Serious Sam: The First Encounter

by Godgames

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00004ZB7P
• Media: CD-ROM
• Release Date: March 21, 2001
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (78 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #25,351 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Amazon.com

Serious Sam returns to the roots of first-person shooters, serving up big guns, hordes of enemies, and plenty of attitude. The entire game is steeped in an ancient Egyptian theme, with locations that range from claustrophobic temple passages to wide-open arenas, and with surprises lurking around every corner.

The monsters are uninspired, but Serious Sam substitutes quantity for quality. Enemies do little more than blindly rush at you, but when dozens are converging on your position at the same time things get hectic in a hurry. Fortunately there are plenty of health, armor, and ammunition packs to pick up along the way, so expect a sore trigger finger after fighting all the way through to the game's epic end battle.

The only real faults with this all-out action fest are that it ends all too soon, and the Egyptian theme--though beautifully wrought--gets old. Still, Serious Sam's bang-for-the-buck ratio is high enough to make most complaints moot, and players will be too busy trying to survive to get bored with the scenery. --T. Byrl Baker

Pros:

• No-frill, nonstop action
• Beautiful lighting and environments
• Incredible end battle

Cons:

• Can be frustratingly difficult
• Repetitive gameplay and uninspired enemies

Product Description

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Serious Fun!!, March 22, 2001

By 

Bradley J. Erbe (Waukesha, Wisconsin USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Serious Sam: The First Encounter (CD-ROM)

Remember how much fun DOOM was? Well, SERIOUS SAM is a definate throwback to DOOM and DOOM 2. There is non-stop action in this game! Great weapons and graphics. There are several instances in SERIOUS SAM, where you are just swarmed with monsters coming at you! I believe 368 monsters was the most on the screen at the same time! Pretty intense fun! Fun is the key word here. You'll have a lot of fun playing SERIOUS SAM! If you don't like FPS, you may like this one for sheer action!

There isn't much story, but who cares? The whole reason this game was made, was to make a DOOM-style game with a ton of enemies coming at you. it isn't to hard for newcomers either. There aren't a lot of eloborate puzzles to solve, just a lot of shooting of monsters!

CroTeam has made an impressive game here people. The graphics are indeed stunning, but I am no expert when it comes to grapics, but it looks just as good as the QUAKE 3 engine.

To top it all off, this game is seriously fun; ....

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Serious Fun for Serious FPS Gamers, March 21, 2001

By 

"stonedogrunning" (Saint Charles, IL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Serious Sam: The First Encounter (CD-ROM)

There will be those that say that Serious Sam is just another shooter like Quake or Unreal and they would be close. There are those that would say that SS is just another squad based combat game like Tribes and they also would be close. Then there are those that will look at the graphics, environments, worlds, weapons, bad guys, AI, speed, configurability, support, mods, scripts, and adrenelin gland crushing action and say..."This is pretty freakin intense!" and they would be right on target. If you have only enough money in your budget to get one newly released game, get the one you've been waiting for with the most anticipation. If you are lucky enough to have enough for two...also grab Serious Sam. You will find yourself trying to decide which game to play. Over and over again.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Serious Sam - Serious Action, April 19, 2001

By 

Ole Kasper Olsen (Eidsvoll, Norway) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Serious Sam: The First Encounter (CD-ROM)

With it's hardcore action and lacking storyline, this is *the* game for everyone who loved id Software's Doom games "way back then". Those that are too young, or for some reason never played these wonderful pioneering games, should also pick up this game, to see what they've missed, and also have a really good time.

What's wonderful about Serious Sam is the unique game engine these guys from Croatia (that's in Eastern Europe) has made. What do you do when you don't have the money to lisence an existing game/3D engine like the Quake engines or the LithTech engine? You make your own, of course! The engine that these Croatians came up with is unbelievable. It has all the fancy effects you could wish for, like fog, bumpmapping, particle effects, etc. But where it really shines, is when it comes to rendering the extremely large levels that Serious Sam is build up of, and the insane amount of enemies.

And insane it is. Actually in one of the level you're pitted in a quite small room, against 2-300 small toad-like creatures jumping over a wall with one mission in life: kill you. Mowing through them with the machine gun is unbelievably fun. Also in the normal levels, you're pitted against hordes of enemies, from small to HUGE, even at normal difficulty. When I played through the game on normal, I virtually had my finger glued to the quick-save button (F5 - remember that). You never know what's around the next corner, but you're likely to die.

Alas, the game is quite difficult (on Normal that is), but that isn't why i deducted a star in the rating. The reason for that is that after I had mowed through about 2000 enemies (I don't remember the number exactly, it might have been many more) with an impressive array of weapons, it was suddenly over! I had used only about 6 hours of effective gameplay. And that's a bit short. When a friend and I cooperatively beat the Serious difficulty, we used about 4 and a half hour.

If you aren't an experienced FirstPersonShooter-player, you probably will have some troubles getting through the game on Normal, but you also have Easy and Tourist modes, so there should be enough fun for eveyone in here. You also have Hard and Serious if you're feeling good, and also a Mental mode, only unlocked if you manage to beat the game on Serious difficulty...this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, buy it now! If you really like this type of action games, you've probably never had as much fun behind your computer as when playing Serious Sam. It's a bargain, and remember: Not all great games come from the US :)