Serious Sam

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Serious Sam: The First Encounter
Developer(s)	Croteam
Publisher(s)	Gathering of Developers (GOD games)
Engine	Serious Engine
Version	1.05
Platform(s)	Microsoft Windows, Linux, Xbox, Xbox 360 (XBLA)
Release date(s)	March, 2001
Genre(s)	First-person shooter
Mode(s)	Single player, multiplayer
Rating(s)	ESRB: Mature (M)
Media	CD
Input methods	Keyboard and mouse, gamepad

Serious Sam is the title of a series of first-person shooters created by the Croatian development team Croteam. Originally released for the PC market only, Serious Sam's rising popularity resulted in the porting of the series to a number of different platforms, including the Microsoft Xbox, Nintendo GameCube, Sony PlayStation 2 and Xbox Live Arcade among others.

The series follows the adventures of hero Sam "Serious" Stone and his fight against the forces of the notorious extraterrestrial overlord Mental who seeks to destroy humanity.

Contents 1 Gameplay 2 Games 2.1 Serious Sam: The First Encounter 2.2 Serious Sam: The Second Encounter 2.3 Serious Sam: Gold Edition 2.4 Serious Sam (Xbox) 2.5 Serious Sam Advance 2.6 Serious Sam: Next Encounter 2.7 Serious Sam II 2.8 Serious Sam: The First Encounter HD 3 Future of the Series 3.1 Serious Sam Forever 3.2 Serious Sam 3 4 Humor 5 Development 6 Reception 7 References 8 External links

[edit] Gameplay

The series' gameplay involves huge number of enemies, large, open areas, and various hidden rooms and treasures. The levels in the games are massive, depicting vast plains, deep valleys and the exterior/interior of the monuments of different human civilizations. Monster fighting makes up most of the games, with Sam's only help being NETRICSA (NEuro-TRonically Implanted Combat Situation Analyser), an advanced computer AI surgically implanted in his brain. NETRICSA serves as an in-game strategy guide, cataloguing encountered enemies and weapons, and at the same time providing bits about the background story and hints on how to cross the levels. Though often the hints are quite obvious and presented in a humorous way.

[edit] Games

[edit] Serious Sam: The First Encounter

The First Encounter was the first game in the series which had been in the making since 1996 and had a video showing its early game play in 2000. The First Encounter was originally developed by Croteam as a demonstrator for their engine and this is the reason why some countries saw its initial release priced at less than half the value of other games in the genre.

The game introduction reveals what happened before the game actually takes place: in ancient times, Earth was involved in a conflict between Mental and the Sirians, an alien race that left many of its artifacts to be found by humanity. In the 22nd century Mental's forces return to Earth hell-bent on eradicating humankind: as a last resort the usage of the "Time Lock" is decided: this Sirian device can send back through time a single individual who can, hopefully, defeat Mental and alter the course of history. Because of his bravery in fighting the monsters, Sam "Serious" Stone is chosen to use the "Time Lock". As the game opens, Sam appears in ancient Egypt: his travels from one Egyptian monument to the next, all the way fighting against the monsters Mental sent after him, make up most of the story of The First Encounter. During his wandering, Sam is able to activate a hidden Sirian communicator, located in Luxor, that summons to Earth a starship from the depths of space. Sam goes to the Great Pyramid for a rendezvous with the ship and, after a titanic battle against Mental's general Ugh Zan III, he is whisked on-board the Sirian starship. ^[1][2][3]

[edit] Serious Sam: The Second Encounter

Serious Sam: The Second Encounter
Developer(s)	Croteam
Publisher(s)	Gathering of Developers
Engine	Serious Engine
Version	1.07
Platform(s)	PC (Windows), Linux, Xbox Live Arcade
Release date(s)	February, 2002
Genre(s)	First-person shooter
Mode(s)	Single player, multiplayer
Rating(s)	ESRB: Mature (M)
Media	CD-ROM (1), Direct Download
Input methods	Keyboard, mouse

The Second Encounter starts right where the previous chapter left off, with Sam travelling to Sirius on the starship. Unfortunately Sam's vehicle is accidentally hit by the "Croteam crate-bus" and plummets down to Earth's surface. Serious Sam crash lands in Central America in the Mayan age. However not all is lost, since the Sirians left a back-up ship on Earth. Since this vehicle is located in a different age from the one Sam finds himself, the hero has to uncover the locations of a number of Sirian time-gates that will help him reach his destination. With this objective Sam storms through Mesoamerica, then travels to Mesopotamia and finally to medieval Europe where the starship is located. On his way, Sam battles two of Mental's timelock guardians: the spirit named Kukulkan the Wind God and a biomechanical creature, the Exotech Larva. Finally, in front of the Cathedral of Holy Blood, Sam confronts Mordekai The Summoner, the last obstacle to overcome on his path to the Holy Grail. After a time-consuming battle with Mordekai's minions, The Summoner is finally silenced forever. In the cathedral, Sam lifts the Holy Grail, followed by his confession of his sins in a booth... to Mental, during which he reassures Mental that "he's coming to get him."

Other than the more varied locations, The Second Encounter features some additional weapons—a chainsaw, a flamethrower, a sniper rifle, and the powerful Serious Bomb—and a number of new monsters that Sam has to face. This game has also seen the release of a level-pack titled Dark Island, featuring fan-made levels for single and multiplayer mode.

[edit] Serious Sam: Gold Edition

Serious Sam: Gold Edition is a special Serious Sam release featuring all the contents of The First Encounter, The Second Encounter and the fan-made level-pack Dark Island. The games are on separate CDs (in the UK version) and are identical to their individual releases, although the Sam character model for The First Encounter has been modified to match the one used in The Second Encounter.

[edit] Serious Sam (Xbox)

The Xbox edition of Serious Sam had notable differences including the model of Sam being changed from the model of First Encounter, to form a more cartoon style Sam and removing the shades to make him look less like Duke Nukem and more like he does today. The Xbox version includes the levels from both of the PC games. As a result, weapons from the The Second Encounter were added to the levels that were part of the First Encounter on PC. The levels were made smaller by removing the areas outside of the playing area. Unlike the PC version, you can't exit too far out of the playing area. This is due to the smaller amount of memory available in the Xbox. The gameplay was given a more arcade touch. A life system was implemented into the Singleplayer game making use of the score. Every 100,000 points grants the player a new life, which allows respawning at the place of death rather than at a save point. Combo points were added for killing multiple enemies at the same time, which allows the player to increase his score at a fast pace. Further changes to the game include the addition of treasure and the tweaking of save points. Save points are designated by a red phone booth. Autoaiming was also added to the Xbox version to compensate for the degree of control usually offered by a keyboard and mouse setup.

[edit] Serious Sam Advance

Serious Sam Advance is a spin-off for the Gameboy Advance. The game features Egypt and Rome as settings, new graphical style, and many enemies and weapons returning from The First Encounter and The Second Encounter. The game introduces many new, exclusive enemies and weapons. The story resolves around Sam going back in time again as a group of people studying ancient civilizations in the Earth's past encounters new forces of Mental hybrid army. Sam has to return to Egypt first, and then proceed to Rome, battling hordes of enemies on his way. The game's bosses (each one encountered at the end of two settings) are two similar looking lychantroph-like commanders: Sirian Sphinx (Egypt) and Wolfiator (Rome). With the defeat of the former, Sam Stone, again victorious, finally returns back to his time.

[edit] Serious Sam: Next Encounter

see also: serious sam: next encounter Serious Sam: Next Encounter is a console exclusive version of Serious Sam that was released for the PlayStation 2 and the Nintendo GameCube. The weapons in Next Encounter are all remakes of those from the PC games (e.g. the revolvers are renamed to pistols), also support for vehicles and brand new levels with previously visited history periods new have been added; in addition, different types of ammunition were available for certain weapons. In line with the PC releases, Next Encounter retailed at a budget price of US$19.99. While this game was not developed by Croteam, but by Climax under stylistical and technological terms, it is still identical to the other games in the series. Climax also developed Serious Sam: Advance. It starts off with Sam Stone stepping into a time machine which teleports him into ancient Rome where large groups of Mental's forces are waiting. Sam has to confront not only the armies of his enemy, but also the Mini Sam, an evil being created by Mental. The story takes Sam through three different settings of Earth's past: Ancient Rome, Feudal China and long lost Atlantis where Sam, as usual, has to wipe out the hybrid army of his nemesis and save the timeline from corruption. On his way through Rome and China, Sam defeats other two Mental's timelock guardians: the gigantic beast Diablotaur and the monstrous Subterranian Emperor Hydra. The game culminates aboard a Sirian mothership, where Sam has to battle the Sirian Dark Lord, a soul of a great Sirian warrior infused with giant robotic body.

[edit] Serious Sam II

Serious Sam II, the second major game in the series was officially announced by Croteam and Take-Two Interactive for both the PC and the Xbox in April 2005 and released on October 11, 2005. A PC demo was made available on September 21. Although Serious Sam II is actually the third game in the main series, the first two games are widely considered to be two halves to one larger game, similar to Doom and Doom II. Thus, Serious Sam II might be considered as the true sequel to The First Encounter and The Second Encounter. In the game, Sam travels to distant planets under Mental's control to find the pieces of a magic medallion that could help defeat his nemesis. Sam's ultimate task is to assault Sirius, the capital of Notorious Mental.

[edit] Serious Sam: The First Encounter HD

Serious Sam: The First Encounter HD, the third Serious Sam game was announced by Croteam and printed in many gaming news articles such as Eurogamer,^[4] and on June 25, 2009, it was officially announced that the third title in the series will be Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter. It has been released on 24 November, 2009 for PC through Steam, with a XBLA release soon after (published by Majesco Entertainment). The game is a remake of Serious Sam: The First Encounter with improved textures and character models. It will retail for 1200 Microsoft Points or US$15 ($20 on PC version) and support 4-player online co-op. This remake will feature Achievements.^[5][6]

[edit] Future of the Series

[edit] Serious Sam Forever

Official Serious Sam Forever website^[7] launched on March 13, 2009, with new teaser video containing maps and monsters renders from the upcoming title, which actually resembles that of Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter. The game is being developed by Prophets-of-Sam, an independent international studio, using Serious Engine 2.^{[8][dubious – discuss]} An official beta of the game has been released on http://www.seriouszone.com/ the beta is actually a mod for Serious Sam 2. It is speculated that there may be no game in development, and Serious Sam Forever is a spoof on Duke Nukem Forever. The game is unlikely to come out due to the release of the superior Serious Engine 3.

[edit] Serious Sam 3

Serious Sam 3 is currently in development by Croteam. Its engine was used in the remake Serious Sam: The First Encounter HD. It will feature the use of Serious Engine 3.

[edit] Humor

The games, contradicting the title of the series, are full of one-liners and slapstick humor. Some of the humor comes from the secrets in the levels, such as "secret gay wedding" or "secret CROcodile". In addition, there is also the recurring appearance of a creature called a Gnaar, who is seen in several cutscenes throughout the games. Many of the jokes break the fourth wall. For example, Sam occasionally taunts other action heroes, claiming to be the best one, or stumbles upon a movie set showing a scene from an earlier game in the series being recorded.

[edit] Development

Croteam created their own engine for use in both First Encounter and Second Encounter. Named the "Serious Engine", it is designed to cope with extremely large view distances and massive numbers of models, unlike most FPS engines which are developed for a limited draw distance and only a few animating models (i.e. enemies) on screen at a time: it is very efficient, capable of maintaining dozens of moving enemies (often stampedes) even on a modest system challenging the well known id Tech, Unreal or Source engines. The "Serious Engine" can render through both Direct3D or OpenGL and, while it does not support pixel or vertex shaders, it is optimised for Direct3D 7's hardware transformation, clipping and lighting. The "Serious Engine" is available for licensing from Croteam.^[9]

The next, more powerful iteration of the "Serious Engine" has been developed for use in Serious Sam II and has been called "Serious Engine II". This one has support for many of the features of modern GPUs such as pixel shaders, vertex shaders, HDR, bloom and Parallax mapping.

Serious Engine 3 was used in Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter, and is to be used in Serious Sam 3 as well. It includes detailed shading, and enemy textures are completely remodeled to look more realistic. This engine is also being developed to harness the full capacity of HDR and High Definition mapping.

Serious Sam is voiced by John J Dick.

[edit] Reception

The First Encounter was the recipient of various editorial and consumer praise, with an overall 83% review ratio on Game Rankings^[10] as of October 1, 2007. It was the recipient of several major awards from the media, including Game of the Year.

• Game of the Year (PC) (2001) – GameSpot^[11]
• Editor's Choice – IGN^[12]
• Outstanding Achievement in Technology (2001) – IGN Action Vault^[13]
• Surprise of the Year (2001) – IGN Action Vault^[13]

[edit] References

http://www.violencemedia.com/

Website of John J Dick - Voice of Serious Sam.

[edit] External links

• Croteam website
• Serious Sam series at MobyGames
• Seriously! – Serious Coverage – Forums, Downloads, News, Interviews, etc.