"It ain't the size that matters, is how you use it."

Mike Arrani
Mike Arrani @prometheanbound
Serious Sam: The First Encounter - 评论

Lately I've been going through old video game magazines and game-related TV programs, and it kinda occurred to me just how many games gamers in post-USSR got exposed to that are niche or obscure in the West. It gradually changed by the late 00s as the internet became more accessible in that part of the world, and big foreign companies began to get a better grip on marketing there. But Serious Sam was really big in Russia. Far as I can tell, much bigger than in the US. It was so big that all the way into 2005 gaming mags continued to publish maps and mods for it on their discs. And this popularity was completely deserved.

To begin with, few games in 2001 could boast levels as huge as in Serious Sam. And it's not like this scale came at the cost of visuals. SS was still one of the best-looking games of the year, especially if you take its aesthetics into account. But it wasn't really the graphics that made it so special. The big open areas would mean nothing if it was just decorative.

Jumping into the game knowing nothing about it was an experience. You appear like the Terminator, from a time portal in ancient Egypt, a setting that wasn't very much explored by first-person shooters (Powerslave and Hexen 2 come to mind with their claustrophobic and confusing level design). In front of you is a huge temple, seemingly devoid of life. Behind you is the infinite expanse of the desert. Tribal ambient is playing in the background. To say this game had atmosphere would be an understatement. A strong sense of mystery grabs you and doesn't let go until the very end. The level design, beyond just being functional, creates spaces that feel inhabitable. Whenever I feel the desire to immerse myself into an ancient-Egyptian environment, I jump into this game. There's a persistent feeling of exploring an actual dead civilization.

But it's not before long that first enemies appear. You start the game with a knife and a single revolver. Almost immediately you find a second revolver. And within minutes you find your first shotgun. The progression in The First Encounter is near-perfect. This is something they fucked-up in the sequels (not counting The Second Encounter) and DLCs.These early weapons are only good against early enemy types. But then every time a new weapon gets introduced, you encounter a new (or old) type of enemy that this weapon is most effective against. This way the game teaches you which enemies should be attacked with which weapons. It also gradually throws at you combinations of various enemies to teach you which ones should be prioritized. This prepares you for the later levels where you're gonna be encountering huge hordes and have to think on your feet.

Contrary to what many people think, Serious Sam is not a game about kiting and holding down the left mouse button. If you play like that, you're sure to die quickly (unless you play on Tourist). In fact even the movement patterns of some of the earliest enemies teach you to dodge and switch to the third-person view for better spatial awareness, so you could anticipate threats coming from various directions.

There is really a very high skill ceiling here. I'm by no means an expert at this game (in fact I mostly play it for relaxation), but I've personally known people who treated Serious Sam as almost an esports discipline. One of my closest childhood friends was one such person. In fact some of my earliest online deathmatch experiences were playing Serious Sam with him and his friends. I've heard people describe this game as "too basic" and what this tells me is that it completely flew over most people's heads. It is forever doomed to be viewed as that game with huge crowds of enemies and giant bosses, when it has so much more to offer.

Every enemy is fun to fight with. There are no highly-mobile tiny enemies that are hard to target or the kind that pull some cheap bullshit. In comparison, Serious Sam 3 has annoying little spiders and the Witch-Brides that stun you, disappear and are invulnerable most of the time. There are no Lost Souls or Archviles or those piles of slime from Duke3D, and you never feel like your weapons are not adequate enough to deal with your enemies. Every weapon relates to one or several enemy types, and every enemy type relates to one or several weapons. The game originally had something like 30+ levels, more than half of which got removed in the final product. A lot of other content like enemies and weapons got discarded too. That is to say the game was designed meticulously. Cohesion was clearly a priority. But the way people act, you'd think the devs just threw a bunch of shit into big arenas and called it a day.

Occasional puzzles and optional NETRICSA messages add to the atmosphere. The puzzles are never too difficult because they usually require you to flip some switch, and the level-design is extremely intuitive. I don't think I've ever gotten lost in any level in this game, and it's not like the levels are linear either. There is a lot of room for traversal and strategizing.

There were two areas that I remembered from my childhood as being really bad. One was this big tunnel somewhere towards the end, which upon the revisit turned out to be much milder than I had remembered. The other is the final arena before the final boss. Now that thing is still a nightmare. You get locked in a comparatively small arena with 6 enemy spawn points surrounding you on all sides, and you have to survive waves upon waves. It's one of those moments where you'd be forgiven for using cheats to just fly over it.

The rest of the game is absolutely incredible. And, what makes it special, is that there really is no other game like it. People often call it a Doom-clone, but it's really not. Doom's level-design is much more claustrophobic, and its weapons get progressively more effective with the exception of the shotgun which remains the go-to weapon in short distances. It doesn't really throw hordes of enemies at you. Doom 2 kinda does, but not nearly with the same variety. A lot of enemy types, like werebull, headless kamikaze, Aludraan reptiloid and others are not common enemy types in other first-person shooters and certainly don't have equivalents in Doom, but each of them adds unique mechanics that cascade in depth when put together in various combinations.

There's just no other game where the combat consists of rapid weapon-switching while dodging and preventing the horde from reaching you by strategically prioritizing targets. And then between combat you get to explore huge gorgeous locations to the accompaniment of a beautiful and atmospheric soundtrack. And then on top of that there's tons of humor. Serious Sam is truly a masterpiece and one that hasn't been rivaled, nor has there been any attempt to clone it. It occupies its own niche and completely dominates it.