The releases of Serious Sam honestly confuse me. The version I played on the xBox is known as Serious Sam. However, the original on the PC was released in 2 episodes (“The First Encounter” and “The Second Encounter”). This confused me when I heard about Serious Sam 2, as I wondered if that was “the Second Encounter”. Furthermore, the GameCube and PS2 got “Serious Sam the NEXT Encounter”. Is that just the Second Encounter, Serious Sam 2, a wholely different game or just a port of the original?! Well upon looking it up, it seems to be an original game exclusive to the two consoles that don’t have any other Serious Sam game on it. What genius came up with that? Boy, I didn’t think I’d ever have a hard time figuring out where a game with no numbers or subtitle falls within its release history.
The xBox version wasn’t just notable for packaging the two episodes into one; there were obviously going to be some other changes. One that may have been necessary was cutting the size of the levels (however, I have to say that it doesn’t feel small on its own). Also Serious Sam looks different than in the first encounter, no longer wearing his sun glasses, has a T-shirt instead of a muscle shirt and seems generally redesigned in an ironically less serious manner. This is mostly all done to look less like Duke Nukem, and I feel it fits the tone of the game a lot better (he looks and acts a bit like Rocko from Undergrads now actually). They also added a life system (though I was never low on lives), tweaked the save points, put in auto-aiming and did a few other things to polish up the game a bit.
This is obviously not the deepest game ever made. However, it does have a lot of personality and that goes a long way. Serious Sam is just hilarious every time he gets to talk. Again, much like Rocko from the Undergrads, it’s funny when things don’t quite go as he expected. He’s not an over cool guy like Duke Nukem, but he tries. For many reasons (most of which were laid out in the Jimquizition’s “Too cool for cool” episode), this makes him a much better character. You really want to help this guy succeed, because even though it would seem it would come to him, you know he needs a little effort put into it.
Likewise, the game play isn’t astounding, but it is very likable. You’ll walk around and shoot whatever gets between you and your goal (in this case stopping the alien overlord Mental). However, the aliens are a lot of fun to kill, mostly because they are designed in very creative ways or are at least entertaining to look at. The weapons are fun to use too: you get everything from just a pistol to lazers. It’s satisfying to mow down a whole rush of enemies or take down the big guys with these tools. However, stronger level variety could have helped this even more: though there are some ice, fire or alien invasion levels, too many of the ones I remember are basically a desert or field. The levels themselves are very well designed and laid out though, and hide enough wacky secrets to encourage replay.
What else can be said about Serious Sam after saying that Developers Croteam and publishers Gotham Games made a great affectionate parody of Duke Nukem and other popular FPSs of that time? True, the graphics aren’t amazing, but it could easily be claimed that it was to make Serious Sam look like the game it was emulating. Also, the enemies are still unique and distinguishable amongst each other. The music is always fitting for whatever moment is going on, and the voice work for Sam is hilarious in terms of acting and timing, so the audio gets a big plus from me. The plot isn’t very deep, but sometimes you just want to be entertained; if there’s such a thing as a “popcorn movie”, there’s gotta be the same thing for games (I ate cheezies while playing this, can “cheezies video game” be a thing?). Though it could also use more in terms of cut scenes or level variety, for what we get, I’m seriously satisfied. I give Serious Sam for the xBox 7.5 levels out of 10.
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