In the ten years since Serious Sam: The First Encounter was released, I can't count the number of times I've seen it described as similar to Doom. Whether it's a review or just some guy's comment on a forum, the person will mention Doom or Duke Nukem 3D or some other old FPS, then use a phrase like "mindless shooting" as if that's supposed to be a positive characteristic on its own. One of the reasons it's taken me a decade to play Serious Sam is because I assumed the praise it got was mostly a case of reviewers not understanding what made older FPS games good, mistaking simplicities for strengths, and generally going easy on the game since it only cost 20 bucks at launch.
Sure, there are basic similarities that make it easy to categorize Serious Sam as "old school." There's the obvious lack of realism, of course, and the fact that the game barely tries to explain anything that happens by way of plot. Your character, Sam "Serious" Stone, gets sent back in time to ancient Egypt in order to kill a bunch of monsters so they can't threaten Earth in the present, and other than blurbs of text in between levels, that's all the exposition you get. Not the most enticing premise, but whatever. The game wasn't hyped for its storyline; it was hyped for its massive environments and swarming hordes of enemies, right?
Yeah, well, the huge open landscapes are there as advertised, but once I started playing, it quickly became obvious that this was a significant departure from the Doom formula that other reviewers would have you expect. To ask it pointedly: where's the level design? Apparently, these Egyptian locales were built as a connected series of cubical arenas. The arenas are segregated from each other via locked doors and are largely empty until the waves of monsters start pouring in. Killing all the enemies unlocks the next big open box for you to fight in, and so on until you exit through the final door and the level ends. Oh, and sometimes, the door to the next big cube stays locked until you hit a switch, but if you ever get confused, some text will appear on the pause screen that tells you what to do.
That's a harsh oversimplification perhaps, but it really is the core of the game. Okay, so the arenas aren't always empty--sometimes there are obelisks and pillars scattered about, sometimes there are hills and trees, and sometimes you're in hallways, or rooms with bridges and ramps. But their layouts are always simple, despite their often impressive size. Old FPS games like Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem 3D, and their ilk had architecture that mattered. Not only did it create twisty, interconnected, visually interesting spaces for you to navigate, but it shaped the combat as well. There were windows to snipe and spy from, secret passages and back entrances, pits to avoid and gaps to jump across, confined areas that limited your maneuvering, and all with enemies that could be high above or far below you. That's not to say that the decoration in Serious Sam is pointless scenery--fighting enemies in a forest of pillars does feel quite different from battling on the open sand dunes--but it never catches your attention or requires you to give it much thought. That is, unless you're looking for the secret areas. Those can be quite well-hidden and do reward exploration, but are never necessary and in fact can be more punishing than beneficial, as I'll get to in a minute.
The second way Serious Sam is different from most older titles is the relative movement speeds of your character and your enemies. In a game like Doom, you can run circles around anything. Sam Stone, although a pretty fast-moving guy compared to, say, Master Chief, is nevertheless easily outpaced by many of his opponents. The ones that can't outrun you themselves will fire projectiles that can. As it turns out, this is one design decision that, when paired with the open environments and monster hordes, allows Serious Sam's concept to shine. But before I get into that, I want to mention one last major departure from the "classic" FPS formula: the enemy spawns.
Now, the idea of new enemies spawning into an area is certainly nothing new. You'd be hard-pressed to find an FPS that doesn't occasionally drop in an enemy out of nowhere. But Serious Sam takes it to ridiculous lengths. There are spawn traps everywhere in this goddamn game, and their placement ranges from sadistic to seemingly random. Don't get me wrong--I expect traps in this genre. I'm certainly used to the old "pick up the keycard/weapon/item and release a wave of enemies" trick. Serious Sam, however, takes that idea and applies it to damn near everything. Pick up some minor health item? Spawn trap. Take the left hallway instead of the right? Spawn trap. Grab that box of bullets? Well, that one was safe, but the rockets right next to it? Spawn trap. Even the secret areas have spawn traps! After the first couple levels, I started avoided the 1-point health and armor pickups entirely, because there were even spawn traps for those. I mean, what's the point? Why would I risk fighting a dozen or more enemies for 1 point of armor? It was funny the first few times, I guess. It's clear that many of the traps are intended to be humorous, since some have amusing names that pop up on screen when you trigger them, but sheesh, enough already. I wasn't playing for 100% kills or a high score, so I just quicksaved a lot and avoided them whenever I could.
Speaking of saving, the checkpoints in this game are like the spawns in that they are difficult to predict and easy to accidentally trigger. Several times I died in combat only to find that, while frantically dodging enemy fire, I had crossed an invisible line and activated a checkpoint a split second before my death. What was particularly annoying about this is that the checkpoint saves were overwriting my quicksave slot, so I had to go back to my most recent hard save. It wasn't a big deal as long as I kept it in mind, but it certainly thwarted my attempt to play the game via checkpoints only, as I prefer to do when a game supports them. I gave up on the third level and imagined that going further would be intensely frustrating unless I had the entire game memorized. This turned out to be ignorance on my part: if you select "Quick Load" from the main menu instead of using the quickload key, you can choose from any of your last eight quicksaves, so reverting to an earlier checkpoint isn't a problem. Unfortunately, I didn't figure that out until after I had finished the game. Although I did use save states liberally, I was pleased to find that they weren't the challenge-destroying crutch they can be in other games. You can slap that quicksave key all you want, but it's not going to slow down the waves of enemies or keep them from surrounding and overwhelming you. If you're not on top of the situation and playing well, you'll just save yourself into a corner.
That constant pressure to play skillfully is why Serious Sam is actually pretty damn good, despite the complaining I've done above. In every level I found the combat to be consistently challenging and well-balanced once I got past the initial information deficit and understood what the game was throwing at me. At its best, the design elements come together wonderfully: the sparse environments give you plenty room to maneuver, but don't offer much in the way of cover or choke points, so you have to maintain a 360-degree awareness of the situation. Even when surrounded by dozens of enemies, you need to be at least vaguely tracking their movements and anticipating their shots. The scale of the arenas allows enemies to spawn far away, giving you a time window to prioritize your targets and herd the faster ones into your lines of fire. Once they get close, you have to dance and weave, dodging their attacks and buying yourself time to shoot. It's a fantastic feeling to dart to the side and let several enemies run behind you, knowing their movement patterns well enough that you can target another enemy in the meantime and still know exactly when to dodge again without even turning around. The bigger battles often walk a line where the odds seem overwhelming but end up manageable once you’re using the correct weapons, aiming properly, and moving intelligently. It is clear to me that the developers took care in choosing the number of enemies, the distances they appear at, the formations they appear in, the timing of the spawns, and the amount of ammo and health available. I even warmed up to the idea of enemies appearing out of nowhere, since the challenge increases steadily and I found myself wondering what crazy assortment of tough enemies would surprise me next. Although the level layouts never do get very interesting, the game at least paces out the weapons, so you're getting new toys up until the last few areas. The final weapon (which I won't spoil) is unusual for the genre and a joy in the way it slams through multiple opponents, but the rest are your standard shotgun, machine gun, rocket launcher, etc.
The cliche way to put it would be to say that Serious Sam only does one thing, but does it very well. In every aspect other than the mechanics of the massive, well-balanced battles, it's unremarkable. The game's graphical strength, for example, is entirely about scale, with textures, lighting and shadows that are all decent-looking for 2001 but hardly eye-catching in their own right. As I said, the architecture is blocky and not much to look at once you get over the sheer size of it all. There's a lot of sand and sand-colored stone. Enemy models are likewise average, though some of them are impressively large as well. The designs of the creatures, however, do stand out simply for how ridiculously goofy they are. They're the sort of monsters a kid would come up with if he was trying really hard to think of something scary ("It's like a giant scorpion thing! A golden scorpion! But it has a man's head and body! Oh yeah, and a chaingun for a hand!"). Although silly, enemies like the headless kamikazes that run at you screaming are memorably strange, and it's no surprise that they've become mascots of sorts for the series.
For music you get forgettable ambient tracks when things are quiet, and generic thumpin' guitar riffs when things get violent. Sound effects are the same story: decent, but run-of-the-mill, and many have a flat, compressed quality to them (the punchy blast of the double-barreled shotgun is a satisfying exception). Although there's nothing impressive about the sounds themselves, the game does a great job of giving each enemy its own distinctive noises, so just by using your ears you can tell what has spawned around you and where the attacks are coming from. Certain enemies have a warning sound that plays almost constantly while they're around, such as the thundering of hoofbeats when bulls are attacking you, but I noticed that those sounds didn't seem to position accurately or have volume adjusted for distance like most of the other noises. Maybe it was an issue with my configuration, or maybe it was intended, since they end up functioning like enemy alarm bells that ring right in your ear.
With so few standout elements, it's easy to imagine how Serious Sam could have been worthless. I've played enough amateur levels to know that any idiot can make a big empty space that dumps enemies on your head. The expansive arenas could have been a pointless gimmick, offering little more than novel eye candy. The enemies could have been wimpy cannon fodder, waltzing into your gunfire while you stroll forward and hold down the left mouse button. Fortunately, the developers were smart enough to play to their engine's strengths and create delightfully frenetic combat scenarios. The game's narrow focus meant that Serious Sam was something I could only play in small doses, but it always kept drawing me back in, excited to see if I could handle the next wave.
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