Serious Sam: The First Encounter

"Fun brainless shooting"

Serious Sam: The First Encounter is an FPS developed by Croteam and released by GOD Games. Once upon a time FPS games where like the first Doom game. 90% of those games where just shooting everything that wasn't you, and boy how many things weren't you! Nowadays games need more puzzle solving, require stealth techniques and more strategic play. Also they use a great amount of polygons to create game characters, but high quality models forced developers to lower the amount of enemies on your screen. Less models on the screen means more dangerous and clever enemies than old games where hordes of stupid monsters where just running towards you. Serious Sam attempted the resurrection of the classic FPS gameplay, with more stupid enemies that you can handle.

Story: N/A

Serious Sam is a game that doesn't take it self too… serious and also it's an old school FPS so it doesn't really need a good plot. Well the story is quite typical an alien race is attacking earth and you are to destroy them. So far so good but the problem is that you actually don't know what you're actual mission is. Yeah destroy the alien race, but where are you heading too. You'll be roaming many ancient Egyptian areas, (that all look the same), killing enemies without knowing what's going on. What makes the game quite nice is its sense of humor, since it is actually a parody of similar games.

Graphics: 7.2/10

Everything in Sam is brightly colored, has simple textures and doesn't confuses you making it easier to find enemies in the outdoors. Expect simple but extremely large areas with simple walls, stairs, columns and statues that all use Egyptian textures and great sky images that look beautiful, especially the night level which has a sky filled with stars. The problem is that textures are extremely simple and repetitive and levels look all the same since everything takes place in ancient Egypt. Simple enemy design that looks good since you won't ever have the time to observe an enemy for too long. Good special effects like lens flares, explosions, glossiness, water etc. One thing that has too be said is that Serious Sam has fast gameplay and can make you battle with 50 enemies at the same time but graphic quality luckily remains the same! Generally a very good looking game whose only problem is its simplicity.

Sound: 5.5/10

Good sound quality without being something extraordinary. Guns sound good, enemies sound good, everything sounds good and as it means to. Upbeat music tracks that start playing when an enemy pops out, (never a dull moment in this game). The major problem is that music is extremely repetitive and after 3-4 levels will bore you to death.

Gameplay: 7.5/10

I would now like to compare the amount of enemies in Doom to the amount of enemies of Serious Sam. In Doom a group of 15-20 simple enemies is not a rare phenomenon but in Serious Sam it is! Here simple enemies often attack you in groups of 30-50. Doom would challenge you with a group of 4-7 stronger enemies and Sam would do so with the use of a group of 15-20 stronger buddies. Doom would torture you by making you fight 1-3 very strong enemies, but Sam prefers a group of 10-15 to have some fun and don't forget that they all run at you very fast!

Let give you an example of a typical Serious Sam level. You enter a room, which has a weapon and large amounts of ammo. You take the gun and then 10 monsters appear running towards you. You kill them then 10 monsters of the same kind appear along with 5 more. You kill them and take some ammo that has appeared. Again more enemies for you and again and again and again!!! After 100 enemies the door opens and you enter a room and repeat the whole process with new sets of enemies or combinations of different groups of bad guys. That sums up the gameplay of Sam. No puzzle solving and only 3-4 key finding parts. Enemies are dumb and run towards you throwing things. There aren't many kind of monsters and you'll soon get bored of meeting the same monster over and over again, especially the skeleton horses, I have a feeling that I've killed almost 5000 of those boneheads before reaching the end. Weapons are the typical, knife, revolver, shotgun, minigun, rocket and grenade launcher, plasma gun and a… canon! Since the game is like a parody of FPS games it could have more goofy guns but it's ok even with those weapons.

The game tries to be funny in some ways. Enemies are quite strange and Sam is a parody of those beefcake heroes on action games like Duke Nukem. He often says some fun stuff, for example after you meet you first headless suicide bomber enemy who shouts, “AAAAAARGH!!!”, while running towards you and kill him, Sam says, “AAAAAARGH to yourself!”. Action take place in ancient Egypt so all levels quite the same and that's a problem because Serious Sam is game with a very repetitive gameplay and playing it in levels that have little differences between them doesn't help. Finally the game has a great co-op mode that split the screen in half and simple Multiplayer options that don't flatter the game at all. One thing that I've wanted this game to have is more goofiness. Sam's quotes, strange enemies and the funny mission objective explanations are not enough for me. This game should be the king of goofiness like Worms Armageddon for example.

Positives:
-Great if you like 100% mindless FPS action that leaves you breathless
-A gazillion of enemies attack you from all possible directions
-The co-op mode
-Quite funny

Negatives:
-Level design, weapons and enemies lack variety
-Extremely repetitive gameplay
-Very simple Multiplayer

Also Play:
Doom (PC)
Doom 2 (PC)
Serious Sam: The Second Encounter (PC)
Serious Sam 2 (PC)

Overall: 6.7/10

The review and the overall score are quite useless I must admit. I could say the following and get over with the review: If you love fast mindless shooting while confronting 500 enemies on each level then this game is for you, if you want something more sophisticated and complex stay away from this game at all costs!

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 08/09/07, Updated 03/03/08

Game Release: Serious Sam: The First Encounter (EU, 03/30/01)