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"Special Edition" a glorified demo

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 30 / 31
Date: February 17, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Dont' get the Serious Sam: The First Encounter Special Edition. The "Special Edition" is basically a glorified demo version of the full version. It only comes with 7 of the 15 full-version levels and not all the weapons present in the full-version are present in this version. I recommend getting the full-version.

Serious Fun!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 14 / 15
Date: March 22, 2001
Author: Amazon User

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; ....

Serious Fun for Serious FPS Gamers

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 9
Date: March 22, 2001
Author: Amazon User

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.

Serious Fun

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: April 19, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Serious Sam is based around two different aspects, Fun and Intense Gameplay. This is a game that will be liked by any lover of first person shoot em ups. You travel ovr loads of different area ranging from Egypt to several distant planets. The main aim of the game is to stop Mental (an assasin), but i just spent most of my time going around shooting people, because its fun.

Serious Sam - Serious Action

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: April 19, 2001
Author: Amazon User

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 :)

Take that ya faceless, soulless corporate Video games!!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: April 14, 2001
Author: Amazon User

If you're tired of the same old shooter games where you jump, shoot, sneak, jump, shoot... then get this game! Serious Sam throws out all the crap that shooter video games have become and gives you a game where you run and kill anything and everything.

If you are like me, you do not enjoy games like Thief 2 where you must spend hours sneaking around looking for the right shaded pixel to walk on. And if you're like me, you think that this whole "awesome" 3d graphics for PC video games is highly overrated in games like No One Lives Forever (where human faces look like they are wrapped around rocks) then this game is for you. No sneaking, great graphics, and hours and days and weeks of fun fun fun!

Best of all, you get a score! HA! To think it took 10 years for a gaming developer to think of this.

Then there's the price... for this masterpiece of minimilist arcade type action. This game is the asteroids of first person shooters - level after level of the same thing but you still love it cuz it's hard and too much fun for one person to have.

Seriously Sweet.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 7
Date: March 22, 2001
Author: Amazon User

If you think the only way to play a shooter is like Half-Life or Deus Ex, you might not like this game. If you prefer bot/arena combat, you might not like this game. But if you grew up on Doom and Duke Nukem, and you've been eagerly awaiting for something to come along that can meet those, here is your game. The engine, while not Quake3, is BEAUTIFUL, and the game is just plain FUN. It's only $20. Pick it up. It is the best $20 game you will ever purchase. (I say "will ever" because you WILL buy this game, it is THAT fun!)

Great Multiplayer FPS

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: August 19, 2001
Author: Amazon User

My husband and I have been waiting for a FPS like this for a long time. In the tradition of Duke Nukem and Doom, Serious Sam supports cooperative multiplayer FPS gaming, including save and restore (once you get around the bugs in the software).

The monsters come fast and furious, but there is enough ammo and health to let you get through them. In addition, there are "secret" stores of ammo, health, armor, etc. that entice you to slow down and take a closer look around rather than just blast your way to the next level.

For us, the primary positive features are (1) First person rather than third (although SS suports third person view), (2) Good cooperative multiplayer play, (3) Save/load in multiplayer mode, (4) Ability to see through your partner's eyes.

The one thing I would have liked that is not available in Serious Sam is a female skin (for obvious reasons). This is a small point, however, and does not detract from the gameplay in any way.

The only other problem is that, even with the 1.02 patch, there are still bugs in multiplayer mode. We were finally only able to get around the bugs by moving one of the games from a 2000 machine to an XP machine.

Another pleasant surprise was the reasonable price of the game. At [a reasonable], you don't hesitate to buy that second copy of the game for LAN gaming.

I hope this inspires other game developers to go back to the best of the basics in first-person shooters.

Beautiful engine and reasonably fun game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: April 02, 2001
Author: Amazon User

The game, itself, is pretty much a Doom/Duke Nukem clone, in terms of play style and "attitude" (right down to the smart quips that Sam occasionally offers), which means that it has all the strengths and weaknesses inherant in that style of FPS. But it's a D/D that's been updated with the best graphics engine that I've ever seen on a game, period. Indeed, if you go to Croteam's page, you'll see that they're pitching the engine as hard as they're pitching the game, and I don't blame them.

Really, this is one beautiful game. The levels are physically huge (as in you can, literally, see for miles of *real* terrain), the colors are crisp, the lighting effects are beyond unbelievable, and the physics engine is so impressive that it has to be seen to be believed.

Of course, such graphical power comes as a price. I have a VooDoo3 and a P2 450. I can play the game on this system (after downloading the WickedGL driver), but I need to play it on the "Speed" settings, which basically turn down the graphics to their minimum settings. It still looks good, but I compared it against a friend's machine, which is a 1GH P3 with a maxed out GForce2 card. The difference is like the difference between a Hanna-Barbara cartoon and a Disney epic. Aspects of the game were practically photo-realistic. It looked even better with his 3D glasses.

If you're running anything slower and less capable than my system (see above), I really wouldn't recommend buying this game; you'll just frustrate yourself. If you have a system that's adequate, such as mine, I think it's worth it. If you have a graphics powerhouse, then buy this game, if for no other reason than to show off the capabilities of your system, because there's no other game on the market that will do as good of a job.

Old Fashioned and Fun, Fun, Fun.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: April 11, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Serious Sam is more game for the money than any FPS in the last five years. The level details (eye candy) are excellent. The action is unrelenting and as you work through it you will be LOL at the gobs of monsters that just keep coming, e.g., Exploding guys that run at you screaming at the top of their lungs, Bad guys that carry their heads in their hands, a huge Ox like thing that is faster than a Corvette and will knock you a 100 feet in the air. There is a point in the game where you are tempted to grab a certain power-up. If you do nothing happens for a few seconds and them about a thousand screaming bad boys come at you from around the corner of a building. There were times where I was laughing so hard I couldn't shoot straight.

If you are a veteran of first person shooters you know that most of the fighting takes place in confined areas. This is true in Serious Sam to some extent but many times you will have a big time fight in wide open spaces. If you love to run, jump, strafe and shoot you are going to have a ball. Careful though, all that light and space might put the zap on your head. We hard-core gamers just aren't used to so much roaming room.

The interface is simple and you can bind your movement and hot-keys to your favorite configuration, no sweat. Most importantly you can save the game anytime and as many times as you like which is a feature that recently has been lost on some developers and publishers.

It seems Croteam got it right when deciding to make a computer game the entire purpose of which is to have fun. Make no mistake this is not a break-through game. You won't find anything different. What you will find is an inexpensive game that will beg the question; Why did I spend fifty bucks last month for a game, that has a frustrating interface, does not support in-mission saves and because of all the dang bugs has left me wating for the proverbial "patch".

Bottom line, buy Serious Sam it delivers!

Atta boy Croteam.

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