Let's Get Mental - My Life With Serious Sam Stone
The year was 2001. I was a mere 19 years of age, and I had recently moved from my home in Port Macquarie to the big city streets of… Queanbeyan. I loaded up my clothes, CD collection and, most importantly, my lovely beige PC and headed down south to chase work. During that year, thanks to a PC PowerPlay cover disc, I discovered something that has been keeping me entertained ever since. I had heard rumblings about a game that could put hundreds, if not thousands, of enemies on the screen at any one time. A game where, even with a modest PC, you could take on vast, seemingly endless hordes with a huge selection of guns and some cheesy one-liners. That game was Serious Sam, and thanks to that humble demo disc, I found a franchise that fed me in a way FPS titles couldn’t at the time.
The story was basically nonexistent. The lore was stupid and clichéd, but the action… oh my, the action. Thousands of enemies storming my position as I circle-strafed my way through levels with my left mouse button permanently held down. Headless suicide bombers who somehow screamed were rushing me while giant mechanical creatures shot lasers and rockets my way. Dodging a giant charging bull while trying to take down a massive scorpion equipped with chainguns. Running through an ancient pyramid as creepy one-eyed gorillas hunt you. It was an absolute blast, and not even FPS classics like Doom or Duke could offer the same adrenaline kick. From that day forward, I was a lifelong fan and have followed the series closely ever since.
After two releases based on their first “Serious” engine, Croteam got to work on Serious Sam 2. Now, at the time, I was still rocking a pretty dated gaming rig, so when I found out it was coming to Xbox, I was all in. That was, quite simply, a mistake. Don’t get me wrong, Serious Sam 2 wasn’t bad. It was pretty much more of the same with a more cartoony look, but it wasn’t designed to be played with a controller. I struggled in a big way, unable to keep up with Mental’s hordes. I should have waited; I should have held out until I could upgrade my rig, but I didn’t, and as a result, the second game will always be a low point for me.
We then got a bit of a break between releases. Serious Sam 3 took a while to make, but we weren’t left out in the cold. It was at this point that the spin-off games started to appear. Indie-like titles that featured Sam and his chaotic style in different genres. Some were great, some not so much, but they all featured the same basic premise: Sam vs. a tonne of enemies. I am pretty sure I’ve played them all over the years, and while none of these side games ever set the world on fire, they all had their charms and were almost always at a super cheap price, so their faults are easy to ignore.
But back to the main franchise. Serious Sam 3. It had felt like a long time coming, but I thought it was well worth the wait. The concept hadn’t changed, but the tech had, and while it was never the best-looking game at the time, seeing a modern engine render so many enemies on the screen is still something that must make other game engines weep. The look of the game was much closer to the original releases and not the more comical look of Serious Sam 2, and, for me, it was a welcome return. Don’t get me wrong, it had problems, and by this point in time I was already working in games media, so those problems were more than apparent to my critical way of thinking about games. My love for the simple joys it offered overrode any negatives, and they never stopped my fun.
Serious Sam 4 didn’t seem to take quite as long to arrive, but it offered the biggest change seen in the franchise yet: a semi-open world with multiple mission objectives. Freedom to run around vast, open spaces was both a blessing and a curse for the title. It offered some much-needed variety to the long-running formula, but at the same time it was undeniable that some of these sections were a bit of a chore, and when Sam gets boring, well… the cracks really start to show. Luckily, it seems Croteam recognised that, and it wasn’t long before they took another crack.
Welcome to Siberian Mayhem. A kind of Serious Sam 4.5 that took the ideas of Serious Sam 4 and, if not perfected, vastly improved on their faults. This, I imagine, was the game the Development team wanted to release initially, but it took some time and public feedback to reach this point. It is, in my mind, the perfect Serious Sam game. An endless swarm of enemies, big guns, bad wisecracks and a sense of fun that more serious shooters often look down upon. It is the perfect quick blast, the stupid co-op night with friends, or a healthy way to vent some frustrations with the real world. It isn’t a perfect game in reality; from a critical viewpoint, it probably isn’t a great one. But it is undeniably great at what it does, and that formula is perfectly fine with me.
Now we are in the year 2026, and Sam still isn’t dead. A new spinoff has just landed, and it is playing on a couple of things that the world, or at least studio execs, can’t seem to get enough of. Serious Sam: Shatterverse is an FPS like all of the mainline titles, but this time around it is a Roguelike. Secondly, and you probably guessed from the name, it deals with a multiverse scenario. In this multiverse, Sams from across many different dimensions have come together to take on Mental once more and stop him from ruling over the multiverse. It is, I have to say, a pretty cool spin on the usual formula, with five different Sams to play as, each with their own personality and special moves.
There are some issues, though; I don’t think the roguelike loop is as satisfying as it should be. The unlock speed is a little slow, and the upgrades don’t add as much as they should. This is a difficult balance in the genre, and many games have had to tweak these elements once the game hits the public, so I suspect that will be the case here. Also, it does lack some of the craziness of the Sam games. It is built around a series of kill rooms as opposed to the big open maps of the mainline games. It really changes the feel and can lead to frustration when you run out of room to circle-strafe your way out of danger.
But despite its faults, Shatterverse is still a lot of fun. That flawed-but-enjoyable feel has permeated the entire franchise, so it seems almost appropriate that it can be applied to the latest game. I especially like the interactions between the different Sams. Our Sam, the hero of the previous games, only speaks in one-liners, but luckily Cartoon Sam can translate for the others. It leads to some genuinely funny moments, and it is clear the developers had a blast with the concept. That alone was worth the price of entry for me. There are also some great new weapons, new enemies and interesting goals that make this another game in the franchise that, despite its issues, is well worth a play.
As I look back at Serious Sam’s history, no doubt through the rose-coloured glasses of nostalgia, I can’t help but smile. I often think the simple concept of the games, one man vs. millions, has perhaps hidden the tech achievements required to perform that simplicity. To this day, there is no other game out there that can send as many baddies your way in first person, and that is an achievement in itself. Serious Sam may not be an award-winning franchise, but it is one that knows its place, its fans and what it does well. It is a franchise that is happy with its place in gaming history, an interesting side note from the FPS explosion of the early 00s. But most of all, it is a franchise that thinks fun is a screaming, headless suicide bomber chasing you as you madly try to reload a shotgun… and who am I to argue with that?
