Review: Serious Sam II

The genre of the first person shooter was born with simple elements in mind: shoot, strafe, win. Since then it has moved on to loftier frontiers, better stories, bigger things. Despite this it's an lot of fun to go back to the basics once in a while. 2001's Serious Sam was the kind of mindless fun that a PC gamer needs every once in a while. No long cut-scenes, no intricate plot, just the opportunity to turn some harpies into feathered confetti. The sequel, Serious Sam II, has a lot of potential but manages to miss out on the essentials that made Croteam's first encounter a success. Read on for my impressions of Serious Sam II.

• Title: Serious Sam II
• Developer: Croteam
• Publisher: 2K Games
• System: PC (Xbox)
• Reviewer: Zonk
• Score: 5/10

On loading Serious Sam II, a group of strange coloured midgets look on at footage of the original game and wax philosophical that Sam may indeed be ... 'The One'. The rest of the game goes downhill from there. In the original cutscene, though, the plot goes on to babble some nonsense about a magical amulet that's split into sections and entrusted with different civilizations. The story in SamII has you moving from place to places assisting these little guys against the ravening hordes of evil. After you beat the boss of one area, you get a piece of the amulet and can move on.

The problem comes with everything between coming to a new area and moving on. I'll get to that in a moment, though. I'd like to paint an overall picture first. Gameplay is very much like that of the original title. The title sports pure FPS-standard controls. You use the controls to aim a bevy of weapons at oncoming hordes of enemies. Where Half-Life 2 places enemies intelligently and Doom 3 had them leaping at you from the shadows, SamII throws wave after wave of unintelligent monsters in your direction, daring you to take your eyes off the prize for even a moment. The fun factor of the original Sam, at least with this facet of gameplay, is still sound. Having to deal with over a dozen critters moving in your direction at once is both intimidating and amusing. Death doesn't hold much fear, as you have multiple lives and can respawn if you do end up meeting the grim reaper. Tossing death back at your foes is accomplished with a dizzying array of weaponry, from the standard rocket launcher to a paired set of submachine guns all the way to a parrot-bomb. Each weapon, besides having an amusement factor, is capable of taking out different types of enemies. Enemy types are varied, and in addition to keeping you on your feet make you think a bit as well.

Besides running and gunning, there are some vehicles sequences as well. You'll have the option of piloting a hoverbike, a jet fighter, and a dinosaur over the course of the game. The Boss fights themselves are also a nice change of pace from the normal scenarios. As fast as you have to think with multiple incoming, you almost have to think faster while holding down your fire button to continuously fire at one creature. Aside from huge Boss fights to break up the game itself, there are mini-boss fights throughout the game. Though there isn't necessarily one each chapter there are enough of them to give a small sense of satisfaction as you make progress towards the end of the game.

The real problem is that, while all of this sounds good on paper ... it just doesn't work on-screen. The weapons are unfun rehashes of similar weapons from other titles. There's a curious lack of satisfaction to using them. How they managed to make an auto-shotgun unsatisfying to use is a trick, but there just doesn't seem to be much weight to the action. Unlike the previous title, which saw you mowing down enemies in great sheets of blood and gore, SamII feels more like a trip to a carnival. Popping enemy-shaped balloons with darts just doesn't have the same feel. The controls, despite being standards throughout the genre, manage to feel cumbersome and unwieldy in this setting. Whether I was firing a rocket launcher or a sniper rifle, I always managed to feel as though my opponents had a better grasp of the whole 'pointing the mouse' thing.

These frustrations could have been overcome, though, if the sense of pace to the title was anything like that in the original game. Just as quickly as you tore through a mapful of enemies, you were off to another locale with more bloodthirsty hordes to slaughter. In SamII you do the incredibly fun activity of walking to your destination a great deal more than I would like. At some points there is even an MMORPG level of travel involved. While I guess I can understand wanting to show off your new graphics engine, it absolutely kills the game's pacing. To add insult to injury, several levels have cutscenes to fill us in on what exactly it is we're doing as we move through the game. In almost any other title, I'd be glad to listen to plot and learn more about my surroundings. This, though, was Serious Sam! While the scenes are skippable, whenever I made the mistake of sitting through one I regretted the decision. As laughable a plot as the amulet thing is, when I actually took the time to listen to a cutscene it was like watching a joke that no one had let the writers in on. The blue midgets talking to the gravel-voiced psychopath just went on and on, when all I wanted to be doing was squishing some evil with whatever came to hand.

Despite my frustrations with how it was put to use, the Serious engine is relatively pretty. It's not Source, Unreal, or Doom, but it stands well on it's feet as a modern FPS engine. The shiny saturated look of the original game has been mostly preserved, with the monsters not only looking creepy and weird but managing to do it with style as well. The audio environment is pretty much a wash. There isn't any music or orchestration worth mentioning, and the sound effects only managed to be good enough not to annoy. Some of the weight of the sound effects from the original game seems to have been lost, as well, leaving weapons fire somewhat hollow.

For whatever reason, SamII developer Croteam chose to fill in places that weren't lacking in the first game. By adding bulk to the design and essentially ignoring what made the original title fun, they've managed to drain the fun from what should have been a hard to screw up sequel. Even the return of the first game's co-op multiplayer mode isn't enough to overcome the game's lack of soul. Vehicles and traveling, cutscenes and an attempt at a plot ... sound like any other games you know? By trying to make their game into an emulator of more serious genre titles, Croteam diluted the essential fun-ness that the Serious Sam model had to offer. Serious Sam II is a frustrating, confused experience that made me lament the fact that you can never go home again. Even at just thirty dollars on the PC, I don't recommend this title to anyone but a desperate FPS junkie looking for a fix.

Comments

Unfortunate release timing

[RogueyWon]

Serious Sam 2 had the misfortune to come out in the middle of a fairly bumper crop of big PC fpses. In particular, Quake 4 and F.E.A.R. really stand out.

I picked up both Serious Sam 2 and Fear (I can't be arsed typing all the capitals and .s again) last weekend and I can tell you now that switching between sessions of the two games is a truly mind-bending experience. One moment you've got incredible amounts of cheese (and I think Zonk kind of misses the deliberate badness of SS2's cutscenes), then the next you've got brooding darkness and pants-wetting terror.

Bouncing through a Fear map in a happy, bouncy Serious Sam 2 mood is to set yourself up for a serious scare - in my case, making a high volume "urk" noise and nearly falling off my chair - the first time you run merrily around a corner. Playing Serious Sam 2 in a state of nervous exhaustion, crouching in corners and freaking out at the sight of each enemy, on the other hand tends to... well... take quite a while.

On a side note, I more or less agree with the review above, although it does seem a bit too harsh in places. The plot made me smile, with its complete and blatantly deliberate disregard for plausibility and sanity and the weapons seemed satisfying enough to me. Besides, the cutscenes are skippable and slamming a game for having cutscenes just seems a bit too "I'm l33ter than you because I think cutscenes in games suck and are not for REAL GAMERS". The vehicles do suck, though. Least entertaining fps vehicles ever.

Re:Unfortunate release timing

[Anonymous Coward]

Quake 4? Stand out?

You must be joking.

It's a rehash of a rehash of a rehash.

They even managed to bless it with shitty multiplayer.

Re:Unfortunate release timing

[Tet]

I more or less agree with the review above, although it does seem a bit too harsh in places.

Agreed. I installed a Windwos partition on my machine for the first time in 3 years or so specifically so I could play SS2. I was a bit disappointed, in that it seems a bit watered down. The violence is a bit more cartoon like than before, and there's less of a feeling of utter terror as you're overwhelmed by hordes of enemies. But that said, I still enjoy the game, and felt the review was overly harsh. I'd have given it an 8/10 (as opposed to the original which gets an 11).

Re:Unfortunate release timing

[Hallucienda]

maybe a rehash of a rehash but its a beautiful to behold and i for one haven't had so much fun playing a FPS in ages. Gotta love FEAR, its a great game and Serious Sam 2 is notable for its co-op mode.

Re:Unfortunate release timing

[AKAImBatman]

Quake 4? Stand out? It's a rehash of a rehash of a rehash.

That's beside the point. Quake 4 has brand recognition, as well as an association with Doom 3 to carry it. Serious Sam, OTOH, was an underdog the first time, and will be an underdog this time as well.

Re:Unfortunate release timing

[RogueyWon]

Quake 4's a rehash, yes, but I don't think it's entirely without value.

First of all, it manages to do a lot of stuff on the Doom 3 engine that I'd not seen there before. Now, I understand that Raven had to virtually re-write a lot of the engine, but the results are still damned impressive. Outdoors looks a bit sparse compared to Farcry, but it actually manages to *do* outdoor sequences without grinding to a halt, which is more than could be said for Doom 3. In fact, the game in general looks every bit as good as Doom 3 and yet, for some reason, runs significantly better on my far-from-stellar system (P4 3.4ghz, 1 gig RAM, Radeon x800).

The gameplay isn't half bad either. Sure, it's essentially the same run-and-gun gameplay as Quake 2, but this isn't necessarily a bad thing - the play-style was fun then and it's still fun now. There's a good range of weapons and they're all satisfying to use. Plenty of enemy types and the game manages to keep throwing new ones at you until right near the end. Even a few creepy sections, although the game never really replicates the constant tension of Doom 3. It's not a genre-defining game, but it's still about as good a game as the PC can hope for these days.

The multiplayer seems very Quake 3, which disappointed me a bit. I always loathed Quake 3 and thought it was a major blip in id's record. However, I'm sure the multiplayer scene will be graced with the usual assortment of mods that should extend the game significantly over time.

HOWEVER, I do have one very major gripe with the game that lowers the score I would have given it from the 8 or so it should have deserved to about a 4 or so. Namely, the retarded copy-protection system prevented my DVD+RW drive (the only drive in my gaming desktop) from reading the disks at all. The "helpful" customer service guy explained that this was a "known" issue with my brand of drive... no fix in sight. Eventually, I worked out I could install the game over the network by sharing my laptop's DVD drive, and then downloading and installing a crack. Hardly ideal.

I hate games piracy. Really, I do. I know a few people who work in the industry (although I wouldn't work there myself if you put a gun to my head) and outside of a few of the biggest studios, profit margins on PC games are pretty minimal in most cases. Games piracy digs into this already slim margin and, for once, the hype about it costing jobs seems pretty justifiable (unlike in the music industry, for example). Until the advent of these retarded copy protection systems, I'd never used a warez site or a peer to peer network to find a game or a crack for one. Sadly, even though I still purchase all my games legally, I'm now intimately acquainted with both. And I'd be lying if I said that the temptation to go further wasn't there now.

Re:Unfortunate release timing

[ucahg]

len("Fear (I can't be arsed typing all the capitals and .s again)") = 61
len("F.E.A.R.") = 8

61 > 8

Whatever you say.

Re:Unfortunate release timing

[chamenos]

"(and I think Zonk kind of misses the deliberate badness of SS2's cutscenes)"

"Posted by Zonk on Tuesday November 01, @01:13PM
from the too-serious-for-its-own-good dept."

Irony at its best.

Re:Unfortunate release timing

[Rogerborg]

"far from stellar system"?

Half Life 2 runs like a dream on my Athlon 1200, 768MB RAM and GeForce 4 ti4800 card. The Doom 3 engine is a pig in a wig.

Re:Unfortunate release timing

[CaptnMArk]

Q4 also has Q3 deathmatch which is "the deathmach".

I suspect Q3 will be more popular until hardware catches up.

Re:Unfortunate release timing

[Hank Chinaski]

The only thing that makes Quake 4 stand out is it's title. The rest is pretty mediocre. I totally agree with the eurogamer review on that.

Re:Unfortunate release timing

[lscotte]

Actually:

Fear (I can't be arsed typing all the capitals and .s again) = 64
F.E.A.R. = 12

If you count shift key presses assuming no capslock and US layout. String length is not equivalent to number of keypresses.

Have fun...

Re:Unfortunate release timing

[Anonymous Coward]

It still took more effort to explain why you wouldn't spell F.E.A.R. correctly than to actually do so.

I'm assuming you just wanted to be clever. However, you failed.

Re:Unfortunate release timing

[F34nor]

Above all its a fucking lame name for a video game. Either way those alien bastards are going to pay for busting up my ride... ohhh strippers!

Re:Unfortunate release timing

[qor72]

Serious Sam 2 had the misfortune to come out in the middle of a fairly bumper crop of big PC fpses. In particular, Quake 4 and F.E.A.R. really stand out.

Wow, talk about a confusing name change. First Serious Sam: The First Encounter, then Serious Sam: The Second Encounter. Now Serious Sam II. Shouldn't this be III? I got burned out on the "more of the same" exercise in Sam II. Fun, well done, well storied, but ultimately looking for more than what was there and getting tired of trying to dance my way through billions of mobs...

Re:Unfortunate release timing

[Ford Prefect]

Half Life 2 runs like a dream on my Athlon 1200, 768MB RAM and GeForce 4 ti4800 card. The Doom 3 engine is a pig in a wig.

Probably because the artwork behind Half-Life 2 is of such a high quality that it doesn't lean on the engine too much - I was really surprised how nice things looked when testing it with different DirectX capability settings.

Source is, in some ways, a very old-fashioned engines. That's probably what makes it so great, in that it takes stuff which worked well in the past and extends it to today's hardware. So far, the only way I've managed to slow it down on a fast PC is by using far too many materials with complex shaders - it munches its way through geometry like there's no tomorrow. So much so that I'm not sure if there is a way of directly checking scene polygon counts, merely the system load that's induced...

Re:Unfortunate release timing

[Fred_A]

You have marketing to blame for that, the original title was "Serious Sam: the encounter that won't happen".
But then someone figured it was too prophetic...

Re:Unfortunate release timing

[Anonymous Coward]

Well he did type fear once more, so it saved him a couple keys, but 65 is still greater than 16.

But more importantly, what the hell does "I can't be arsed typing all the capitals and .s again" mean? I can't be assed again? Does that even make sense? When did "assed" become a verb (or even a word, for that matter)? Is that some sort of hacker ghetto slang I'm not familiar with?

Re:Unfortunate release timing

[Tenzen01]

I hate switching CD's when the entire game is already installed on my computer.

I also have had my share of problems with Copy Protection on games I legally own.

The answer for me was Alcohol 120%. It lets you run games completely from your hard drive. I never met a copy protect scheme it couldn't get around. I run all my games from it now.

Re:Unfortunate release timing

[RogueyWon]

Alcohol is great, but it runs into problems when your drive brand (the generic DVD+RW shipped with umpteen thousand Dell PCs) can't even see the disk to begin with, which was my problem with Quake 4.

Re:Unfortunate release timing

[KDR_11k]

They didn't call Second Encounter Sam 2 because it wasn't really a full sequel, it was a stand-alone expansion.

Re:Unfortunate release timing

[PinkPanther]

Q3 deathmatch which is "the deathmach".

Just how fast is that?

Re:Unfortunate release timing

[motherball]

The multiplayer seems very Quake 3, which disappointed me a bit. I always loathed Quake 3 and thought it was a major blip in id's record.

I agree with your post on the whole except for the above statement that Quake 3 is a blip in id's record. That's absurd! Perhaps it is a little disapointing for you because it is multi-player only, but the engine IMO (and probably in lots of other people's as well) still stands up as probably being one of the, if not the best 3D game engines of all time. I know, there are so many, namely Valve's and all of the newer offerings, but Quake 3 was definitely a genre-defining engine. Not to mention that there have been hundred's of namebrand titles forged from the Quake 3 engine that you have probably played and enjoyed. hey, and its open source now!

gotta love it.

Re:Unfortunate release timing

[Anonymous Coward]

he didn't say can't be assed.
he said can't be arsed...which makes perfect sense to the rest of the English speaking world.

Re:Unfortunate release timing

[airjrdn]

Where've you been? At any given time UT2004 which isn't a new game by any means has almost double the # of players as Q3. Among the reasons for that are much better movements (dodges, wall dodges, boost dodges, double jumps, etc.), gametypes (bombing run, Mutant, Assault, Double Domination), and vehicles. The gametypes don't necessarily directly map to deathmatch, but people don't generally switch games to switch gametypes.

Q3 was ok when it came out, but it's definitely not "the deathmatch" at this point.

Re:Unfortunate release timing

[jdevivre]

...runs significantly better on my far-from-stellar system (P4 3.4ghz, 1 gig RAM, Radeon x800).

You're trolling... right?
Far from stellar. Sheesh!
Show off! :P

Re:Unfortunate release timing

[I(rispee_I(reme]

Perhaps UT2004 doesn't attract hardcore deathmatchers? Further, perhaps popularity isn't the standard by which "the" deathmatch should be chosen. By your standard, Counter-Strike (perennially the online fps with the most players) would be the deathmatch.

Re:Unfortunate release timing

[Terminal Saint]

Well in all fairness it IS 92,955,887.6 miles from the nearest star...

Re:Unfortunate release timing

[airjrdn]

Counterstrike isn't deathmatch, it's about terrorists and the counter-terrorists.

Where is Q3 here or here?

Re:Unfortunate release timing

[DFossmeister]

Finally, someone who agrees that Quake 3 sucked great "hoary hedgehog" balls and is a major blemish on id's record. It seemed more cartoony than previous Quakes and they copied many things that UT had gotten right.

I will probably buy SS-2, but I doubt that I'll buy Quake 4.

Re:Unfortunate release timing

[Pxtl]

Well, I think Zonk is being harsh on Sam 2. Some of problems in Sam 2 are holdovers from Sam 1 - like the useless shotguns. Sam's shotgun has always been the weak end of the weaponspread - it's what you use when you're out of machinegun ammo. The super-shotgun is what you use when you're out of chaingun ammo and there are guys at point-blank range. I don't know why the developers chose to make the standard shotgun graphically into an autoshotgun without changing it's r.o.f., but it was a bad idea.

A problem is that the game didn't add too much - most of the good features are polish on the original. I mean, the vehicles are just stupid - they're basically "hey, let's go kick some ass in god mode!" - they don't actually add anything to the game but bigger carnage.

To me, the big good new thing the game brought to the table was the new variations on good old Sam combat, mixed in with the hilariously annoying natives. The "defend the village" scene is awesome fun.

I do have to say though that I love what they did with Sam himself - before, he was Duke Nukem with black hair - now he visibly has personality. He looks like some smug overgrown college football frat boy. It suits him.

And yes, the cutscenes are hilarious kitsch - and yes I skip half of them if I don't want to bother.

Sam 2 does have one awsome addition - a good autosave system, taking you back to the beginning of the scene when you die rather than leaving the player to mash the "quicksave" key every 5 seconds. I love being able to focus on combat and nothing but combat. Plus, no more annoying Netricsa messages interrupting the gameplay - Netty now talks.

Re:Unfortunate release timing

[Neoncow]

I dunno aboot you, but here in Canada our keyboards have this really cool CAPS LOCK key, eh.

Sorry, I quit FPSs when they wanted me to jump

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

Sorry, I quit FPSs when they started to want me to jump from place to place. I guess I've been tuned out since 1995.

Re:Sorry, I quit FPSs when they wanted me to jump

[hawkbug]

Yeah, that's my biggest gripe with games like UT2004 - when I play people who are really good at it, all they do is jump around and shoot at you. It's annoying as hell since I don't like to jump around aimlessly and shoot. Somebody should make a UT clone and remove all jumping while shooting...

Re:Sorry, I quit FPSs when they wanted me to jump

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm glad you posted then.

Re:Sorry, I quit FPSs when they wanted me to jump

[affliction]

Yeah jumping is not manly at all.

They should stand there and take it, like real men.

Re:Sorry, I quit FPSs when they wanted me to jump

[TheRaven64]

Serious Sam 1 was, to me, a modern replacement for House of the Dead. The single player and deathmatch games were okay, but it really shone in co-operative. Have a few drinks with some friends, then play it on the hardest difficulty setting (with the blood set to flowers for the most amusement). The enemies are stupid and just run at you - the aim is to try to run out of ammunition before they overwhelm you, respawn, and keep firing. You then get a short puzzle-solving sequence before more random slaughter.

Re:Sorry, I quit FPSs when they wanted me to jump

[flocculent]

I know what you're getting at, but in fairness there are hundreds of FPS' out there that are at the realistic end of the market. You can always play one of those if you'd rather be crawling on your belly just to get an accurate shot. ;)

To me the main thing that makes UT and the like *fun* is that they're unrealistically fast, and that skill-wise they're not all just about aim. Learning and getting good at the movement (including jumping!) gives you an extra way to get better and better. Cunning movement tricks have really added an extra dimension to a bunch of the classic multiplayer FPS - strafe running in doom, strafe/curve jumping in quake2, boost jumping in UT2003, etc

Take these things out of arcade FPS titles and you're left with games that can feel pretty shallow and have less of a learning curve and therefore typically less incentive to keep playing month after month. In UT2003 I was learning new ways to get across maps 2 years after I started playing because of the flexibility of the movement.

In Serious Sam, Halo (and most 'realistic' titles also) I feel like my feet are glued to the floor or I'm running through syrup. After playing quake and ut for so many years it's a pretty frustrating feeling. The controls/movement just don't have any flexibility or feel.

It's just a shame that there aren't many fast arcade FPS' coming out any more, but it looks like everyone else would prefer to have another WWII 'sim' shooter.

Re:Sorry, I quit FPSs when they wanted me to jump

[Slime-dogg]

Aim rockets at their feet. Then, when they jump, they'll go way further than they thought, then you can frag them in their confusion.

Re:Sorry, I quit FPSs when they wanted me to jump

[hawkbug]

Yeah, I'm not saying that :) I'm just saying that do it like real soldiers/killers/etc and hide behind something and shoot, or whatever. Just jumping around and shooting seems a bit unrealistic to me, which I guess goes with the territory in a game called "Unreal Tournament" I think. I'd just enjoy it more if it was more difficult to jump and shoot at the same time, but as other commentors have said, that's part of the fun I guess - learning a new skill with the speed factor.

Re:Sorry, I quit FPSs when they wanted me to jump

[joggle]

Well then you should like the Tom Clancey line of games. I like the unrealistic element of play because I'm better at shooting accurately while jumping than most. In realistic games, I tend to die after about 10 seconds and then have to wait for the game to end before trying again. As long as there's some variety of games out there I'm happy.

Re:Sorry, I quit FPSs when they wanted me to jump

[Anonymous Coward]

I knew a guy who played lazer tag like that...always jumping around like a damn frog. Sooooooooo annoying!!!

Re:Sorry, I quit FPSs when they wanted me to jump

[Stormeh]

rofl I agree. Would you ever see a real combatant jumping around to avoid bullets? No... Kind of funny though.

Re:Sorry, I quit FPSs when they wanted me to jump

[KDR_11k]

If you don't want to wait for the respawn you can play FEAR in deathmatch. Overall the mode is pretty weak because the weapons are too strong and you usually die before you even notice they're shooting at you but I suppose it's the closest thing to "Counterstrike without waiting forever to respawn" that you can get.

Re:Sorry, I quit FPSs when they wanted me to jump

[rainman_bc]

If you want realism, play America's Army. Fantastic game, with the most amazing level of realism I've ever seen.

UT has nothing to do with realism.

Re:Sorry, I quit FPSs when they wanted me to jump

[lgw]

There are actually plenty of martial-arts experts who can "dodge bullets" in real life by jumping about. It works the same way it does in the game: by moving around faster that you can react and adjust, you can't point the gun at the right spot.

Not to say it's realistic, but then *nothing* in a FPS is realistic, beyond the need to watch your ammo so you don't get fragged while reloading.

Re:Sorry, I quit FPSs when they wanted me to jump

[StikyPad]

I was just thinking about playing Ghost Recon on our LAN back in the day before I read your post. It was great, but there was one guy who always picked the SAW and cried when he got sniped. To be honest, it is sort of like rock-paper-scissors, except snipers usually beat medium and heavy weapons if they're worth their salt. But in my opinion, adjusting to and taking advantage of any aspect of a game is part of what makes it fun.

Re:Sorry, I quit FPSs when they wanted me to jump

[DFossmeister]

Removing the special jumps is an option to whoever is hosting the match. As to regular jumping, well, get over it. Anyone who runs in a straight line is going to get shot, real soldier or not.

Re:Sorry, I quit FPSs when they wanted me to jump

[Anonymous Coward]

There are actually plenty of martial-arts experts who can "dodge bullets" in real life by jumping about.

I hope you're just trolling and not naive enough to actually believe this idiocy.

Re:Sorry, I quit FPSs when they wanted me to jump

[Anonymous Coward]

Play the latest version of America's Army, then. They frown on it too because it isn't a real-world combat tactic so they've limited the set of actions you can combine with a jump to basically nothing.

Who could ask for more?

[honeypotslash]

More guns, bigger guns, more explostions, more monsters. And now vehicles! Along with no plot to get in your way of killing all the baddies!

Shouldn't that be ...

[krgallagher]

"SamII"

Shouln't they have called it "Son of Sam"?

Re:Shouldn't that be ...

[AKAImBatman]

Shouln't they have called it "Son of Sam"?

Nah. They should have called it, "Serious Sam: The Serious Little Monkey".

( Sorry, for some reason that stuck in my head after I read the headline. :-) )

Re:Shouldn't that be ...

[nightsweat]

Shouln't they have called it "Son of Sam"?

They wanted to, but the dog said, "no".

Old FPSes

[Sealoth]

Speaking of old FPSes, does anyone remember Catacombs, which was the first FPS I ever played (and the earliest published that I recall) It was shareware, published by softdisk, and featured a mage killing monsters in (initially) a graveyard IIRC... Was this the first FPS to be published, or was there another?

Re:Old FPSes

[Fiver-]

I think most people point to Wolfenstein as the first FPS.

Re:Old FPSes

[TheRaven64]

While I don't recall which came first, I would imagine that The Catacomb Abyss was out first for two reasons:

1. It was simpler - the default weapon was a fireball, and the only other weapons were a spread of three fireball, and an omnidirectional fireball pulse.
2. It ran happily on my 8086 with 640KB of RAM and an EGA display, while Wolf3D had somewhat higher system requirements (a 386 seemed to be a good working minimum - Doom really needed a 486).

Re:Old FPSes

[TheRealMindChild]

I donut know what game you were playing, but Catacombs wasn't first person at all... it had a top down bird view:

http://www.angelfire.com/games5/dosgames/cat1shot. jpg

Re:Old FPSes

[AKAImBatman]

He's referring to Catacomb 3D, presumably a sequel. Although a lot of people consider Ultima Underworld (1992) to be the first true FPS, even though Wolf3D was the first truely immersive one.

Re:Old FPSes

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't much of a FPS, but I think the first walkthrough 3D game was Dungeons of Daggorath for the TRS-80 Color Computer.

Here's a link with screenshots:
http://nitros9.stg.net/daggorath.html

Re:Old FPSes

[thebdj]

It would be kind of hard to call Ultima Underworld FPS...since the 'S' does stand for SHOOTER. Other then that, it might be one of the first (or the first) First Person game.

Re:Old FPSes

[capninsano]

Maze wars was the first fps i believe.

Re:Old FPSes

[Urusai]

The Catacombs game must be older. Look at its credits--it was written by id software, and it features a Wolf3D engine but in 16 colors. http://www.dosgamesarchive.com/download/game/3

Re:Old FPSes

[Ford Prefect]

Here you go: Infestation, released in 1990. Most definitely an FPS, was in true 3D, and seems to have been entirely forgotten since it wasn't for the PC but the Atari ST and Amiga instead.

It's bastard difficult, though - I've only ever managed to survive thirty seconds or so. Apparently you can get inside and remove your helmet and wander round, so it's a proper indoors/outdoors FPS engine! ;-)

I think I'm off to have another play...

Re:Old FPSes

[AKAImBatman]

Flat shaded games don't generally count in the "Which one was first?" war. If you count them, then you can go all the way back to the 70's when the Atari came out.

The reality is that the term "First Person Shooter" was created for Doom. It was then retroactively applied to Wolf3D as they are in the same linage. Everyone then forgot about the existance of Ultima Underworld, Catacombs 3D, and Hovertank. (Even though the latter two were Id products.)

Re:Old FPSes

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I remember catacombs. It was written by John Carmack for the Apple // series and then the PC. He later wrote Catacombs 3D, took the engine and made some improvements and then wrote Wolfenstein 3D as ID software. The rest is history. You can find catacombs here: http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=2450

Though if you want to see one of the first FPS style games, look for "Way Out" by Sirius software -- it's a rare find but it is real indeed. It was a realtime 3D environment with a suprisingly fluid framerate for an Apple //e or Atari home computer (not a Stella 2600, I mean the computer that had more modern features like a freakin video buffer)

Re:Old FPSes

[FreonTrip]

Catacombs 3D was one of the first First Person Shooters as we currently know them. Its engine was designed by id Software, and the game was published (and mostly developed) by Softdisk. The engine was reminiscent of Wolfenstein 3D's, though it ran in EGA mode, featured Adlib and PC speaker sound support, and was quite playable on a 12 MHz 286 with 640k of RAM. For more information, consult the Wikipedia page.

Re:Old FPSes

[KDR_11k]

It was created (by Apogee, I think) with the Wolf 3D engine while Wolf 3D was still in development.

Nice game, I liked it.

Re:Old FPSes

[Anonymous Coward]

Battlezone preceeded them all!

Re:Old FPSes

[lgw]

First person non-shooters are older than dirt. I remember playing text-only first person maze-exploration games. They probably pre-date the personal computer.

Re:Old FPSes

[PGC]

Doom and Doom II ran perfectly fine on my 386. You just had to know how to handle the memory management when booting DOS.

Re:Old FPSes

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember Dungeon Master on my Atari ST, circa 1987. Man I thought that game kicked ass, except I didn't like having to map the dungeons on graph paper while I was playing.

Re:Old FPSes

[Tet]

Other then that, it might be one of the first (or the first) First Person game.

Not even close. Prior to that came:

• In 1991, Hovertank 3D
• In 1987, Driller
• In 1984, The Sentinel
• In 1983, Star Wars
• In 1981, 3D Monster Maze
• In 1980, Battlezone

Plus, the myriad flight sims throughout the mid '80s, space games like Elite, and I'm sure many others.

Re:Old FPSes

[Monkey]

Another one for your list:

1982 AD&D: Treasure of Tarmin for the Intellivision.

Cutscenes

[Fiver-]

I agree about the cutscenes. This is Serious Sam, not Deux Ex. I don't care about the plot. I just want to shoot hundreds upon hundreds of monsters. It's frustrating because on one hand I don't want to sit through the rather lame cutscenes, I just want to get back to the action, but I'm also afraid that some vital plot point will be revealed in one of the cutscenes, so I'm hesitant to skip them. Stupid blue midgets, I don't care about your village.

you guys still buy new games after WoW?

[tont0r]

I havent bought a game since April since I bought World of Warcraft.... is there really a point to playing other games? hehe.

Re:you guys still buy new games after WoW?

[anakin876]

what do you do when the servers are down? sleep? I have every other tuesday off - and I find it HIGHLY frustrating that the servers are down for the whole morning when I could be playing.

Re:you guys still buy new games after WoW?

[Rude Turnip]

Not paying a fee month to month comes to mind.

Re:you guys still buy new games after WoW?

[tont0r]

serious sam II costs an average of $30, which is cheaper than most new games. $30 = 2 months of lots of entertainment in WoW. how long are you going to play a mindless shooter? yes i realize that there are people who enjoy playing the same thing over and over. but for $15/month, i get lots of enjoyment and new content constantly enough for me to enjoy it. i was buying 1-2 games a month. thats $50-$100. now i spend $15/month. so the monthly fees arent really that bad :P.

Re:you guys still buy new games after WoW?

[Rude Turnip]

I don't have the kind of time where I can justify spending much on games. Sadly, I'm down to only a few hours a month of playing around on the PS2. I waited until Mercenaries could be had for $25; I just bought Super Bust a Move 2 (Frozen Bubble) for $20 and the first Serious Sam for PS2 for $7. Along with a couple other games bought on the cheap, I've got a couple years' worth of games on my plate.

Re:you guys still buy new games after WoW?

[HeavyMS]

"$30 = 2 months of lots of entertainment in WoW"

Yea killing the same monster over and over and over and over again... dude WoW is brainless to, no action (beyond cheating) you take have any consequence on your character. All you need is to spend some gold and you can redo you lvl 60 char. I have the game and frankly I can't remember why I consvinsed myself to buy a supscriptions game.

Re:you guys still buy new games after WoW?

[lgw]

i realize that there are people who enjoy playing the same thing over and over.

Did you mean to contrast this with an MMORPG? Does anything change beyone the artwork of the monster you're repetitively killing over years of play? Heck, the entire genre is fight-loot-sell-level, repeated over and over between games! ProgressQuest was the best!

Re:you guys still buy new games after WoW?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yes, because WoW is so much more fun and not mindless at all!

Raid, over and over again. Play BG once in awhile, and then go back to raiding. Go out and gank random lowbies when bored. Rinse and repeat.

What? New content? OMG, Blizzard gave me more places to raid! So happy! New epic items! 133tzor!

Meh, I'm sure you get the point.

Re:you guys still buy new games after WoW?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I agree, it's like paying rent for an apartment that doesn't exist or buying jewelry to your imagenary girlfriend. Ehem, not that I would know anythin 'bout that..

I suppose part of their fun is to simply throw money at someone - "You see! The action starts as soon as I pull out my wallet!".

(I keed, I keed!)

Re:you guys still buy new games after WoW?

[Anonymous Coward]

WoW costs $50 bucks and comes with 1 month of play, so your $30 = 2 months play is a little misleading. And that brings to light the reason why I will never play a MMO. I may be willing to pay a monthly fee but I refuse to pay for the software too. $15 am month x 12 months = $180 a year. Adding $50 for a a box with a CD in it plus $20 - $30 for "add-ons" is more buggering than I'm willing to endure.

I played "Starseige:Tribes" for almost a year and it cost me $30 with no monthly fees and all of the "add-ons" were community created and free. I played the original "Half-Life", "Conterstrike", et al for 18 months and it cost me $40 with no monthly fees and all of the "add-ons" were community created and free.

So the math breaks down as follows:

Tribes: $30 / 12 months = $2.50 per month
Half-Life: $40 / 18 months = $2.22 per month
Wow: $230 / 12 months = $19.17 per month

I could go on but you get where I am coming from.

Refreshing

[ninjakoala]

What I really like about Serious Sam is that it's sort of a mix of my still-favourite FPS games: Duke 3D and the two original DOOM games.

It has Duke cheese written all over it - which is a good thing in my book - and is one of the most arcade-like first person shooters around.

Personally I'm tired of the oh-so-realistic games and just want something that's crazy, exaggerated and comic-like. Oh, and fast. Serious Sam delivers. It's the Sonic of FPSes pretty much.

There are lots of people this sort of game won't appeal to, but it's a fresh breath of air to me.

Re:Refreshing

[orateam]

SSII should have gone for a gimmick like multi-monitor monsters where monsters have to fight through the monitors to get at your character. one gimmick is all they needed to put this game over the top. Oh well

Re:Refreshing

[cryptocom]

Good point ninjakoala...I'm the same way. I play CS:S like 20 hours a week, so sometimes I like to fire Serious Sam up just for a humorous break. I think this game series probably appeals to two very narrow niches of players...total gaming newbs who just bought the game because it was 20.00 at EB, and hardcore gamers who need a laugh to go with our Mt. Dew every once in a while.
: )

Re:Refreshing

[Bitmanhome]

It's the Sonic of FPSes

Funny, I had the same sense when playing the demo. The lighting, coloring, and music are all out of Sonic Adventure on the Dreamcast.

I tried the demo

[modemboy]

I thought about the same as the reviewer after trying the demo, the carnival comparison is appropriate. Way to many stupid flying enemys to pop, no sense of fear or urgency. And the 2 cutscenes in the demo were awful, so I can only imagine it went downhill from there...

I agree on some points..

[FunctionalMethod]

... but you also need to keep in mind that the game costs 30Euros , that is 20 Euros LESS then normal games. Also the reviewer seems to totaly ignore the fact that you can play the game in Co-op mode , something that is incredibly fun and I only wish more developers added coop to their game. It's not an amazing game , but for 30Euros , you get more then what you paid for.

Re:I agree on some points..

[Anita Coney]

"Even the return of the first game's co-op multiplayer mode isn't enough to overcome the game's lack of soul."

Re:I agree on some points..

[bigsimes]

The co-op sounds like a mod could maybe create a 'Space Harrier 2005', a superb two player that redefined co-operative playing of video game, thought it was made by Taito, but it was Sega. I might buy this after I see the demo, I always though SS was more like 3DRealms than ID and thought the humour was cool.

Weird Stuff

[Arkiel]

I've played and beaten this game, and after reading this review, I have the following things to assert.
1) The game's diverse set of locales is an improvement over the original. It is the next logical step up after The Second Encounter gave us vast plains, Mayan architecture, and snowy fields.
The vast majority of levels in Serious Sam II have significant differences from one another. The first jungle episode being the weakest example.
2) Croteam is about as funny as a dead family pet being found under the power-lines. Hire a writer. This wierd stuff may fly in Croatia, but the rest of the civilized (I'm guessing Europeans, Australians, Asian countries won't get it any more then this American did) world does not want to watch what could be gently referred to as retarded 70s British comedy.
3) They took out localized gravity and portals. This was pretty much eye-candy in the first game, true, but damn-it-all, the gravity was FUN. The only reason they took it out of this game, I would think, is that they couldn't make it work in the new engine.
4) *spoiler* No Mental, and he did the joke we all just knew he'd do (maybe it was done in SS:SE? Reeeal familiar, anyway).
5) Underpowered weaponry, good way to describe it. I want a double-barreled shotgun that can take out a crowd, not just two at the most. That said, some of the weapons are fun to look at
6) Boss battles are fun, but sometimes uneven. For instance: Second-to-last boss battle involves you running like hell from a marauding robot which has Mental inside. You run up and suddenly find yourself in a helicopter. Now, the controls are logical, but this is the first instance where you have piloted something that can actually move freely in three dimensions. That little moment of startling uncertainty is fun, and unique in the game. It is probably not such a bonus to people lulled into a shoot-reload malaise.
7) The best FPS computer game featuring co-op play out this year. Also the only one.

Re:Weird Stuff

[JohnPerkins]

#4: No Mental.
#6: Robot with Mental inside.

?

Re:Weird Stuff

[Arkiel]

Sorry sorry. You HEAR Mental, and you see it's little escape craft. You don't see the creature itself. The fact that Mental is inside the robot is not evident until the game is finished.

Re:Weird Stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

This wierd stuff may fly in Croatia, but the rest of the civilized (I'm guessing Europeans, Australians, Asian countries won't get it any more then this American did) world does not want to watch what could be gently referred to as retarded 70s British comedy.

America is not in any way, shape, or form part of the civilized world.

Re:Weird Stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, so Mental's a thing? A person?

Re:Weird Stuff

[Arkiel]

The big, bad boss that invaded Earth with the swarms of baddies you spend the game retiring. I believe it most often referred to with gender neutral pronouns. Apparently Sam's father, so take from this what you would.

Re:Weird Stuff

[Arkiel]

Industrialized world, then.

Re:Weird Stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

8) Invisible walls all over the place, leaving even the most expansive (looking) levels feeling cramped. Opposed to the first 2 where you could run for miles in any direction.
9) Huge enemy models, and never seeming to be more than 15 enemies to engage at any one time. Also, alost all the enemies look like sunday morining cartoon characters, not the minions of the most evil beeing in the entire universe.
10) Loading screens in the middle of levels making action feel disjointed, and cut scenes looking like early dvix rips of poor quality vhs tapes.
11) Farts, beltching, and scratching one's balls are the funniest things in the world and will be inserted every 5 minuits (every cut scene),
12) Why couldn't pc players pay $10 extra so we didn't have to face the Mental Institue like the xbox. When playing on easy and virtually walking to the final boss, and then having the boss nearly impossible to defeat (needing to go through save/reload hell), something is wrong.

Re:Weird Stuff

[jpop32]

This wierd stuff may fly in Croatia, but the rest of the civilized (I'm guessing Europeans, Australians, Asian countries won't get it any more then this American did) world...

Ummm... You do realize that Croatia is actually smack in the middle of Europe? Furthermore, Croatia was civilised 100s of years before US of A even came to be.

But, hey, being American, you probably did not.

53R10U5, LIEK JEFFK!

[Thud457]

Here's a bettar review!

Good for you

[Anonymous Coward]

Meanwhile, the genre has matured beyond that nonsense, but what would you know. Closing your eyes and covering your ears makes you l33t I guess.

maybe I'm wrong...

[rogabean]

But wasn't there a sequel to Serious Sam 1 the very next year after it was released called Serious Sam: The Second Encounter? I remember playing the hell out of that one. So why is this one called Serious Sam 2? Yep IMDB shows it was released in 2002.

Re:maybe I'm wrong...

[Blakey Rat]

Serious Sam: The Second Encounter was an expansion pack to Serious Sam, not a sequel. It used the same engine, same weapons and (mostly) the same enemies as the first.

Re:maybe I'm wrong...

[NicklessXed]

This is seriously getting old... Second Encounter was supposed to be kind of a "Serious Sam 1.5", since they wanted the real Serious Sam II to have a new engine.

Re:maybe I'm wrong...

[rogabean]

sorry didn't know... thank you for clarifying. :)

Re:maybe I'm wrong...

[Trejkaz]

They should have called it "Serious Sam: The One Point Fifth Encounter", then. :-/

Console-itis

[jgbishop]

I think one of the main problems with this game was that it was clearly developed for a console. The lo-res cut-scenes and horrific user interface just scream "console controller". Cro-team simply forgot where they got their start, and showed absolutely no love to PC owners (other than an extra boss at the end of the game - IIRC, console versions of this don't include the Mental Institution boss).

I really liked the colorful worlds (no boring grays and browns like virtually all shooters available today), and the turrets and vehicles were a welcome addition. But otherwise, the whole thing seemed like a let down. I guess I was expecting a "Third Encounter" rather than a true sequel.

Opinions

[chamenos]

"The weapons are unfun rehashes of similar weapons from other titles."

Aren't they all? How different can a shotgun or sub-machine gun be? The same can be said of almost any other FPS out there, including Doom 3 or Half-Life 1/2.

"How they managed to make an auto-shotgun unsatisfying to use is a trick, but there just doesn't seem to be much weight to the action."

"The controls, despite being standards throughout the genre, manage to feel cumbersome and unwieldy in this setting."

"Whether I was firing a rocket launcher or a sniper rifle, I always managed to feel as though my opponents had a better grasp of the whole 'pointing the mouse' thing."

"Some of the weight of the sound effects from the original game seems to have been lost, as well, leaving weapons fire somewhat hollow."

Why did you find the auto-shotgun unsatisfying? Rate of fire too slow or the lacklustre animation? Why did the controls feel cumbersome and unwieldy? Was it because it was laggy? Having an opinion is fine, but I hate it when people are unable to substantiate them. It's like telling someone who asks you why you liked a movie "Oh I don't know, I just do!". Drivel like this sets off my B/S alarm, and holds no weight with me.

Re:Opinions

[RogueyWon]

Although, as I point out in an earlier post, I'd be tempted to be a bit kinder about the weapons than Zonk was, I can probably explain some of the points he's making here.

The main difference from the weapons in Doom 3, Quake 4, Half-Life 2 etc is the near-complete lack of reloading. Weapons have a set rate of fire. Some, like the double-barreled shotguns, have what looks like a reload animation, but other than the pistol, none of them actually interrupt their normal rate of fire for a reload. The game doesn't even have a reload key. This can feel a bit basic after playing other recent fpses, but it fits SS2 well.

The shotgun's a funny issue. It's not actually a bad weapon, if you think of it as a normal fps shotgun. It's got about the same rate of fire, damage and spread as you'd expect. However, the model for the shotgun shows a huge great multi-barrel affair, that looks like a gatling gun. When you pick it up, you expect that holding down the trigger would unleash a fully-automatic hail of death. It doesn't. Once you get used to this, the gun's fine. However, the model does create a bit of a false expectation. The double-barreled shotgun also seems to have less spread than I remember from the original game.

God knows what he meant about the controls. They feel fine to me.

The aiming on the rocket launcher does feel a bit broken, though, which may be what Zonk was referring to elsewhere. There seems to be a slight lag between pressing fire and the weapon actually triggering. The shots don't always seem to go exactly where they were pointed, either. Could be my imagination, could be some random left-over code from the console versions, or could be neither of the above.

In fairness, the game has some pretty damned unique weapons. The flying parrot bombs aren't something I've seen elsewhere.

Re:Opinions

[Mad Ogre]

Weight of the shotguns? What do you mean? An autoloading shotgun can weight the same as a pump gun... and in some cases less so. Look at the Remington 870 Magnum Express... one of the most common shotguns out there. Then take a look at the field grade autoloader from Charles Daly (no, not the best auto out there, but its just an example.) The CD gun is a lot lighter than the older Remington pump gun.

Re:Opinions

[KDR_11k]

Where did anyone talk about the weight of a shotgun? Weight is no consideration in a game where you can carry a cannon that fires 5 meter diameter cannonballs. What Zonk was complaining about was that the sounds are weak and don't suggest much firepower. IMO that was an issue with the first two Sam games as well.

Re:Opinions

[Some_Llama]

The difference between the auto shotty and the double barrel is rate of fire and spread, auto has less spread and faster shots, DB has slower rof and more spread... although I do think they should have upped the reload speed on the autoshotty with possibly less damage...

Re:Opinions

[Arkiel]

The Serious Bomb was as unimpressive as to be criminal. SS:SE (was it introduced, then?) had much more umph to it. Accourse, improving upon it would require some kind of bullet-time slowdown where you witness the enlarging sphere of destruction growing around you and hitting the enemies one by... hmm... *starts mod sheet*

The auto-shotgun differed from the double-barrel by, I think, about half-second reload time, which made it more practical for the weaker hordes. Kleers and whatnot required double-barrel to take out in one shot, though you could only kill one full-health at once.

Some weapons are also majorly underutilized. The flame thrower does not make a return. They have a plasma gun that you use in perhaps two levels, and a grenade launcher that is only worth using when you don't have any rocket launcher ammo. Splash damage seemed exaggerated from previous versions, as well. I found myself hardly using any explosives, save the Serious Cannon, another weapon that suffered from serious lack-of-effect.

Re:Buy it here!

[Anonymous Coward]

Kaleidojewel, you blow goats. Stop posting referrer links.

I love it

[Falconoffury]

I don't really understand what problems people have with this game. It has just as much action as the first serious sam. I also don't understand the lack of satisfaction in the weapons. I thought some of the weapons were more satisfying. Nothing like sending a flying death bird towards your enemies, and the sniper rifle is very satisfying. The music sounds great. The sound effects are good. I don't understand why it's so bad for some of the humor to fail. I watched all the cutscenes, and I at least laughed some of the times. It's a silly game, but that shouldn't make it bad. We need more sillyness out there. I've read several reviews of this game, and none of them satisfactorily explained what was so unsatisfying about the game. I personally give it a 9.5 out of 10. I love it.

ALL HALE JEFFK!!!!!!eleven!!!!

[Rogerborg]

Curiously, I find myself in agreement with the gist of his reviews a lot more than I do with this 'Zonk' guy.

FPS born with strafing?

[Satorian]

I don't think so if I recall the gameplay of Wolfenstein and Doom correctly.

Re:FPS born with strafing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Doom absolutely had strafing in it. Wolf3D, can't remember but I think it so...

Re:FPS born with strafing?

[destx]

Incorrect. Both had strafing, they just weren't used as much in the pre-mouselook days.

Re:FPS born with strafing?

[Satorian]

I think gamers were not meant to be using strafing in those games if the default config is anything to go by. Default was turning and strafing was demoted to . and , I think in many cases. I don't think strafing can be considered a key element back then.

This review is spot-on

[thanester]

If you're still thinking about buying the game after reading this review, I urge you to download the demo and give it a try. The reviewer pinned down everything that was dissatisfying about the demo.

Re:This review is spot-on

[Slashcrap]

If you're still thinking about buying the game after reading this review, I urge you to download the demo and give it a try. The reviewer pinned down everything that was dissatisfying about the demo.

Absolutely, especially the weapons. They all feel like pea shooters. And I spent a good half an hour messing my sound settings trying to find out what was wrong with the sound effects. Reading this review confirms my eventual conclusion - they just suck.

Yet another game review from Zonk

[Overly Critical Guy]

Aka "Slashvertisement."

Anyone noticed what's happening? Remember when TechTV became more gamer-oriented and became G4? Same thing happening to Slashdot.

The story loop is:
Google
Google
Microsoft
iPod
Game Review
Google
Microsoft
Google
iPod
Game Review

Rinse, repeat.

Re:Yet another game review from Zonk

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for the link to Civ 4!

Re:Yet another game review from Zonk

[Anonymous Coward]

As your name points out, your overly critical. I've seen some of your past posts and they were just as 'old man'ish. Chill. If you don't want game reviews, or articles by Zonk, use your brain and change your settings, instead of posting crap that will do nothing but lose your karma on the best days.

Re:Yet another game review from Zonk

[KDR_11k]

Except this game review says the game sucks and as such wouldn't be an effective advertisement.

Re:Yet another game review from Zonk

[Durrok]

Let me check my RSS Feed here... Microsoft Microsoft Microsoft Linux RIAA Microsoft Google BBC Linux Game Review ... hmm, think your theory is slightly flawed

Serious Sam

[GmAz]

I remember the first Serious Sam. It was fun. The type of game where you can play, go on vacation for two weeks and come back and remember what you were doing...running...shooting...shooting...running... shooting. Pretty basic. As for F.E.A.R., its more of a story line game with incredable graphics, audio and physics that keeps you hooked. You find yourself thinking of the game when you're not playing it. Though they are both FPS, they are two totally different kind of FPS games. Personally, I like the F.E.A.R. type of game more because I can dedicate more time to playing it. But in four months when my wife has our baby, I will probably either abondon games for a while or take up a game like Serious Sam 2 because its not the "constantly play me" kind of game. I guess them also means my World of Warcraft account may be put on hold for a while. This makes me sad. Very sad. Poor little gnome mage :*(

Re:Serious Sam

[wernercd]

lol That's what you get for making an alliance toon... Karma will get ya every time :)

But what of the engines potential?

[Hektor_Troy]

The first thing that came to my mind when I saw the first video of it: MORPG (not massively though).

Think about it:
Lots of monsters, absolutely huge areas at times, accurate physics (at least in the original, where it was quite possible to suicide from running to fast and hitting a wall for instance) etc.

The original was quite easy to modify script wise (I suck at modeling and level design) and if this one is as easy, then it shouldn't be too difficult to mold it into an RPG of sorts.

Games are kinda blah right now

[slaker]

I just recently upgraded my "toy" PC. I've been looking for something fun to do with it ever since.

HalfLife 2 has totally stupid Steam.
Doom3 was awesome for about two minutes, then boring.
Every other FPS is a clone of UT or whichever of the indistinguishable WWII shooters came first. ... or its a console port, and therefore both evil AND stupid.

But Serious Sam is different. It's the proper Doom mentality of "No way I'm beating all six dozen of those guys all at once" and then doing it anyway, or even better, "No way I'm beating all 12 of those bosses all at once". I like the utterly massive scale (bad guys that're 20 or 30 times taller than you are, etc). I like the ridiculous weapons, although I wish the escalation continued past the point it does (Rise of the Triad was great in that regard! You could use "The Hand of God" as a weapon. Sam needs the hand of God). I like the attitude of corny jokes (shades of good ol' MDK).

The cutscenes are skippable, if you aren't into 'em.

Personally, I like the game. I haven't finished it yet, but it's entertaining in a way that realistic shooters like, say, Farcry, just aren't. The weapons are kind of weak, but it's still fun to use them all. I'm a little disappointed that their sound engine isn't terribly immersive, but that's hardly a big deal in the context of this particular game. Oh, and I miss the gravity changes. Those were cool.

Re:Games are kinda blah right now

[flocculent]

Have you ever played Painkiller? Much more fun than SS2 IMHO.

It's faster, has really great feeling weapons (the stake gun is *fun*) and varied levels. You should be able to pick it up for next to nothing now too.

Multiplayer was a bit buggy when I tried it, but otherwise highly recommended.

Re:Games are kinda blah right now

[Lisandro]

Painkiller is one of the most underrated FPSs ever. Looks great, doesn't take itself too seriously, and it's FUN, which is more than can be said for 80% of games released these days.

Re:Games are kinda blah right now

[Zed2K]

If the only thing you have to say about HL2 is that it has steam then you are missing the point and you might as well admit that you don't like these types of games to start with. There is NOTHING wrong with steam as a distribution device. I've never had it not work and I don't know a single person that has had a problem with it. The majority of the problems come from people trying to pirate the game or they are running some extremely wierd or overclocked setup. 99% of the time its a defective end user error.

Re:Games are kinda blah right now

[Some_Llama]

I have had problems with it and I am not pirating the game and not overclocking...

Have you been to a lan party with steam lately? Try playing it on a ded server with no internet connection even after authenticating that same day (server too) you'll love the "steam ticket has expired" error....

I have had many problems with steam, so i guess lucky u.

Re:Games are kinda blah right now

[slaker]

I refuse to play a single-player game that requires regular connection to the internet. I should be given the choice to download patches or anything else that requires online activity. I spent a very long time (around 10 years) on a 9600bps connection to the internet. Just because I live someplace where I have a faster connection today doesn't mean that in the future I wouldn't have that problem again, and requiring an internet connection to either download the program or authenticate the DVD for a single player game is utterly moronic.

Steam uses assloads of memory and it tries to be a resident application/chat client/game browser thing. Fuck that! I just want to play a SINGLE PLAYER game. I want to run a command and play a game. I don't want a bunch of extra daemons/services/whatever bullshit on my machine and certainly don't want a major extension to my operating system installed. That's what steam looks like to me. Who knows what the fuck it's doing?

I enjoyed the first Half Life because there was a decent, compelling story that went along with it. I'd like to find that Half Life 2 is, also, but unless they release a non-fucked version, I'm never going to find out.

Re:Games are kinda blah right now

[Anonymous Coward]

I want to run a command and play a game. I don't want a bunch of extra daemons/services/whatever bullshit on my machine and certainly don't want a major extension to my operating system installed. That's what steam looks like to me. Who knows what the fuck it's doing?

Exactly. I bought the original Half-Life and all expansion packs. I enjoyed it very much and was eager to try Half-Life 2. But when I saw that it required an Internet connection, I skipped it. Instead, I bought Doom 3 (and its expansion pack), Quake 4 and Serious Sam.

I'm not into pirating games so I don't want to look for cracks that would allow me to bypass Steam (if such things exist). I simply did not buy it, even if I would probably have enjoyed the game very much.

Serious Sam==Robotron 3D

[markh1967]

I really liked the last two Serious Sam games. They were unique at the time because they were the only games to throw huge numbers of enemies at you at the same time whiole still looking great.
One of my favourite gaming moments is the level in SS1 where you are rushed by about 150 skeletal horse-things, all on-screen at the same time, firing every grenade, then rocket, then other weapons into the oncoming mass with explosions in the ranks throwing bones everywhere while you back-peddle as fast as you can. Other games tend to bump up the detail level until the engine has serious trouble displaying more than a few creatures at once and the games are designed with this in mind, whereas Serious Sam was really more like Robotron in 3D for most of the levels. It's the nearest I've experienced to old-skool pulse-raising arcade gameplay with modern graphics.
Shame they've lost the plot with this one; hopefully they'll get it right again next time.

Fond memories

[Wiseazz]

I loved the first Serious Sam - it was entertaining and fun. Plus it wasn't outrageously taxing on my poor-man's system.

I haven't played the new one yet, but I plan to. I have to have something to do in that half-hour from the time I finally get the kids to bed and I pass out myself!

Consolitis

[kwietman]

This title was clearly designed for a console release rather than a PC-dedicated release as the first title was. Biggest gripe? Save points. It has a save-anywhere feature, but doing so takes you back to the beginning of a section rather than freezing at a point you want, such as just before you grab the item that will spawn a million or so enemies. I don't like having to see the same scenery over and over again just to get to one spot. Save that for the XBoxers. I agree that the weapons are underpowered in terms of feel, although some seem unreasonably strong, particularly the double-barreled shotgun, which has near-unerring accuracy at half a mile with no loss of power. Other than that, pure mindless fun; didn't really expect anything else from SS2. It seems, however, that the inventiveness that made SS such a hit kind of took a dip, probably for the same reason Netricsa gives for having a voice now: "Bigger Game Budget." The Croteam guys probably had suits looking over their shoulders this time, whereas they were able to roll under the radar with SS.

Re:Consolitis

[Superfarstucker]

I think the save anywhere go back to checkpoint feature is a particularly welcomed one in my book :)

Even with all it's faults

[Macblaster]

The price is still right. Essentially this game series is the cult B movie of computer games. Some flaws, but you're not paying 55 bucks, instead you're paying about half. It's like the movie you find in the bargian bin at blockbuster. Sure its about ghosts living on the internet, but you werent paying the 25 dollars you would have spent on some acadamy award winning feature. Anyway, thats just my 2 cents. If 1400 people also want to contribute, we can go out and buy a copy.

Linux Version

[Anonymous Coward]

A Linux client is supposed to be released "soon". Also, the development tools will be cross-platform as well.

Re:Linux Version

[IntergalacticWalrus]

Would you mind telling me where you read that? I've looked all over but never saw mention of a Linux port.

You forgot...

[kmartshopper]

The genre of the first person shooter was born with simple elements in mind: shoot, strafe, win.

You forgot bunny hopping...

Can't be Arsed to Properly Explain

[SeanDuggan]

I think it's an Imperial thing. "can't be bothered" is a reasonable translation. No, it doesn't correspond directly, but neither does "know fuck-all" or similar constructions.

Serious Sam has always been a Serious Tech Demo

[draxredd]

Seriously, these games were patched together by Croteam to showcase their 3D engine (where they are making their business).
Having a nice $30 game is collateral benefit.

Re:Serious Sam has always been a Serious Tech Demo

[KDR_11k]

They sold two licenses of the original Serious Engine IIRC, not exactly their main business.

Underrated

[Mugros]

I just finished the game and think that 5/10 is a bit low. I would say 7/10 is ok.
It was less fun than the first two games, but still ok. The cutscenes are crap, even for consoles, i think. The weapons are fun, IMHO, but the standard weapons are almost never used.
Thw worst thing of the game is the last level. That was no fun at all. And i even had to cheat when the last bomber horde released. There was no way to get out of it alive.

This is serious, oh wait, no it isn't

[jrmiller84]

I agree with the point that enjoying games that aren't always serious is a refreshing way to have fun. It's nice not to worry about whats around the next corner and just concentrate on what's all around you. Many people were tossing around Fear and SS2 as contenders, I've been playing SS2 as well as Fear side by side and I don't believe they are two games that can be really be compared to one another. Although they are both FPSes, one is meant to entertain while the other is meant to scare and get your heart rate going. In my opinion neither really offer much when it comes to a story line, but I think SS2 is more justified with not having one since it's a game that is known for it's corny jokes and cutscenes. Fears story line has been watered down from the beginning. Catch Fettle at all costs is all I've gotten out of the storyline so far. I still don't know how they got the guy who looks like fat bastard(http://img.gamespot.com/gamespot/images/20 05/285/reviews/920744_20051013_screen023.jpg) in the story line, the world may never know.

Painkiller

[jfedor]

If you're looking for a well done, fast-paced, pure fun FPS, I strongly recommend Painkiller and its expansion pack Battle out of Hell. It was released over a year ago, which means it will probably run even on a not-so-recent machine. Check out the demos.

Basically, what Serious Sam promises, Painkiller delivers.

-jfedor

Games like this keep reminding me of Descent 3

[RobiOne]

Remember good old Descent 3 ? Either you hated it because you couldn't figure out how to control the ship in 3D or you loved it because it felt like the most free environment short of a space sim. Totaly 360 degree, and very playable with a mouse + keyb.

Dust off the old copy and install it on todays hardware. I'll bet it'll impress all over again. It did for me. The sounds are great, the graphics sweet, and playability is good too. I liked the cunningness of the AI and being a hotshot at the controls, strafing everywhere in 3D. The indoor/outdoor dual fusion engine behaved smoothly in transitions and gave you more options when dealing with the baddie robots.

Ahh the memories.. too bad the average gamer was so conditioned to the Doom style of play back in the day, and couldn't appreciate the extra degree of freedom and excitment.

The Descent genre needs a resurrection. Especially now with Mars exploration ;]

Re:Games like this keep reminding me of Descent 3

[ProfanityHead]

Descent 3 was a disappointment after Descent 2.

Re:Games like this keep reminding me of Descent 3

[SkiToDie]

The problem with Descent 3 was the loss of smoothness and surrealism in the levels. In the first 2 games you could fly through the levels at top speed and when you hit a wall you would simply slide along it. In Descent 3 they added a lot of details (pipes, edges, other trimming, etc.) along the walls, AND they made them collidable. This would cause you to stop immediately if you happened to hit them. As somebody who liked to fly through the Descent 1&2 levels after clearing them just for the cool visual overload, this change was unforgivable.

Also, the engine in the first 2 games allowed the level geometry to intersect with itself, which made all manner of trippy and cool user-created levels to be made, and even the official levels managed to twist and turn enough to really mess up your orientation until you memorized them. Descent 3's levels were more realistic and didn't mess with your orientation enough. The outside levels were interesting, but they still had a confined "bowl" feeling to them.

Having said all that, I agree that the visuals in Descent 3 were very impressive, and I have dozens of save games that I can load up just to look at some of the coolest views. I'm still hoping that somebody makes a spiritual sequel to Descent 3 and puts back the gameplay from the first 2. One thing that didn't get the shaft was the AI though, which was as funny and ruthless as ever.

DESCENT RULES!!!

Patch Descent 3

[Airconditioning]

If you're going to install Descent 3, make sure you get the patches for the game. The first release is buggy and has serious memory haemorrhage issues. Other than that, it's good advice - grab the bastard.

Isn't this game old?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm confused. I swear I played Sam2 on PC 2 or 3 years ago.

Re:Isn't this game old?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are thinking about "Serious Sam: The Second Encounter", not "Serious Sam 2". The Second Encounter was an extension of the original game and was based on the same game engine. Serious Sam 2 uses a new engine.

Lost Coast

[Borg453b]

Speaking of FPS:

Has anyone here played the lost-coast tech demo? Not too long ago i buildt a highend rig sporting a Geforce 7800 gtx. Ive played hl2 and doom 3 on it, and while beautiful, theyve pale in comparison to the lost coast tech demo. If you have buildt / purchased a high end pc recently, you ought do download lost coast and behold its glorius eyecandy-rendition ability.

Playing lostcoast made me want to revisit hl2.


Before you whine that i am all about the graphics and dont care for gameplay; Im currently replaying Deus Ex (1). Someone needs to made something similar with the source engine :P~~~|

Played the original Serious Sam. Yep - we need more coop gaming :D

Black humor

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a lot of black humor in the game, and jokes about Duke Nuk'em Forever... by the way, want to know what really happened to Duke? Go play Serious Sam 2. :-)
This really is just a pretty dumb shooter, but the humor makes for it. Developers played a joke on other games, played a joke on themselves, and this is seriously the game with a nice touche. Compared to Serious Sam 2 jokes, other FPS titles pale in comparison.

And that's it - kill monsters, laugh, kill more monsters, find secret sexy bush, kill even more monsters, find the secret of smelly poo (and a match to lite the dinamite), kill some bosses, wet your pants laughing over Cecil the dragon (one of the bosses) who kidnapped princess, and get beaten by Sam who had to rescue her after having a serious conversation with her mother, the Queen, in her private bedroom...

Oh well, I've given too many spoilers already. :-)

Re:You forgot... (bunny hopping)

[Fluffy the attack ki]

Go dig up an old copy of Doom or Wolf3D and try to find the jump key. Or don't, because there isn't one. Come to think of it strafing wasn't too important either until keyboard+mouse became popular.

Icon in story post?

[curmi]

What is it? I can't make it out. Maybe it is a red plane? Or is it a gun with a red handle? The end of a fire hose?

Re:Icon in story post?

[IntergalacticWalrus]

It's the rocket launcher from Quake 3.

Re:Icon in story post?

[Anonymous Coward]

Rocket launcher from Quake. I think.

what the companies need to do really is ..

[x130844]

to think about the logistics. the most important is the speed of the guy running and shooting. If you're running for 20sec, you should slow down, then take a little break (even a split second) behind a wall, catch your breath, and you're back full speed. i mean, imagine yourself in a real combat, or paintball match, you shoot, run, pause, breathe, go on etc. That'd be cool coz it'd force you to predict big battles, where you gonna need your energy and speed, so you need to find good spots to hide to take your break. anyway, just saying...

Yup, this game sucked.

[billybob]

I wrote a review of this game. I only played the demo but I was seriously disappointed. What a huge smelly pile of crap.

Missing Something

[Deathlizard]

I got SSII a few days ago, and it definetly feels like it's missing something.

Cutscenes dont bother me much at all. Actually the thing that bugged me more was the fact that they were pre rendered, and sometimes he would wear a serious sam II shirt which he doesn't in the game. Cutscenes beat Netrissa poping up that stupid Email icon every five minutes in the old game.

My biggest problem with it, was that it didn't seem to inundate you with unending hords of enemies. Sure your getting a lot in SSII, but not nearly the initial count the first SS:FE and SS:SE gave you. There were levels where you would fight 30-50 werebulls easily, the most I counted on SSII was 15. You always had this feeling that they aren't throwing nearly enough enemies at you and are throwing smaller multiple waves at you rather than sending one huge wave your way. The Final level of SSII literaly felt like halfway through the first or second encounter. Nowhere near the amount you saw in the final stages of those games.

Another problem was less one liners. in the first two games, Just about every big battle sam spewed something funny, but This one he stays too quiet. I really wanted to hear comments on each new enemy, and more random comedy that the first few games were swarming with. this game seemed to be more serious so to speak.

Oldest FPS. Do some research guys! :)

[Ch_Omega]

Hovertank 3D by ID was the first 3D FPS on PC, according to ID software themselves. Both the Catacomb 3D(which came out before Wolf3D) and Wolfenstein 3D engines evolved from the Hovertank 3D raycasting-engine. However, the game Darkside on C64 and other platforms came out in 1988, and allthough it could hardly be called fast-paced, it featured a first-person perspective and movement in a (in some ways more advanced than Wolf3D)3D world.

Third time less charming.

[A_Non_Moose]

Agree with the poster about Descent3.

I was IMO a 'hat trick' as d3 nailed the fun factor all over and did it with updated grfx and good sounds.

And the sounds in SS2 are lacking, save for the parrots (snicker) and the sniper rifle have good sounds...the other, well sound hollow. The chain gun sounds OK, but compared to Quake4...damn. Heck, I'd use the chaningun in q4 just to hear it.

But, the killer for SS2 is it is such a console port....ugh!
The first two had wide open areas you could use to buy time and snipe, but SS2 you are cooped up and hit invisible walls trying to explore(what is this 1997? Need For Speed the serious sam edition?)

Oh, and the same frikcing voiced for all the characters? c'mon, give me a break, that screams cheap (yeah, $30 game, but still the joke of 'bigger budget' at the beginning).

Of all 3 sam games, this has the least replay value. I can't think of any SS2 level I'd like to do again (maybe "Shaolin Temple"), but have gone back and played "long walk", "elephant atrium", "grand cathedral" and a few others because they were a blast. SS2..meh.

FEAR...played thru on top 3 difficulties...damn what a blast, just not too thrilled about the performance. Like doom3 all over again, like Henry Ford said, "any color you like as long as it's black". (dark, damn dark).

That reminds me, I need to reinstall Descent 3 again, you know, to play games because they're *FUN*.

Sheesh, video cards that can pump out 32Million colors at good frame rates, and what do we get from a lot of games? Shadows and 32Million shades of "night".

Sad, but true and at least SS2 is colorful.

For those keeping track:

[Inoshiro]

PC:
Serious Sam (2000)
Serious Sam: The Second Encounter (2002)
Serious Sam 2 (2005)

Xbox:
Serious Sam 1 (which is 1 + Second Encounter).
Serious Sam 2

Do not buy PC games.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Namely, the retarded copy-protection system prevented my DVD+RW drive (the only drive in my gaming desktop) from reading the disks at all. The "helpful" customer service guy explained that this was a "known" issue with my brand of drive... no fix in sight."

I tend not to play PC games much, except for the Blizzard ones. I had no problem backing up all my Warcraft discs (to skip the CD check), and WoW is even nice enough to not want a disc in the drive. However, I also have a bunch of other titles (Quakes 1-3, Doom 1-2, Final, TNT, Plutonia, SMAC, Civ 2 Gold, etc). I finally got the itch to buy Civ 3 Complete and play it after tackling Civ 2 again. Imagine my frustration when imaging of the "Play" disc for their stupid CD check caused untold numbers of errors to my reader!

The EULA on Civ 3 says I'm allowed to make a backup copy and use it; in my case, I load ISOs for my games onto a central file server so that I can access them from either of my two workstations that have a spare Windows drive on them (it's a handy setup for WoW as well). Their tech support says they won't provide me with ISOs, and that they won't help me with the backup -- but that I'm allowed to. They also skip out on the clause about refunds for dissatisfaction by saying that they won't refund it, even though I'm within my 90 days.

The lesson I learned is: these companies no longer want my business. They no longer want your business, either. What did Quake 4's ridiculous incompatibility buy it? I know plenty of people who were able to download it before it reached store shelves. If I ever get curious enough to try it, I'll download it before I'll pay money for discs I can't read. At least with the warez version, I can run the game!

Waves Not Mass

[cjb110]

I think the biggest difference and imho let down is the fact that they now have you fighting multiple waves of enemy's rather than a massive buttload.

In the first two there were times when you thought how the f*ck could I ever kill this lot? hell they even gave you a power up to increase the already rediculous amount of ammo you could carry.

In 2 you just get multiple waves, ok some bits are challenging, but only once.
Instead of other games where you get a few smart enemies, it throughs lots of pretty dumb ones. Which doesn't work in the same way as the staggering amount the first two threw at you.

As for humour, some of its very bad, most of its very childish...take it or leave it.

Engine doesn't seem as impressive either as the first one either, which had massive enviroments.