Serious Sam The First & Second Encounter PC Game Review

There is this one encounter in the first game i never forget it was those endless horde of skeletons in a shady rather large area where there was a pit behind u i took me over a hour to pass that i was almost mentally finished with the game that was for me the hardest part in the game , but its such a joy to replay it again in hd great times.

This was the Dark Souls of First-person shooters.

I AM SAM!!!

For me these two are the absolute video games

Too much mimimi

Have to stop after every level? Spoken like a true old man. Back in the day when this came out, our kid brains had no problem handling this game in a single sitting :D

No need for the swearing…

If the Duke Nukem is a representation for the 1980's action movie heroes like Rambo or John Matrix, Sam feels more like a super hero from an old animated series like G.I. Joe, He-man or even Max Steel.

anyone want to co op? i just got it off xbox store

Lol this is so old gggman rip

The kamakazies are the worst in groups.

playing the remastered trilogy the first game has some bad design enemies just spawn out of thin air and shit

I didn't start playing Serious Sam until many years after release but I absolutely love it. My first introduction to the series was Serious Sam 3 in 2012 which I though was fine, but around 2016 or so I picked up the first and second encounters and played through them relentlessly. So good.

This game looks absolutely STUNNING nearly 20 years later!

When's this series going to reach its long-suffering endgame? (It better be the fifth game, in my opinion.)

Yep, the hardest of them all sounds about right. You really needed a break after killing literally hundreds of foes. Brilliant game, though i didn´t finish the second encounter, i was too tired. Still, i had a serious blast playing this one. (see what i did there as well).

Why Croteam? Why Serious Sam 4?

I miss those smaller but on point reviews. The ones you make today you try to explain every single aspect of the game it goes way to long

An awesome FPS that I played the shit out of when I got it in the late 2000s.
Still have the original CD of TFE after all these years.
A little tip for those who wish to play this without getting constantly killed:
Open the command and type in "please god" (or "pleasegod") for God Mode.
You'll thank me for this cheat.

Can you remake this review with the hd version clips but with the same script? itll be funny.

i deeply enjoy that croteam went from this absurd hardcore shooter to the philosophical puzzle game Talos Principle

The remakes are so good. I got stuck due to a bug when they came out. That was a driver issue though.

Wow so many comments even in 2021 this is mad

I like the second encounter way better than the first. I would play for hours on end on the second one. But could only play for an hour or so on the first.

This along with halo and Pokémon yellow were some of my first games ever played. And the hd remake is very neat.

First

I wonder what difficulty gman played it on. Every other review seems to never mention difficulty or strategy whatsoever and some even describe it as a "mindless shooter", which makes me think gmanlives played it on one of the higher difficulty levels

I disagree on the "cheap" challenge for spawning enemies on the edge of the map. I think it's brilliant. You have to be aware of the WHOLE map at all times cause enemies can spawn pretty much anywhere.

I remember getting a demo of this in a cereal box when I was a kid. I'll never forget the screams...

I managed to survive both First and Second Encounters with my sanity mostly intact.

One of the most memorable gaming moments in my life is when I got cornered on a particular level while being swarmed by those skeleton dogs. The hordes just wouldn't stop coming at me! I had a minigun and managed to find an ammo refill or two. But I just kept the fire button down the entire time and mowed 'em down as fast as I could. Part of the tension was keeping an eye on my rapidly dropping ammo count. Ammo casings are flying everywhere and skeleton parts are flying everywhere. It was like taking a big hedge trimmer and running backwards through a dense hedge, with leaves and branches flying everywhere while swinging the trimmer back and forth. It was kind of hard to see what was going on but I was so zoned in that I was able to focus my fire pretty well.

I wouldn't have believed it if I didn't see it but literally my last bullet dropped the last skeleton dog, and I barely survived. My hand was frozen in a death grip around the mouse and I was sweating. I had to stop and just take a breather and walk around for a bit and massage my mouse hand back to life. But I had a big smile on my face, too.

game designer: "hey uuuuh we have all these enemies how many should we put in every level"
Supervisor:" YOURE FIRED
Game designer 2: "uh sir i put 197263 enemies in this one hallway"
Supervisor:"good job 6ou get a raise"

Just started playing these games a few weeks ago and the tone really caught me more off guard than anything else (of course, I knew the gist of the formula already from friends telling me about the series). The beautiful landscapes and very fitting, thematic music clashes immensely with the ludicrous enemy designs, Sam's personality and all the crazy secrets like the sunglasses-wearing kamikaze props, bobblehead chipmunk-voiced developer cameos, phone booths, microscopic joke enemies and God knows what else, but it pulls it all off really well. I've played a good amount of the classics from this era, but I had absolutely no idea what to expect at any given time in this game.

The combat also really reminds you of how the first FPS games were really just top-down shooters from a new perspective. It's got that dodge-dancing pace where you're weaving between projectiles and lining up your shots to pick off the most threatening targets as efficiently as possible; it all feels very elegant in a way. I'm most of the way through The Second Encounter now and it still holds up. The new weapons are all incredibly useful without feeling unbalanced, and the levels themselves are just stunning. That said, I definitely understand having to take a break between each level. I generally play these types of games pretty cautiously (I love them, but I'm no expert), and some of these levels took me almost an hour and a half each!

Right now, I'm completely stuck at that part near the end where you're in a narrow corridor with double layers of bounce pads catapulting you back and forth across the room. I'm sure I'll get through it eventually, but I really don't see any strategy that could make this any less chaotic: if I stay on one side I get mobbed in seconds, and if I bounce back and forth I eventually end up flying right into a missile. Trying to jump between the bounce pads seems possible, but way too difficult for me when there are enemies around. I know this video is from 2014, but if anyone has some advice, it would be greatly appreciated!

Edit: No worries, I took a break and beat it no problem.

Absolutely love this series. I remember playing it so much back in the day that I failed my drivers license theory test.

This sounds like Doom Eternal

Playing these games hearing AAAAAAA after playing it hearing AAAAAAAA

Played this game for the first time last year when it was for free, absolutely love it. I think The First Encounter is better tho, it has only one setting, sure, but it makes the most out of it, and many of the levels stuck with me, whereas in The Second Encounter they begin to blend together at some point, especially in Persian episode.

am i the only one who hears the kamikaze's "AHHHH" while playing doom eternal

Croatian version of Duke Nukem

I think you simply don't understand the Game. Serious Sam has always been about getting from point A to point B killing swarms of enemies. It also involves learning what weapon to use, which enemy to kill first, what bonus to pick up, etc...
That is what the first encounter does well and the second does even better. If you are looking for something different try other games..

am i the only one who think the original games were better then the hd versions

My brother is 7 years younger than I am, so we mostly had very different interests... Serious Sam LAN co-op brought us together more than anything else. I'm guessing that with him being 8-10 in the years we played, it was probably a pivotal point in making him the human aim-bot he is now.

With all the ridiculous mods around for Doom and Half life etc, its shocking someone still didnt make a mod that makes headless kamikazes scream Allahu akbar and look like ISIS guys.

Played this as a kid it use to scare my little brothers lol

It would be awesome if you redo the review 🤠

nuts.wad: The Game

Watching in 2020 to validate my view on how damn good this game is.

I still love these first two games. They just flow really well and are a still fun to see in action.