through the game you have seen everything it has - enormous quadrangles in which meanies appear in a set sequence. Too many of the weapons require one-and-a-tiny-bit shots to kill the most common villains, which is frustrating. The game does not take account of the player's location when warping in monsters, and they often appear just behind you. Most of the monsters go faster than you, and one class explodes if they get too close, whilst the player's ponderous gait makes getting about tedious. Quite often the projectile-firing monsters cannot be dodged without taking some damage, no matter how fast you are.

The gameplay involves running backwards and to one side, until a monster gets behind you, at which point you reverse direction. Mobygame's 'Tips and Tricks' section parodies this, but it is true; there is usually no cover to hide behind, and the monsters run faster than you. Parts of the game are thus excruciatingly frustrating, as no matter how skilful you are, you will die often without first having learned the sequencing of each arena.

The monsters are mostly anonymous, only one of them fitting the Egyptian location. Some of them are intensely irritating; the flying women who go faster than you and can't be outrun or dodged, the running skeletons which form the game's staple villain, but which are annoyingly resilient, chopping off a quarter of your health with each strike, notwithstanding that there are usually hundreds of them, and they jump behind you and you die. Argh. The large arenas and volume of enemy tend to make sidestepping away from incoming projectiles an exercise in guesswork rather than judgement.

The Serious Sam character himself is clearly modelled on Duke Nukem (and the little man from the 'Metal Slug' games), who was in turn constructed out of one-liners sampled from action/horror films. Sam's utterances are however infrequent and functional, beyond the phrase 'Sam I am!'.

The Bottom Line
The size and detailed textures are achieved at the expensive of environmental detail, though. The sequel, 'The Second Encounter', is the better game, and given that the two are now available in a budget-priced 'Gold' edition there's no pressing reason not to own both. Despite the criticism below, Sam is nonetheless fun in short bursts, albeit trivial, with no replay value. I have no idea how it is like in multiplayer, bearing in mind that there is no cover to hide behind and that the first player to get hold of the Tommy Gun would win.

The final battle, and the section leading up to the final battle, is quite strikingly huge.

The Good
The guns are varied and satisfying, the graphics look really good.

The Bad
Serious Sam feels like something a ten-year-old would make right after downloading a Quake level editor. It consists of simplistic, very linear levels and almost constantly throws wave after wave of enemies at the player without any design concept or actual sense of progression. Even though some enemies are actually interesting to fight when they're first introduced, they become utterly tedious as you fight them again and again in almost identical circumstances. The entire experience becomes simply tiring already in its first half.

Croteam probably meant to create something that would reject the more complex gameplay mechanics of newer action games at the turn of the century and return to the '90s classics. The thing is, games like Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, Quake, and Unreal are not just pure mindless violence. Intricate level design is an essential part of their identity, absolutely crucial to how engaging they are - something the Serious Sam developers seem to have completely forgotten.

The Bottom Line
Serious Sam is a tiring and tedious FPS focused on endless enemy spam. 3/10 (officially Worse Than Daikatana)

The Good
Retro is the new black. For every game that looks forward and tries to push the boundaries of gameplay and design, there is invariably another game that relives the days when shooters were fueled by sheer testosterone and "story" meant a paragraph in the manual. Serious Sam is one of the latter, an extremely stupid Doom homage that purposefully ignores all the innovations in gameplay since 1995.

You play as Sam Stone, a guy who has been sent back in time to stop an alien invasion before it begins. It was made by a Croatian development team and is the first of a series known for its intensity and over-the-top violence. The game's calling card is that you fight large numbers of enemies, sometimes several thousand per level. Serious Sam is crazy and unrelenting, sometimes you'll survive a battle with only 3 health and 10 shells left...and then have to fight again. Serious Sam's enemies are very aggressive and dangerous, and pose a massive threat even in small numbers. The absurd body count and non-stop fighting make Serious Sam an exceptionally intense game.

The game mostly takes place in Ancient Egypt, and the game has a funky art style that sets it apart from other games. The game takes place outside in huge courtyards and market squares, giving you lots of elbow room for the game's massive battles. As far as weapons go you have a knife (which is surprisingly useful), pistols with infinite ammo, single and double-barreled shotguns, a tommygun and chaingun, a rocket launcher, a grenade launcher, the series' trademark "Serious Bomb", a laser blaster, etc. Even the weak weapons pack a punch, and the diverse nature of the game's enemies mean you have to switch around a lot. Speaking of which, deformed and drooling horror-movie rejects are the rule here, as you have to fight such critters as headless suicide bombers, fridge-magnet shaped apes, and giant scorpions cross-bred with spiders. The bosses tower over you like skyscrapers.

Although it's mostly a by-the-numbers Doom clone, Serious Sam does experiment with some new ideas. You have an on-board computer called NETRISCA, who will provide information on the enemies you fight (analysing how strong/dangerous they are, etc), give you warnings about potential ambushes, or give you guidance on how to escape the area you're in. It speeds up the action in the game because you don't have to run around for 15 minutes looking for a button to press or an elevator to ride.

Graphics aren't great, but they do what they're supposed to do. Hundreds of enemies can be rendered on-screen at once with little lag, and the game's bright colors and exuberant art are reminiscent of Indiana Jones. There are some nice graphical effects like lens flares and realistic blood splatters (when a fast-moving enemy crushes you, it leaves a giant blood streak on the ground), and surprisingly good AI. Enemies will chase you up staircases, and even jump narrow ledges if possible. The game also has a dynamic soundtrack, which changes tempo to match the amount of action on screen.

Ultimately the best thing you can say about Serious Sam is it succeeds in expanding upon the frantic action of Doom. It seriously does make almost every other FPS game look tame, and that's not bad at all for a budget game.

The Bad
The game looked very promising when I first started playing, but sadly it never delivered the goods. Serious Sam begins and ends as a gimmick game. It's fun for about 20 minutes and after that is an extra-stupid version of Quake. It's weird how a game with this amount of KICKASS ACTION can be so...boring.

Serious Sam's gameplay formula boils down to the same thing: enter a large area, and destroy a huge swarm of enemies in order to collect some random item/weapon from off the ground, after which an exit will open somewhere and you can move into the next area where you will probably have to do the same thing. This is all there is. A computer bot could play Serious Sam.

Serious Sam is often compared to Duke Nukem 3D, but it isn't half the game Duke 3D was. The design isn't there. Serious Sam has huge environments, yes, but they are bland and featureless. There are huge expanses of practically nothing. Sam Stone gets a couple of weak one-liners but there's nothing like the retarded non-stop comedy of Duke. Environmental interaction is limited to pressing buttons and blowing up statues. The game's zany graphical style is cool at first, but every level looks the same. The only area where I would say Serious Sam's content shines is in the monster and weapon design, and frankly games that get off on wacky and weird enemies are a dime a dozen these days.

Since Serious Sam's action is repetitive and uninspired, and the levels boring and bland, I guess I can't do anything except pass this off as a 21st century version of Galaxa. But even by arcade game standards Serious Sam doesn't work. Sam Stone moves too slowly considering the pace of the action, and avoiding enemies when you run out of ammo is nearly impossible. Explosions do way too much splash damage and you'll often be killed by your own rockets. The game's aiming system automatically snaps you on to targets, which is nice, but it's only a token offering considering how frustrating combat can become.

The game has a very annoying over-use of monster traps, meaning when you go to pick up health or ammo monsters spawn from everywhere and attack you. Serious Sam's monsters are so fast and aggressive that this is a major problem, since the game gives you no warning whatsoever and enemies will often spawn right next to you.

The Bottom Line
Action-packed but generic and forgettable, Serious Sam is bargain bin material. There's not much of a game here and even on its own terms it is frustrating for the most part.

The Good
Well, first off, there is LUDICROUS amount of action. You'll know what I'm talking about when you're standing in a field with enemies faster and more powerful than you are coming towards you from all sides. Yeehaw! Secondly, I enjoyed the refreshing Doom-like feel of the game. Even if a situation looks impossible, you will find a way out of it. Finally, the game is full of humor and secrets. Speaking of secrets, they're the best damn secrets in any game. They COMPLETELY step away from the game, and ANYTHING can happen in a secret area. Oh, yeah, and the graphics engine is absolutely gorgeous! Do yourself a favor and walk up to a wall. IT JUST DOESN'T PIXELATE!! NOT ONE BIT!!

The Bad
Parts of the game, especially towards the end, are EXTREMELY difficult. Some areas limit you on health and ammo for a while. Finally, you get annoyed when, for the 45th time in a level, you walk into a wide-open area with some really powerful item in the middle. Before you know it, the world around you is exploding, scratching, and, er, laser-ing. In my opinion, once per level is enough! UGH!

The Bottom Line
A serious FPS with a soaring fun factor!

The Good
Serious Sam is a return to the mind-numbing fast-action shooter solidified by Doom. In a nutshell:

• You have many weapons of mass destruction
• You have many mindless enemies that exist solely to kill you
• You have fast framerates and crisp control that you can command at a thought's notice

It's an homage to Doom, but Croteam has added their own twisted spin on the types of enemies. One of the more grotesque enemies would be what I like to call "the walking maw" -- a running torso with no head and a huge, gaping, teeth-filled mouth embedded in the chest. But easily the most, ah, disturbing enemy has to be the suicide bombers. Headless men that run at you with a bomb in each hand, stopping for nothing and noone, and screaming the entire time (yes, even though they have no head). You haven't felt terror until you've heard a faint noise... that gets louder... that slowly graduates into a yell and by that time you're frantically spinning around trying to figure out what the hell is coming at you.

There were some times in Serious Sam where the action got so thick I literally started laughing out loud at how utterly ludicrous the situation became. 60+ galloping skeletal creatures that can run faster than you, all headed your way? 10+ werebulls all heading at you like a runaway derailed train? It's friggin' nuts! And also some of the most fun I've had in recent months playing an action game.

You'd think that a game like this wouldn't have any story or plot, but I was surprised to see that the authors of the game had more than a passing interest in ancient egyptian locales, history, and mythology. As such, a passable (if completely false) plot exists tying all the locales and (simple) puzzles together based on ancient egyptian history.

Finally, the graphical engine (the real reason Serious Sam was created was initially just as a technology demo for the engine) is superb. The engine is capable of a lot of things that you don't normally think about until you see them demonstrated, such as support for many different objects onscreen, huge wide open areas where you can see for miles in all directions (there is absolutely no fogging or pop-up that I could see), portals that really work, and nicely-implemented effects (lens flares, reflections/water, etc.) where appropriate.

The Bad
As much as the graphical engine kicked ass, I experienced some severe rendering anomolies at times that were fairly annoying, such as flashing polygons. If the game weren't so fun, I might have stopped playing entirely because of it. Note that I am in the minority -- I haven't heard of any other major graphics glitches from other players.

I also experienced an odd mouse button delay -- if I didn't hold the mouse button down for at least 50ms, it didn't register. In other words, I couldn't "tap" shots off; I had to really press the button down. I don't get this kind of behavior in any of my other games, so it was definitely Serious Sam-related.

Some situations (especially near the end) cross the line from "ludicrous fun" to "impossible situation". If you play on any of the harder settings, there is simply no way to win the game, I am convinced. I would love to see an AI bot try it.

Finally, there are some annoying situations you can get into when you need to kill all onscreen enemies to advance to the next section, but you can't find one of them because they've fallen into a pool and can't get out, or they're hidden, or stuck, or you just haven't wandered into the area where they're waiting for you yet.

The Bottom Line
This game is the action-game antithesis of Counter-Strike -- no strategy at all. Just blast everything and keep running! It's the old-school modern-day oxymoron of 1st-person shooters.

And since its retail price is only $20, why not pick it up?

The Good
EVERYTHING. Serious Sam is a game with nothing but action. The plot is almost non-existant, the puzzles suit 3-years-old, and the blood is flowing like a river all over the place. The only thing you'll do in Serious Sam is blow things up, with a variety of deadly weapons.
The game already has a powerful fan base around it, ever since its original demo was released. New maps and mods are created daily, and the top sites (whose links you'll find on the Related Sites section) are filled with tutorials which allow even the scrubbiest player to create cool additional features for the game.
As an added bonus, Serious Sam wasn't created by a well-known company, therefore it's published as a "budget" game- ie, it only costs 20$!! That's nothing compared to the newest 50$ monstrosities (like Tribes 2, another modern FPS)


The Bad
Nothing. This game is meant for the sole purpose of having fun and watching the gore fly over the monitor, and it fits this purpose well.

The Bottom Line
Who needs plot? Who needs thinking? Serious Sam is the 21st century reincarnation of Doom, with amazing graphics, powerful engine and great sound and SFX. If you call yourself a fan of FPS, or of gaming in general, go and buy it- NOW.

The Good
Non-stop shoot-em-up action. Lots of creatures to kill with plenty of ways to kill them. The graphics are top-notch for its time, especially considering that it is value software ($20). Coming from an independent development team, this game is absolutely amazing.

The Bad
I can not stand vanishing corpses or blood. It really ticks me off that I can not survey the carnage I just caused. All the levels take place in Egyptian-style locales, which really makes one want some more variety.

The Bottom Line
The most mind-numbing shooter to hit the market since Doom. Don't think... SHOOT! Over-the-top battles and great multiplayer options round off this sweet package.

The Good
The mindless killing is great, but...(continued in next section) and the graphics are fine and definately serve it's purpose. The gameplay is extended for a couple of hours with the multi-player, although it isn't that different from playing the single-player.

The Bad
(continued from the first section)...after a few hours it all becomes VERY dull. You've seen all the enemies and gotten all the guns about half way through the game. Then what you get is just a bunch of rehashed enemies(different colour, different size(only one of them, The Head-less suicide guys, are remotely interesting) and the same lame guns for the rest of the game. Oh, yeah, the weapons are bad. They're all boring and unimaginative except for one: The Cannon. And, in the spirit of the game, I'll repeat myself and say: Unimaginative gameplay, enemies and weapons.

The Bottom Line
This game shows just how easy it is to impress gamers now a days, with a dull, mediocre FPS. It might just be worth your money because of the low price, but that shouldn't justify putting no imagination into it. The only way for this game to live in the memories of gamers, is to keep pumping out sequels every year. And believe me, you don't want that to happen. In short, a quickly-forgotten game, with a low price tag.