Serious Sam: The First Encounter

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
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.