| Serious Sam: The First Encounter (In The Flesh) | Croteam / Gathering of Developers | 2001 | |
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Serious Sam is based on a self-developed
engine from Croteam (in Croatia) and is focused on fast loading weapons
and tough & fast player reactions. The creative developer team had
in mind to release a traditional DOOM kind of shooter. The background
story is an alien invasion of Earth. The Earth is nearly beaten but
one fighter proved himself in battle, and is called Sam -Serious Sam-.
He is sent back to Egyptian times to save the world but he arrives too
late and the aliens and their alliance are there already. Headless attacking,
screaming *lol* enemies turn on Sam. Also there's little, one-eyed aliens
and big scorpion-like aliens. They implemented a good graphics engine
which is quite fast. Animation of the enemies is worked out well with
an alternating linear level design with only a few repetitions. In the
beginning of the game, Sam is joking around sometimes and reminds me
of Duke Nukem and is what i liked (I played that one again too). But
after playing 1/3 of the game, it seems the developers ran out of ideas.
Although the rooms differ, they're basically big square areas (sometimes
with open places, sometimes filled with buildings). On the other hand
you are entering some empty room or level and just do something unimportant
and suddenly the enemies will attack from all sides. What I liked in
Doom was the firing into a new building which causes enemies to search
for you. This kind of detail is not implemented here. The enemies are
teleported to all sides and attack which got boring after a while. Getting
some help from experienced designers would have made more out of it.
At the end of the game, more stronger enemies are present and also huge
end bosses which are impressive. Serious Sam, although it's a pure shooter,
is fun to play even with weaknesses in its design. I personally favor
Kiss Psycho Circus but will play Serious Sam later on in co-op mode.
See also: #Serious Sam Gold Edition, #Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter, #Serious Sam Classics: Revolution, #Serious Sam VR: The First Encounter |
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