SERIOUS SAM
Developer: Croteam
Publisher: G.o.D. (Gathering of Developers)
Game Type: First Person Shooter
Similar To: DOOM series

Date: 12/9/2001
By: Rice

Note: Screenshots courtesy of GameSpot.com

    First person shooters have evolved quite a bit since its original inception by id software's Wolfenstein, the grand daddy that started them all. Throughout the years, the genre has branched out to form different segments. You have brainy ones like Half-Life, or multiplayer-only ones like Quake III. Another example is the brainless shoot 'em up branch, which is what this current game in review, Serious Sam, is most definitely catalogued under.

    Developed by a small geek-equivalent of an art house team in [the country] Croatia, Serious Sam can best be described as DOOM in Egypt. The parallels that can be drawn between Sam and id's classic are numerous, but the most prominent ones are big guns and big enemies. Remember in DOOM when you opened a door that led to countless fire-breathing demons spewing out? Your best recourse was to pull out that badass mofo of a BFG and hammer down on the fire button while you back pedeled away as fast as you could. Blood and guts of those ugly creatures flew everywhere as you methodically mowed down an entire platoon from Hell.

Memories...

    The thrill you got in those all brawn no brain encounters literally *defines* how successful a game is in the shoot 'em up category. However, as 3D technology transitioned from sprites to polygons, having armies of enemies on the screen at once became a conundrum because bandwidth became an issue. Somehow, developers were having trouble getting both gorgeous graphics, and tons of polys together to work acceptably well on an average gaming PC.

    Enter the Croatian geeks of Serious Sam, whose creatively coined "Serious Engine" is the first to successfully implement such a combination from the ground up. Their breakthru enabled them to create the first game since the polygon (read: Quake) era to succeed as a pure, immaculate shoot 'em up. Not only are the levels expansive and wide open, they're filled to the brim with continually respawning baddies that charge at you in a straight line as fast as possible. The result: utter CHAOS... albeit entertaining chaos.

Baddies galore.

    Sam's storyline is utterly nonexistent. From the first moment on, you're thrusted into Egypt (or somewhere that resembles the Egyptian culture) and overrun by enemies. You blast your way through (just to name a few) raging bulls, hulking mech warriors, weird machine-organic hybrid scorpions, and screaming headless (yeah, I know. Scream without a head?) kamikaze warriors whose sole purpose is to charge at you at Mach 3 holding two ticking bombs in their hands. And when you get through each stage, you're met with a progressivly larger bosses until you finally encounter the mother of all big & ugly Serious Sam monsters in the end. It is quite likely the largest boss I have ever played against.

    The guns get proportionally larger as the baddies continue to blossom in size. Hey, fight fire w/ fire must be Croteam's philosophy in Serious Sam. You start off with standard issue FPS arsenal, like revolvers, shotguns, and rocket launchers. From then on, it gets more exotic with multi-laser blasters and howitzer-sized chainguns just to name a couple. Of course, picking up these new toys are a big part of the fun in SS, so I shan't spoil it for you.

Ammo galore.

    Multiplayer comes packaged right out of the box including the notable cooperative mode. With such emphasis on deathmatch and other team-based multiplayer modes in modern FPS's, there's been a glaring oversight when it comes to good ol' coop mode. As a matter of fact, my fondest memories of shooters come from the times I've hooked up with a buddy through modems and rampaged through the levels with a fellow space marine or Duke Nukem. It's geek bonding, don't y'know? And as I played SS coop with my roommates, those long forgotten joys of unleashing metal hell with your virtual compadre were rekindled. There were no enemies too tough and no puzzles too tall. Life was good again.

    Although Serious Sam's replayability is limited, and its storyline is as thin as Kleenex, it's a good ten hours of bloodshot shoot 'em up done as well as it can possibly be done. And of course, its cooperative multiplayer mode is a gem for any co-op old skoolers wondering where the good old days have gone. For what it costs (20 bucks), this game is a serious deal.

This game should've been called Serious Sam: Egyptian Encounters

Final Grade: B
Summary: Big guns + big enemies + little plot = Pretty big fun.

Gratuitous Screenshots:

Yeeaah. Co-op, baby. Just watch the friendly fire.

Nothing a good double-barrel shotgun can't handle.