Serious Sam: The First Encounter

Sam, Samie, serios, and just sam.

I got this for free and spent an hour or two playing it. I gotta say, for what I played, it's very good. It came out in 2001 but feels more like a game from around when HL2 came out. Enemy variety is a cut above, everything serves it's purpose and you need to be smart about what weapons you employ to take them out. It's like doom except you can't just sidestep every enemy to win. The AI is smarter than that.

One of those early 2000s FPS titles for the PC that made me fan already the first time i saw it being presented during a german games show called GIGA Games which was the first time i ever got in contact with a modern FPS game in the tradition of old DOS 3D shooters that had hordes of enemies and a not so important (but not unimportant) backstory. The whole game really lives through its not-so-serious presentation and humorous enemy design. Yelling headless freaks with bombs instead of hands, running towards you in masses or jumping skeleton kangaroo freaks, slimy toads, giant Bio-mechs, one eyed meatballs with arms.... and so on and so forth. And if you are not a fan of red blood, you can change it to green or even change it to flowers without any blood what so ever. The so called Hippie Mode. Weapon-wise the game also throws all sorts of things at you to shoot at these hordes of enemies with. One of the biggest fun factors of this game is the co-op mode which i often played with a good friend of mine. So you can basically play & finish this game by yourself or with a friend. If you just want a shooter without too much story or complicated gameplay mechanics and just want some "brain out" fun, this game is the right thing for you. Even today this game plays pretty well and hardware requirements are laughably low. So if you plan on playing it on more dated hardware, like laptops from around 2006/2007 or so, this game would still play great on low-end hardware.

I remember playing this game when it first came out, and loving it. It <i>is</i> mindless, but who cares as you blast away at insane numbers of well-drawn, well-imagined enemies. The one-liners are great, too. Hopefully the Second Encounter will be on gog too, soon (hint, hint).

Although this is a great game no matter how you look at it, for $5 more you can get Serious Sam HD which is an official HD conversion of this game. The game is exactly the same as you remembered it, just with a more modern engine & better graphics. Anyway, about the game. Straight off the bat, Serious Sam is a completely non-serious game. It's full of cheesy one liners and awesome secrets all over the place. Sam is a great character who is a parody of Duke Nukem. This game needs to be played co-op, I mean sure you can play it singleplayer but it's not very exciting and where this game truly shines is playing together with friends. The game pits you against HUGE forces of enemies which when the game was released would bring computers to a crawl. The engine probably still looks great as it was quite impressive for it's time, especially pushing the enemy numbers it manages. The gameplay is standard FPS shooter fare, wipe out all the bad guys or find a key or switch to progress to the next area, rinse - repeat. The enemies are quite varied and the locations are very distinct and pretty. The game is going for an Egyptian theme and there are plenty of pyramids with their traps waiting to catch you off guard. The game has a lot of traps where you will be pulled towards spikes, have to dodge things or the room is just flooded with enemies. As I said before, this is a load of fun with friends especially watching them mess up and fly into the spikes lol Although the game comes with modding support I don't think it was really utilized so there isn't much in the mods department. The game has a few competitive modes but they are pretty awful and feel like tehy were just added at the last minute to add some extra longevity to the game. I cannot stress how good the co-operative play is though. You really must play this game at least once, it's great fun. The only issue I have with it is I just don't see why you wouldn't pay the extra $5 and get the same game with a fresh coat of paint, better compatibility & support.