Going Through The Serious Sam Games Again

[Rudolph]

After bringing up Serious Sam in a discussion about Rise of the Triad's weapons, I felt like reinstalling and replaying Serious Sam. And damn...

 

That game was a lot less enjoyable than I remember it to be. Visually, it is fine (especially the HD version), the enemies are generally interesting to fight (except maybe for the Kleer), the weapons are satisfying to use... and yet I am oftentimes not having fun at all.

 

It took me a while, but  I think I know why: the level design is just not good most of the time.

 

Maps tend to be huge and realistic, which means that they are mostly empty and I have to run around for what feels like minutes without encountering anything. Enemies will also spawn out of thin air - sometimes so far away from you that you have to go look for them - as if they were an afterthought and as such there never seems to be any sense of pacing or even momentum.

 

I remember Serious Sam 3 not being much of an improvement in that regard either: some set pieces would bring the game to a screeching halt by forcing you to play hide and seek with enemies that love to camp behind objects and you are not given much in the way of flushing them out.

 

So all this to say, are there Serious Sam games out there that are better in terms of level design?

Edited January 25, 2022 by Rudolph

[Doom_Dude]

I could never get into Serious Sam all that much. Only played the original and Second Encounter and that was many years ago. Getting locked in with hordes of frogs or other critters. Not being able to backtrack at times. Secrets that are trapped too often. Floating prune monsters with teeth. I don't get the appeal, really.

[Master O]

17 minutes ago, Doom_Dude said:

I could never get into Serious Sam all that much. Only played the original and Second Encounter and that was many years ago. Getting locked in with hordes of frogs or other critters. Not being able to backtrack at times. Secrets that are trapped too often. Floating prune monsters with teeth. I don't get the appeal, really.

 

The appeal of Serious Sam is its slaughtermap gameplay combined with absurdist locales and enemies, such as the Headless Suicide Bomber or the Pumpkin Head Guy with a Chainsaw.

[HavoX]

It was pretty advanced back then, but it does get tiresome having to deal with all the hoards of bad guys after a while.

Especially when it comes to Sirian Werebulls. One or two I can deal with, but a herd of them charging at me? That's too much for me to handle and it gets VERY annoying being hurled into the air by one of them.

[ducon]

I remember that there were Serious Sam-like games at the time: Will Rock, Nitro Family and the Painkiller series.

[D4NUK1]

It's not flawed, it's just different mindset for the game, the game go this huge numbers of monsters, that was mostly rare for the time the game released. And you just can't put a Duke 3D Map or a Quake Map style with this huge quantity of enemies (and if you do, you have something like maps of chaos, those remakes of DOOM II maps with x3 ( or x4) quantity of enemies and everything reduces to shot from corner of the map and shot everything to the enemies that come forward. So the solution would be exotics maps and opens and without some ideas that come in later levels and even the second encounter that really fix the slogfest of the first levels from the first encounter, it's falls for the same principle.

The one that really do the formula wonderful...It's Serious Sam II, with how variated the arenas are, including gimmicks and not so large in scale. But people don't like it for the look and feel of the game.

 

 

 

[Wadmodder Shalton]

There's even broken kills in the First & Second Encounters as well as decino pointed out in his two analysis videos.

I even wonder how many more prequels for Serious Sam after the fourth game that Croteam will milk out as opposed to an actual true sequel to the Second Encounter. Time will tell.

[Master O]

9 minutes ago, Wadmodder Shalton said:

There's even broken kills in the First & Second Encounters as well as decino pointed out in his two analysis videos.

I even wonder how many more prequels for Serious Sam after the fourth game that Croteam will milk out as opposed to an actual true sequel to the Second Encounter. Time will tell.

 

Serious Sam vs Capcom? 

 

(joking)

[TheMagicMushroomMan]

Never really cared for the adventures of Sam Stone, and the series only continues to get worse with flawed, buggy sequels, hamfisted cringey characters, pointless plots, dumb cutscenes, and lame spinoffs. I kind of liked Serious Sam 2, it felt like a first person Ratchet and Clank on shrooms. The art style felt fresh, fun, and creative, even if the humor was on par with a toddler smearing poopoo on his head. Then they went in the opposite direction with Serious Sam 3.

 

I do like some of the physics, gore, and the engine overall though. For me, the main problem with the series is that its overall personality and sense of humor feels underdeveloped and charmless.

[Mr. Freeze]

Serious Sam is a franchise that's dumb fun for for a few hours then it wears out its welcome fast. Even on the highest difficulty combat has little depth, and now with Nu Doom raising the bar for shooting and movement, Sam's S+M1 combat is so dated. 

[Charlie Love]

The nice thing about Serious Sam is that its relatively simple level design works pretty well in VR (in 10-15 minute increments). I tried playing it in the past and it just didn't stick. In VR though it's probably the best non tech demo game I own besides Saints and Sinners. 

[Murdoch]

I played a demo of one of the games years ago and found it such a monotonous borefest that i gave up after about ten minutes. 

[Rudolph]

1 hour ago, D4NUK1 said:

The one that really do the formula wonderful...It's Serious Sam II, with how variated the arenas are, including gimmicks and not so large in scale. But people don't like it for the look and feel of the game.

Oh, really? Then I guess I will have to check this one out!

[D4NUK1]

39 minutes ago, Rudolph said:

Oh, really? Then I guess I will have to check this one out!

Dont expect levels designs of Doom Eternal or Painkiller, the maps are variated, but without the gimmicks of the place of the arena, they can play mostly like the firsts games.

[PsychEyeball]

The big problem of Serious Sam is that it's a one trick pony. Most of the time the only feature of every arena is "lol it's so full of monsters" and the pace of the game seriously suffers as a result. By the time you're ready to move on to a new room, it still goes on for like 5 minutes so you're totally bored and willing to do anything else. Even though the game boasts an impressive monster count, you typically only fight about 10-15 monsters at a time (unless it's frogs because ooooooh boy there'll be way more!), the rest are just gradually spawned in the arena at a slow pace.

 

Even when arenas go and do something different, it typically goes on for so long that the novelty wears off and you're just ready to move on something else. Being trapped in a rotating room and shooting hundreds of tiny frogs for 5 minutes is not fun.

 

Painkiller didn't have a room variety as good as Serious Sam's but rooms went by a whole lot faster and the pacing was a million times better as a result. The fighting was still intense but it also was much punchier because it came in smaller doses so every fight did feel more unique. 

[Rudolph]

Ah, that is a shame. Like I said, I like basically almost everything about the game except for the level design. :(

[Midnight_00]

I played The First Encounter and I was quite impressed by the enemy placement. It was a pretty challenging game too. The enemies spawn far from you, but I still found them threatening, either because they advance on you rapidly in large numbers, or they can threaten you considerably from a distance (like the enemies with homing magic, don't know their names). The problem is definitely the pacing and the environments in general.

[Azuris]

The third one is Fun in VR.

[roadworx]

oh, thank god - i thought i was just one of the outliers when it came to not liking serious sam. despite the amount of times i've tried to play it, there's just...something about it that always puts me off. like, don't get me wrong, slaughtermaps in doom are freakin' fantastic and i could play them all day, but no matter how many enemies serious sam throws at me, i just can't get myself to like it very much.

 

i think that what op mentioned as well as the weapons are what put me off. even if they're not in terms of stats, the weapons have always felt really lacking in punch to me and i've no idea why.

[Rudolph]

EDIT: Eh. It is kind of dated and widescreen resolutions are not supported. Bummer. :(

 

So someone has made a Serious Sam gameplay mod for Doom I and II. I wonder if it plays well with Doom slaughtermaps.

 

 

Edited January 10, 2022 by Rudolph

[Redneckerz]

Serious Sam is basically a huge open level and endless waves of monsters. It really isn't anymore complex then that and if you are going to say ''But the level design'' then i have to wonder if you understand the philosophy behind Serious Sam at all.*

Spoiler

*There is none.

Painkiller/Necrovision follow similar premises, as does Hard Reset.

 

I immensely enjoy Serious Sam for what it is, including Serious Sam 3 and even Serious Sam 2. The latter i unironically consider one of the funniest games ever (Along with Timesplitters).

 

Sam 3 on PS360 is also hilariously badly optimized and the current Serious Engine 4 looks a generation behind current games.

 

But OP: Serious Sam: Siberian Mayhem has been announced and that looks like it has a lot more variety to it:

 

 

Coming January 25, 2022 for 20ish buckaroos.

[Rudolph]

Okay, I think I have finally found a Serious Sam game that I really like: 

 

 

It is currently -80% off on Steam and -75% on GOG! So far, it is really good! I definitely like it more than TFE and TSE, that is for sure.

Edited January 10, 2022 by Rudolph

[amackert]

54 minutes ago, roadworx said:

like, don't get me wrong, slaughtermaps in doom are freakin' fantastic and i could play them all day, but no matter how many enemies serious sam throws at me, i just can't get myself to like it very much.

 

Slaughter works so well in DOOM because of the major differences in how infighting functions. If I remember correctly, Serious Sam doesn't have a lot (if any) of that. Asides from having to prioritize specific enemy types, every intense arena fight ends up turning into a circle-strafe fest. That would be fine, but there are a lot of enemies that outpace you and it just becomes tedious and frustrating. Unlike DOOM, in Serious Sam you constantly feel like you're at a major disadvantage.

 

I do feel Sam is at its best when you're going through stages like a traditional FPS, taking it slow around corners, exploring the areas for secrets, etc. When it boxes you in and spawns enemies all around you constantly, it can really wear you down, particularly on the higher difficulties. It's a brutal series.

[DynamiteKaitorn]

First encounter was technologically impressive for the very early 2000's and definitely has some good architectural designs but I'd be lying if I said it aged well. For a kick off, EVERY level is Egyptian/Desert themed as thus the constant beige everywhere does wear thin over time. Sure there's water you can dive in a fields of grass but it only break it up here and there. Not to mention it lacks some of the better weapons introduced in it's younger brother game: Second Encounter.

 

SE personally improved on FE's gameplay a lot since it added 2 very good weapons: The Sniper Rifle and the Serious Bomb. These are a GOD SEND for Medium and higher difficulties, especially in the later levels where ammo conservation gets a bit tooo tight (I'm looking at you, Courtyards Of Gilgamesh!) With that being said, SE does contain the same blocky layout that FE did, but at the very least quite often tried to make the levels feel much more dynamic by having things like "oh look! A room with a bouncy floor and low gravity!" or "Hey look! The world's largest tumble dryer!" or heck, straight up break way the floor every time you cleared a wave of enemies.

 

 

Personally though I vote SS2 as best Serious Sam game. :3

[Liberation]

@Rudolph I removed the link, the game is still for sale and devs probably don't have the authority to do that.

[Rudolph]

4 minutes ago, Liberation said:

@Rudolph I removed the link, the game is still for sale and devs probably don't have the authority to do that.

Fair enough. I guess I should have asked first. Still, thank you for your understanding!

[whirledtsar]

5 hours ago, Mr. Freeze said:

Serious Sam is a franchise that's dumb fun for for a few hours then it wears out its welcome fast. Even on the highest difficulty combat has little depth, and now with Nu Doom raising the bar for shooting and movement, Sam's S+M1 combat is so dated. 

Little depth? I think it has plenty of depth just because the monster roster is so well-balanced. Like Doom, every monster has a unique role, and they all play off eachother. The depth comes from prioritizing the right enemies and using the right weapons in the right situation, not the level design. All of the enemies are faster than you, so you can't just pedal backwards forever, you always need to be reacting.

[Hawk of The Crystals]

It's a series filled with repetition with an abnormal fear of evolving; the only fun sequel being 2 — and even that's debatable. Lack of characterization is something that I think was for the better in the 2001 - 2002 era, but of course Croteam gained quite the ego for being 'small time indie devs', which in reality is just a bunch baloney. And obviously serious sam 3 became a thing and shitty characters became the new norm for the games, combine that with the serious disappointment that was serious sam 4, and you have series that only appeals to a niche — yet mentally unstable in the form of stockholm syndrome — 'fanbase'.

 

The level design being garbage is no surprise considering the time of which the games came out in.

 

TL;DR Video games are such serious business and apparently people need to write essays on why some games are bad; such as my self.

[Jello]

I've always loved Serious Sam FE and SE, they have a special place in my heart. The First Encounter suffered because it was more of a tech demo for their engine, and they only had one theme throughout. The Egyptian theme got old after a few hours. The Second Encounter expanded on this them quite a bit, with three distinct eras, and I think it did it well. But they were still arenas, because the idea was to show that you can have detailed arenas with a large number of enemies on screen at the same time. At it worked really well, I still love Second Encounter.

 

And as whirledtsar pointed out, the enemies are really well balanced. I've never switched weapons so many times during a single fight as I have while playing Serious Sam, nor kept my head on a swivel looking for the priority targets. The arachnoids with machinegun hitscans, those are a priority. The Major Bio-Mechanoids are a concern, because their missiles hurt, but they're slow, and their missiles are slow and I can dodge them, so I can wait to take them out once I deal with the Minor Bio-Mechanoids with plasma cannons, one rocket each, or a grenade. Headless Kamikazees? Well, I'll wait until I can lure them into a group of other beheadeds, and shoot the kamikazee. If it doesn't kill the others, it'll at least weaken them for a nice shotgun finish. The werebulls? Those are literally a bull-fight. Get them to charge, jump out of the way at the last second and hit them with a double barrel. Same with the Kleer. Or hit them at a distance with a plasma rifle, or fire a few rockets or grenades into the group to wear them down. And if you have a huge group of werebulls or kleer, use the cannon to clear a path.

 

I really think the enemy balance is fantastic in at least the first two. The second one, I still need to finish, it's a little cartoony, and it overdid it on the humor, but it's not bad.

 

The third started out as a failed military shooter that was retrofitted to become a Sam game, it's not bad, but it could've been better. The fourth game, it was better than 3, but it failed to live up to Second Encounter or Serious Sam 2, because it relied too much on things from Sam 3.

 

But, I think they're good games if you want to kill an hour or two. The enemy and weapons are extremely well balanced and fun, and the levels have to be more open to accommodate the game they were aiming for. The first encounter suffered because they stuck with Egypt themes throughout. The second encounter succeeded because they varied the environments, added more enemies, plus a chainsaw, sniper rifle, a grenade launcher, and the serious bomb.

 

Are they perfect? No. Do I love them? Yes.

[SOSU]

I am in love with the first two encounters :D (and the gamecube game!)

I love the music, the wacky enemies, the gameplay with lots of monster killing, the different enviourments, with egypt, india, medievalz roman and all those other settings.

And i love that it's a Croatian game, it's always good to see fellow balkaners penetrate into western (we're kinda western but also kinda not) pop-culture, plus ypu can tell it's from this part of europe with how uncanny it is xD