Serious Sam (video game)
Serious Sam is a first-person shooter video game, released in two episodes and the first in the Serious Sam series, developed by Croteam. Originally released for Microsoft Windows only, Serious Sam's rising popularity resulted in the porting of the episodes to the Xbox, GameCube, PlayStation 2, Game Boy Advance, Linux and Palm OS, as well as in the remaking of both episodes for Microsoft Windows, Linux and Xbox 360 in high-definition.
| Serious Sam | |
|---|---|
 Cover art of The Second Encounter | |
| Developer(s) | Croteam[lower-alpha 1] |
| Publisher(s) | Gathering of Developers[lower-alpha 2] |
| Designer(s) |
|
| Programmer(s) |
|
| Composer(s) | Damjan Mravunac |
| Series | Serious Sam |
| Engine | Serious Engine |
| Platform(s) | Microsoft Windows, Palm OS, Xbox |
| Release | |
| Genre(s) | First-person shooter |
| Mode(s) | Single-player, multiplayer |
The series follows the adventures of protagonist Sam "Serious" Stone and his fight against the forces of the notorious extraterrestrial overlord Mental who seeks to destroy humanity.
Gameplay
Enemies spawn frequently and attack in large waves from across the game map, and the player is intended to dodge their projectiles and charges by jumping and strafing rather than by taking cover. Health and armor are non-regenerative on most difficulty levels, and instead are replenished with the health and armor packs which are littered throughout the game. Available health is represented by a percentage number on the screen. The combat is high-paced and frenetic: The levels typically consist of a series of elaborate arenas, in which the player will defeat a set number of re-spawning enemies before proceeding to the next. Enemies range from soldiers with rocket launchers to gigantic charging robots to shrieking suicide bombers without heads and holding bombs. The environments include ancient Egyptian pyramids, tropical rainforests, and medieval castles. Serious Sam features cooperative gameplay through a split-screen mode and via the internet.
Episodes
Serious Sam consists of two episodes: Serious Sam: The First Encounter and Serious Sam: The Second Encounter. A fan-made level-pack, Dark Island, was included in Serious Sam: Gold. The games are on separate CDs (in the UK version) and are identical to their individual releases, except that the Sam character model for The First Encounter was modified to match the one used in The Second Encounter. After the release of the remakes, both titles had "Classic" added to the name to prevent confusion.[7][8]
Serious Sam: The First Encounter
The First Encounter was the first game in the series; it had been in the making since 1996 and had a video showing its early game play in 2000. The First Encounter was originally developed by Croteam as a demonstrator for their engine and this is the reason why some countries saw its initial release priced at less than half the price of other games in the genre.
In ancient times, Earth was involved in a massive conflict between Mental, an evil extraterrestrial being who wants to rule the universe, and the Sirians, a technologically advanced sentient alien race that left many of its artefacts to be discovered by humanity. In the 22nd century, Mental and his army of grotesquely twisted monsters return to Earth intending to destroy humanity. The humans are quickly overwhelmed and driven back to Earth. As a last resort, humanity uses the "Time-Lock". This mysterious Sirian artefact contains the power to transport a single person back to a chosen point in time. Because of his bravery in fighting these monsters, Sam "Serious" Stone is chosen to use the Time-Lock in hopes that he will defeat Mental and change the course of history. As the game opens, Sam appears in Egypt. He travels from one Egyptian monument to the next, fighting against the monsters Mental sent after him along the way. During Sam's journey, Sam is able to find and activate a hidden Sirian communicator in the shape of an obelisk located in Luxor, which summons a Sirian starship to Earth from deep space. Sam rushes to the Great Pyramids of Giza in order to rendezvous with the starship, only to be cornered by Mental's general, Ugh Zan III. After defeating the giant, Sam then teleports himself onto the starship. While Sam is aboard the "SSS Centerprice", he leaves a phone message to Mental telling him that "he has a special delivery package for him" and sets a course to Sirius, the Sirian homeworld.
Serious Sam: The Second Encounter
The Second Encounter starts where the previous game left off, with Sam traveling to Sirius on the SSS Centerprice. Unfortunately, the starship is accidentally hit by the "Croteam crate-bus" and plummets down to Earth's surface. As the starship falls, Sam reads the coordinates and frets about crash-landing into Egypt again, but instead he crashes into Central America in the Mayan age, with the starship now heavily damaged upon impact. However, not all hope is lost, since the Sirians left a "back-up starship" on Earth, which was a fail-safe in case anything ever happened to the SSS Centerprice. However, since this back-up starship is located in a different time and age than where and when Sam currently is, he will have to uncover the locations of the Sirian portals that will help him reach his destination. With this new objective, Sam storms through Mesoamerica, then travels to Mesopotamia and finally to Medieval Europe where the back-up starship is located. During his journey, Sam battles two of Mental's portal guardians: a powerful Mayan spirit named Kukulkan the Wind God and a biomechanical creature called the Exotech Larva. Finally, in front of the Cathedral of Sacred Blood, Sam confronts the last obstacle to overcome on his path to the Holy Grail, Mordekai the Summoner. After a glorious battle with Mordekai and his spawning minions, The Summoner is finally silenced forever. In the Cathedral, Sam lifts the Holy Grail in the palms of his hands, followed by his sarcastic confessions of his sins in a booth to Mental, during which he tells Mental that "he's coming to get him." During the end credits, Sam activates the back-up starship, which turns out to be a rocket, and travels back into space toward Sirius, with the "Croteam Big-Heads" cheering him on. The story continues on to Serious Sam II.
Other than the more varied locations, The Second Encounter features some additional weapons—a chainsaw, a flamethrower, a sniper rifle, and the powerful Serious Bomb—and a number of new monsters that Sam has to face. This game has also seen the release of a level-pack titled Dark Island, featuring fan-made levels for single and multiplayer mode. The Second Encounter soundtrack featured three instrumental songs from the Croatian heavy-metal band Undercode.
Development
Croteam created their own engine for use in both The First Encounter and The Second Encounter. Named the "Serious Engine", it is designed to cope with extremely large view distances and massive numbers of models by implementing level of detail rendering. Most contemporary FPS engines were developed for a limited draw distance and only a few animating models (i.e. enemies) on screen at a time. The Serious Engine is very efficient, capable of maintaining dozens of moving enemies (often stampedes) and enormous enemies, even on a modest system challenging the well known id Tech, Unreal Engine or Source engines. The "Serious Engine" can render through both Direct3D or OpenGL and, while it does not support pixel or vertex shaders, it is optimised for Direct3D 7's hardware transformation, clipping and lighting. The "Serious Engine" is available for licensing from Croteam.[9]
A more powerful iteration of the "Serious Engine" was developed for use in Serious Sam 2 and is known as "Serious Engine 2". It supports many features of modern GPUs such as pixel and vertex shaders, HDR, bloom and parallax mapping.
Serious Engine 3 was used in Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter and Serious Sam HD: The Second Encounter. It includes detailed shading, and enemies are completely remodeled to look more realistic. This engine is also being developed to harness the full capacity of HDR and High Definition mapping. An updated version, Serious Engine 3.5, is used in Serious Sam 3: BFE.
The latest version is the Serious Engine 4, which Croteam used in their most recent game, The Talos Principle.
In March 2016, Croteam released Serious Engine v1.10 as free and open source software on GitHub under the GNU General Public License v2.[10][11]
Palm OS version
In November 2001, Global Star Software announced the completion of a Palm OS version of The First Encounter developed by InterActive Vision, to be released in early December. The game included 15 levels, and came in both color and monochrome.[12] The game was released on 6 December 2001, as well as two demos for the color and the monochrome versions of the game.
Xbox version
The Xbox edition of Serious Sam had notable differences including the model of Sam being changed from the model of The First Encounter to form a more cartoon style Sam, removing the shades to make him look less like Duke Nukem and more like he does today. The Xbox version includes all of the levels from both of the PC games. As a result, weapons from The Second Encounter were added to the levels that were part of The First Encounter on PC. The levels were made smaller by removing the areas outside of the playing area. Unlike the PC version, Sam can't exit too far out of the playing area. This is due to the smaller amount of memory available in the Xbox. The gameplay was given a more arcade touch. A life system was implemented into the single-player game making use of the score. Every 100,000 points grants the player a new life, which allows respawning at the place of death rather than at a save point. Combo points were added for killing multiple enemies at the same time, which allows the player to increase his/her score at a fast pace. Further changes to the game include the addition of treasure and the tweaking of save points. Save points are designated by a red phone booth. Auto-aiming was also added to the Xbox version to compensate for the degree of control usually offered by a keyboard and mouse setup.
Remake
Croteam took their publishing rights from 2K Games to new startup Devolver Digital, after 2K Games became uninterested in Serious Sam, waiting for their long rival Duke Nukem Forever to finish. Both episodes were remade using Serious Engine 3 featuring updated visuals, better performance and lush environments, all in high-definition. The remakes featured 16-player online co-op (4-player in the Xbox Live Arcade version), deathmatch and a new game-mode called "Co-Op Tournament".[13][14]
The remake of the first episode, Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter, was released on 24 November 2009 for Microsoft Windows through Steam, on 13 January 2010 for Xbox 360 through the Xbox Live Arcade and on 20 March 2017 for Linux through Steam thanks to the Fusion Engine.[15] The remake of the second episode, Serious Sam HD: The Second Encounter, was released on 28 April 2010 for Microsoft Windows through Steam, on 22 September 2010 for Xbox 360 through the Xbox Live Arcade and on 4 April 2017 for Linux through Steam, again thanks to the Fusion Engine.[16] On 14 January 2011, the DLC titled "Fusion" was released on Steam, which merged the levels of The First Encounter into The Second Encounter. This DLC was free for everyone who owned both encounters on Steam. Additionally, The Second Encounter HD was expanded with new piece of DLC called "Legend of the Beast". Released on 15 May 2012, it contained new maps for the Survival and Multiplayer modes and a new, short set of campaign missions.[17]
Reception
| Reception | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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The First Encounter
Kevin Rice reviewed the Windows version of the game for Next Generation, rating it four stars out of five, and stated that "Hmmm, should you get Deer Hunter XXII Extreme Plus [...] or Serious Sam for the same price? This is a no-brainer purchase for any FPS gamer."[27]
In the United States, Serious Sam: The First Encounter sold 83,000 copies by October 2001.[28]
The First Encounter was the recipient of various editorial and consumer praise, with an overall review ratio of 87/100 on Metacritic. It also received numerous awards, including multiple Game of the Year awards.
The First Encounter won The Electric Playground's "Best Independent PC Game" prize, and was a nominee in the show's "Best Shooter for PC", "Best Graphics in a PC Game" and "Best Action Game for PC" categories.[29]
- Game of the Year 2001 — GameSpot
- Game of the Month April 2001 — PC Gamer UK
- Best Value Priced Game 2001 — GameSpy
- Best End Boss 2001 — GameSpy
- Premier Awards 2001 — Computer Gaming World
- Action Vault Award 2001 (Outstanding Achievement in Technology) — IGN
- Action Vault Award 2001 (Surprise of the Year) — IGN
- Platinum 2001 Award — Gamer's Pulse
- Editors' Choice Award 2001 — IGN
- #1 PC Games of 2001 — EB Games
- PC Action Cream of the Crop Award — GamePen
- Best First Person Shooter 2001 — Christian Computer Gaming Review
The Second Encounter
The Second Encounter was also met with critical acclaim, with an overall ratio of 85/100 on Metacritic,[19] and the Game of the Month February 2002 by GameSpot.
- Game of the Month February 2002 — GameSpot
Notes
- The Palm OS version was developed by InterActive Vision
- The Palm OS version was published by Global Star Software[1] and the Xbox version by Gotham Games.
References
- "Serious Sam". InterActive Vision Games. Archived from the original on 7 June 2002.
- "GodGames Reveals More Details on Serious Sam". Gathering of Developers. 21 March 2001. Archived from the original on 18 April 2001.
- Walker, Trey (15 November 2001). "Serious Sam on your Palm". GameSpot. Archived from the original on 5 December 2001.
- "News Archive". InterActive Vision Games. Archived from the original on 9 June 2002.
- Parker, Sam (25 October 2002). "Serious Sam update". GameSpot.
- "Gathering of Developers Unleashes Serious Sam: the Second Encounter". Gathering of Developers. 5 February 2002. Archived from the original on 5 April 2002.
- "Steam Community: Serious Sam Classic: The First Encounter". Valve. Retrieved 16 June 2015.
- "Steam Community: Serious Sam Classic: The Second Encounter". Valve. Retrieved 16 June 2015.
- "Serious Engine Overview". Croteam. Archived from the original on 7 October 2014. Retrieved 17 June 2015.
- Croteam Open-Sources The Serious Engine by Michael Larabel on Phoronix (11 March 2016)
- "Serious Sam's Serious Engine source code release". Croteam. 11 March 2016. Retrieved 12 March 2016.
- Walker, Trey (15 November 2001). "Serious Sam on your Palm". GameSpot. Retrieved 20 August 2013.
- Fletcher, JC (25 June 2009). "Croteam seriously remaking Serious Sam for XBLA [update: It's coming to PC too]". Engadget. Retrieved 10 October 2009.
- "Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter on Steam". Valve. Retrieved 20 August 2013.
- Dawe, Liam (20 March 2017). "Serious Sam Fusion 2017 (beta) for The First Encounter is now available, with Linux support". GamingOnLinux. Retrieved 10 April 2017.
- Dawe, Liam (6 April 2017). "Serious Sam HD: The Second Encounter is now available on the Fusion engine with Vulkan". GamingOnLinux. Retrieved 10 April 2017.
- "Serious Sam HD: The Second Encounter – Legend of the Beast DLC on Steam". Valve. Retrieved 20 August 2013.
- "Serious Sam: The First Encounter". CBS Interactive. Retrieved 8 June 2020.
- "Serious Sam: The Second Encounter (PC)". Metacritic. Retrieved 8 June 2020.
- "Serious Sam (Xbox)". Metacritic. Retrieved 8 June 2020.
- Kasavin, Greg. "Serious Sam: The First Encounter (PC)". GameSpot. Retrieved 8 June 2020.
- Kasavin, Greg. "Serious Sam: The Second Encounter (PC)". GameSpot. Retrieved 8 June 2020.
- Kasavin, Greg. "Serious Sam (Xbox)". GameSpot. Retrieved 8 June 2020.
- "Serious Sam: The First Encounter (PC)". IGN. Retrieved 8 June 2020.
- Sulic, Ivan. "Serious Sam: The Second Encounter (PC)". IGN. Retrieved 8 June 2020.
- "Serious Sam (Xbox)". IGN. Retrieved 8 June 2020.
- Rice, Kevin (June 2001). "Finals". Next Generation. Vol. 4 no. 6. Imagine Media. p. 88.
- Keighley, Geoff (October 2001). "READ.ME; G.O.D.'s Fall from Grace". Computer Gaming World (207): 30–32.
- Staff. "Blister Awards 2001". The Electric Playground. Archived from the original on 13 October 2003.
