game reviews – Page 2 – The Terra Primus Chronicles

Original Release Dates: March 2001 (First Encounter), February 2002 (Second Encounter)
Remake Release Dates: November 2009 (First Encounter), April 2010 (Second Encounter)
Developers: Croteam
Publisher: Gathering of Developers (Originals), Devolver Digital (Remakes)

Summary

Designed as an independent game over a period of a few years, Serious Sam incorporates elements of all the landmark titles of the almost-3D era of FPS titles into a fully 3D title. If Half-Life (which released a few years before Serious Sam) can be considered a new direction for the genre of shooting games through its emphasis on plot and immersion in a strange world, Serious Sam feels like an evolution of those earliest titles.

Serious Sam is a glorified shooting gallery, albeit with a freedom of movement that wasn’t quite actualized in many of the earlier titles that felt more like rail shooters. Featuring a manly man protagonist who spouts one liners and murders endless waves of alien monsters, Serious Sam tied together a lot of the tropes that made Duke Nukem and Doom mainstays in public culture.

What made ‘the First Encounter’ and its sequel different, however, is the fact that there are clear attempts made to create an immersive world. There are elements of lore, with an AI that provides you (somewhat meaningless) data on the weapons and monsters you find, while also providing you with hints on where to go next and details about your constantly evolving mission. Unlike the cramped corridors of a moon base, Nazi fortress, or a secret, underground science facility, Serious Sam mostly plays out in large, open areas in various historical cities. While the environments are nothing more than that (scenery), they nevertheless provide a stark contrast to the grimy and dark games from which Sam draws most of its inspiration.

Anyone who is a fan of FPS titles should be able to draw some entertainment from the First and Second Encounters. While I personally wish the titles would have been about a third or so shorter than they were, I don’t regret finally sitting down to play through both titles for the first time in close to two decades.

Technical/Presentation (7/10)

Gameplay

Serious Sam is one of the kings of the FPS sub-genre of ‘murder everything with extreme prejudice (and gore)’. In many ways, it is like a three-dimensional version of Contra III or like one of those arcade games where you just spam all the joysticks to try and murder everything on the screen before it can get to you. The game came out in 2001, so I’m not sure it originated anything unique on the 3d FPS stage, as this was a few years removed from landmark FPS titles like Half-Life and Quake and shortly before the genre went full-tilt into war nostalgia with the advent of the Call of Duty and Medal of Honor franchises.

One thing worth pointing out that the game has that feels a few years ahead of itself is the in-game AI. NETRICSA is a computer system that’s implanted into soldier’s brains and acts as Sam’s method of translating languages, figuring out where to go, and even providing lore information on weapons, locations, and the various enemies that you murder. It also tracks stats like secrets you’ve found, enemies killed, time taken, etc. While nothing stood out to me about this in the First Encounter, I did notice that the ‘Netty’ blurbs had a lot more personality in the Second Encounter.

The gameplay itself is straightforward. Sam has health and armor, and he has an assortment of weapons that he uses to murder a variety of alien forces. All of your standard FPS weapons are here—pistols (dual wielding, of course), shotguns, machineguns, and rocket launcher. The First Encounter tops is off with a laser gun and a cannon (a literal cannon that fires literal cannonballs). The Second Encounter fleshes out the assortment further by adding a sniper rifle, flamethrower, and the ‘serious bomb’, which functioned much like the BFG in Doom in the sense that it would murder everything on the screen with extreme prejudice. The game lets you jump and look up and down (as enemies will come at you from all angles) but concepts like crouching or hiding simply hadn’t been invented yet… plus Sam ain’t that kind of guy. It is worth mentioning, however, that the Second Encounter did have a handful of platforming elements, which did provide a needed wrinkle to the experience.

The Second Encounter adds a handful of powerups that temporarily boost speed, strength, and life, and while there are many (many) secrets that are nestled away throughout both titles, there’s no real incentive to try and track them down. Like many other FPS titles of the time, most of them are concealed very well, and the lack of any sort of genuine completion bonus renders it moot when you know you really just want to keep running and gunning your way through alien hordes.

Visuals

I played the original version of this game at the time of it’s launch, and for the purpose of this writing, I played the HD remakes that came out in 2009/2010. I’m also aware that there are VR versions of both titles that released in 2017 but I have no idea what the graphical fidelity might be for those. In terms of both versions, they match the time period, although I think the original aged pretty well.

I think this was a Shakespeare reference

For it’s time, I believe Serious Sam was one of the first FPS titles to really provide the player with wide-open worlds, compared to the smaller passages and claustrophobic spaces of earlier titles in the genre. Both the First and Second Encounters do a nice job providing a fun (if nonsensical) backdrop to the action playing out around you, as the set-pieces of Ancient Egypt, Mesoamerica, Babylon, and Medieval Europe give you just enough backdrop without infringing on what you bought the game for (murder).

The effects are also great, as the weapons rip and tear their way through enemies in engrossing fashion. Naturally, the HD remaster can pull off a lot more in this regard, but I did think they could have done a little more. After a while, the static death animations become less amusing, and this was long before most enemies showcased wear and tear.

Sound

The sound in the game is nothing much beyond the tracks that play in the background. Sam is voice acted, but he’s input is relegated to a dozen or two one-liners when you pick up guns or get through a particularly difficult set piece of monsters or platforming. The music itself is up and down, with some titles feeling great and others quickly growing repetitive. I did enjoy the Mesoamerican background music from the Second Encounter, as well as the Christmas-esque music from the snowy subsection of Medieval Europe. There’s a section where the background music is a somber, slow version of Jingle Bells, and every time you enter combat, it ramps up to a heavy metal version of the track.

Story (5/10)

Serious Sam is story-lite in almost every sense of the word. Sam ‘Serious’ Stone is the Earth’s greatest soldier (one who apparently feels zero need to wear visible armor), so he is picked to go on a dangerous mission through time to save the future from an unknown villain named ‘Mental’, whose forces have gradually pushed humanity to extinction.

Sam’s journey starts in Ancient Egypt, where he has to collection various artifacts to find a way to locate and fight Mental. In the Second Encounter, his journey continues in ancient Mesoamerica, ancient Babylon, and into medieval Europe, where he is trying to locate the Holy Grail of legend. Along the way, Sam is confronted by increasingly difficult waves of Mental’s forces, but he manages to slaughter his way through them, including various lieutenants, all while plopping out the contractually obligated one-liners.

Spoiler Zone

It’s difficult to provide anything akin to a spoiler for a game that has very little plot to spoil. Sam is the only character in the game, and he feels like a next gen Duke Nukem in almost every sense of the word (just try and remember a world where Duke Nukem Forever had yet to release). Sam doesn’t have the same flair as Duke, though… at least how I remember Duke. Sam’s quips are few and far between, and while he occasionally makes a reference to some pop culture (whistling Indiana Jones and shouting ‘Goood morning Babylon!’), nothing really zings or lasts. The sole exception to this is a line that stuck with me from my youth, and that’s from the winter zone. Sam exclaims ‘Damn, it’s cold, my nipples are hard like pencil erasers.’ That line made me crack the hell up as a young teenager, and even as a jaded old person, I snickered.

Reflection

(From IGN) I played the old version as a teen and, yea … the remake is pretty

Serious Sam had slightly more plot than Doom, but there’s not a whole lot to say about the story elements in these first two titles. Yes, they exist, and you do get a degree of world building through the AI in Sam’s brain and the information and quips it provides about the locations, weapons, and monsters. But honestly, I can safely say I never played the game to be engrossed in your standard science-fiction shooter. The fact that it’s transplanted into ancient elements doesn’t really add anything to the plot, because you could have just replaced those backdrops with anything without fundamentally altering the experience.

The core game doesn’t deviate much from the schtick of ‘kill monsters, progress through mostly linear stage with some frivolous secrets, and located object X, Y, or Z.’ Since the same thing can be said about most prolific FPS titles, I can’t damn the title too much, but this was also around the same time that stuff like Half-Life and Halo were either in the market of close to hitting it, and Serious Sam feels closer to the 90s than the 2000s when it comes to FPS design.

Bias/Nostalgia Tint – “Three pencil erasers out of five.”

I owned this game, and it’s one of the earliest pc games I can remember playing and genuinely enjoying. I believe it’s one of the earliest Steam purchases I made as well, as I got the whole series as one of the original Humble Bundles (it’s still weird to think this game started out as an indy title).

Tag: game reviews

Serious Sam (1st and 2nd Encounters via ‘Serious Sam Fusion 2017 [beta]’)