LGR - Serious Sam The First Encounter Review 

The hills are alive with the sound of "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!"

Playing that game, I learned not to pick up single health pills or armor shards unless I wanted more shit to happen.

even today the graphics look really nice and polished

I'll never forget the first time I hear the "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA" and saw the headless guy with bomb hands charging right at me. Damn near made me piss myself in sheer terror and fun.

I've had someone ask me to clarify what I meant when I said _"the result was way better than anyone expected, especially for a low-cost game from a group in Croatia."_ The context of that statement is mostly regarding the cost versus the actual quality of the game. Serious Sam was fantastic, better than games that cost well over $20. The fact that it also came from a small developer from a small country was doubly impressive. Croteam was a pioneering group of folks and, as far as many of us in America knew at least, the first game to come to our shores from that country. As such, seeing such a well-made game from there was awesome. I now see that the combination of the two thoughts was confusing, but I meant nothing malicious whatsoever, and I apologize if it came off as such.

The coding was really some sort of magic. Massive levels, hundreds of enemies, explosions, sharp textures and it all ran great even on older computers. One of my favorite games of all time.

I remember watching my dad play this game. Good times. He always needed me to look for switches because I could find them quickly.

I'm still suprised this was made in Croatia in 2001. I was so blown away back then... I was 12 year old and someone from my tiny country made a game that was so AWESOME. And even more I was impressed they used a inhouse engine!

They don't make FPS like the used to. Serious Sam is, in my humble opinion, one of the best FPS of all time. It came packaged with some many neat things. And i'm not talking about the map editor alone. Split screen, lan, online, but the best part is the CO-OP. I SERIOUSLY love FPS co-op games. There aren't many like that anymore. Even the jokes... i know some may find them cringy, or corny, but seriously, i remember laughing so much back then. I still remember one of the very first ones "Didn't i just kill you back in the other room" When you enter a room with one of the first big enemies that you just happened to kill 1 room before. So it made fun of many cliches and that was AWESOME!.

I met the devs last week in Zagreb! They were delightful. Even managed to try out Serious Sam with the Vive. It's crazy good.

This still looks better than recent Unity engine asset flip scams on Steam right now.

Oh man I loooove this game. So much fun in co-op as well.

Ah, that description, it is the thing I always think of when I think of Serious Sam, "aaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAA!!!" BOOM

My friends and I had lots of fun with the co-op. At $20, it was very accommodating to the college student budget. What really surprised us back in the day was how well optimized the engine was. The game looked and ran great, even on fairly modest hardware.

And now Croteam has created "Serious Sam Fusion 2017." It's their efforts to make sure all games that use their current engine keep updated apparently. Including having TFEHD, TSEHD and Serious Sam 3 BFE in the new Vulkan API or DX11, and allow VR players to play MP against or with standard versions. Best of all if you own TFEHD, TSEHD or BFE, you get each for free in fusion depending on what you own.

This review just got serious.

This game is still a fucking rush, I love it. You should talk about Painkiller sometime.

I discovered Serious Sam on our Schools´s Pc.

Didn't expect you to mention the map editor. That thing was awesome. Even allowed you to mass with gravity. Never made anything spectacular with it, but sure did have much fun.

Hi Clint, it's so nice to see you review my all-time favorite video game. I first played the 2nd Encounter around 2002 and immediately got sold by the game's unique charm. To me, the charm of the first two Encounters comes from the perfect balance between "seriousness" (as seen in the gorgeously recreated ancient architectures and some of the real-life weapons) and "absurdity" (as seen in the designs of monsters, trolling enemy spawns, and some weird arenas, like that "Newton's Nightmare" in the Mayan level, which totally blew my mind when I came across it in my first play-through). As a fan of ancient civilizations, I always dreamed about going back in time and appreciating the architectures in their perfect shape. The game not only granted me the wish, but with "cherry-on-top" awesomeness of kicking aliens' ass like Duke Nukem. However, probably because of the absurdity of the first two Encounters was so well-received, Croteam wanted to piggyback on its success but ended up overplaying this aspect in Serious Sam 2 -- I mean, way too absurd plot, absurd worlds, absurd weapon designs, and the evil of all: consolization. I bought the Sam 2 the first day when it was released but was so disappointed that I never even finished the game. Croteam probably realized their mistake later, but in my opinion, they kinda overkilled the absurdity in Sam 3 and tilted towards "seriousness" way too much. The whole setting is in a modern world, no weird arenas, Sam cannot fall from a great height without getting hurt anymore, ammo and power-ups are real-life looking instead of magically spinning in air in the Encounters. Again, I bought the game immediately but stopped playing it out of boredom half-way through the game. Like you, I still come back to play the first two Encounters very now and then, just to enjoy the fun of looking at ancient architectures and killing alien monsters, or to find funny ways to troll the monsters by getting on to normally unreachable places. This series has brought me so much fun and good memories that I couldn't talk enough about my love and hate for it. I really really hope that in the upcoming Sam 4, Croteam could go back to the balance that set the first two Encounters apart. And also I hope they could upgrade their Serious 3 Engine to bring back the up-side-down gravity physics. (That's part of the reason why I still prefer the original two Encounters to their HD remakes.)

_"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA yourself"_ *Sam Stone*

The singleplayer is fun, but with a partner cooperatively, this is one hell of a blast to play. It's always fun having a friend to experience the chaos with you.

I worked at Take 2 in the early 2000's, which bought GoD around that time, and we took over publishing the SS franchise. Meanwhile, we were also busy publishing a little known series called Grand Theft Auto, and GTA3 had just been released.. but guess what game we'd play on our LAN after hours? Yep, Serious Sam. Great multiplayer, and back then multiplayer FPS gameplay was still in its infancy. SS was actually more influential than a lot of people know.

Wow, I never knew much about it but this game looks absolutely amazing for a game of its time. The smoothness of the animation and movement, the lighting, and the texture quality. I'm seriously impressed.

The first time I saw those "detailed" bump mapped textures... blew my mind!!!

The masses of enemies that were shown at once on the screen were achieved by reducing the poligons in real time when needed. Kind of unique at that time.

played this game as a kid and it was a mesmerizing experience. much more than just a great shooter. I was really fascinated with the level design and art direction. the setting of ancient Egypt was so different and so unique for a video game at the time. never really seen anything like it before then. the levels were HUGE and beautiful and full of secrets. it was the perfect combination of action and exploration and atmosphere. even the background music was enjoyable and memorable and distinctive, like Middle Eastern folk music that blended into EMD when things got intense.

This video was uploaded on my Birthday. Thank you Lazy Game Reviews! ☺👍

I remember playing this and painkiller a lot for the same reasons. Original Doom action.

Duke Nukem and Serious Sam should team up ! co-op shooting game :D

This is quickly becoming one of my favorite RU-vid channels. Clint, you're great.

As someone that played Serious sam on launch, I don't see any reason to not play the remakes. How does better graphics detract from the gameplay which hasn't changed?

I'm kind of surprised you didn't talk about the massive bosses much, if any. When I first was playing and saw one of those things I was like HOLY SHIT!

Wow, thank you for this lovely video. I'm from Croatia/Zagreb (not a developer) :) There is a small revolution going on here in the field of programming. At the time Croteam was mostly composed of Amiga/Atari/Comodore64 generation of programmers, and you can see the influence is some of their stuff, but I am more excited for the new generation that is coming. My generation is now in their 30's and there is a much bigger focus in the economy in the field of programming. Many of us grew up on Nintendo, Sega, Sony consoles (to name a few) and I am hopeful to see good stuff coming from those inspirations. Don't get me wrong, Croteam is far from a dead company, in fact there are many new projects on the way and they will always be praised as the ones that started the world wide distribution. Expect to see more (hopefully good) developers soon!

Honestly, I am so glad i found your channel. You are amazing at what you do, and you have a genuine sense of charm. 10/10 my go to youtuber. I miss your Fallout Dust play-through! It was my favorite thing you have ever put out, but you have truly awesome content. I'll be supporting your patreon soon!

wow,for a 2001 game,i have to admit the graphics are visually pleasing to the eye

My dad is actually really good friends with the croteam developer couse im from Croatia they are legends for me

i can remember being totally blown away by the graphics! This "this is basicly photorealistic, it wont get any better than this ever"-feeling :-) also somehow reminds me of clusterball with these egypt-asthetics

Awesome review. I'm from Serbia, but my mother is from Croatia and a lot of my family lives in Croatia. So I have always considered Croatia to be my second home. You can only imagine how pleasantly surprised I was to learn that such a great and well known game came from that country. I played the HD remasters and I had a ridiculously good time playing them. Truly great games. I'm still trying to find time to play the third game.

Thanks for another awesome vid. Always enjoy your doses of nostalgia.

Serious Sam put Croatia on the gaming map. Also Serious Sam is seriously awesome. Seriously. :)

It's really impressive they managed to get on their feat and make something this good between '93 and '01, what with the war and all.

An all time classic! I'm glad you've finally gotten around to making a video on it!

The guys with the bombs in their hands running towards you screaming are one of my favorite things in the game. Croteam's entire game made me smile the whole gameplay. Taking out raging bulls and skeleton cows with a friggin cannon giggles all around.

I played a whole bunch of Football Glory back in the day (when it ended up on DOS eventually), and actually prefer it to Sensible Soccer. Loss of proper teams & campaign is made up with many little additional features & touches. I recommend it.

A favourite at our LAN parties BITD. Great for Co-op.

I keep seeing The Longest Journey box up on your shelf and I'm so envious of it! This game is soo sweet, one of my favourites of all time. I hope one day we will get to see your review of it, it would be awesome!

8:00 that feels so satisfying. Killing two with one shot, square in the middle.

I remember the early 2000s, IMO the beginning of the golden era of gaming up to 2005. I specifically remember launching Serious Sam and gazing into the sun which would spawn those beautiful circular reflections on your screen. That game had one of the best graphics from that time, it was simply stunning.

This is why I love you LGR, you have an understanding of nuance and what makes a game great even if on the surface it may look generic.

I just suddenly found your channel, LGR, and spend all my free time after work on watching your videos. Damn humor, nostalgia about old days and Duke Nukem voice. You're brilliant of the youtube ! Thank you a lot. Keep it going, you've got one more subscriber now :) Amazing work.

Man that music at the end though!!! So much memories...!

I really enjoy your reviews! :)

One of the most underrated shooter series, ever. And yes, I too just adore the Croteam's GIGANTIC options menus! They just kept INCREASING the options with the HD remasters, SS3:BFE, and finally in Talos Principle. The games themselves are great in general, with SS3 and Talos being easily my personal GOTYs of 2011 and 2015. Besides the some-people-ticking start of SS3, I'd dare to call it THE best shooter of this generation! Definitely beats the crap out of Doom(4).

I loved playing this with my friend who had the first xbox version and just those enemy sounds coming at you and getting prepared made me so excited.

I love this series! I played a ton of the xbox port, it was one of my favorite shooters of all time, still is, probably because of all the fond memories I have of it. The humor is perfect, the locations are awesome, badass guns, TONS of cool secrets and a great co-op experience to top it all of.

One of my favorite FPS series

Smoking joints at LANs and then playing Serious Sam coop with flower blood. It was the shit. Perfect thing to wind down after Counterstrike and Q3 tournaments.

That was on Serious review! Loved your alliteration there.

Thank you for this review, I had been anticipating this.

How about Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines next?

Serious Sam saga has an incredible music, especially Serious Sam 2.

I loved these games Man! Thanks for reviewing them!

Just subscribed. This channel rocks! Just what an old pc gamer like myself was looking for. Where have I been all this time? Jesus.

You know. Watching LGR i have realised something. The early 2000s was just an expansion pack for the late 1990s.

I always thought this game only had those awful blob shadows but it actually had stencil shadows like those found in idtech2/3/4 games which are AWESOME.

"Never underestimate the power of stupid things in large numbers" Great series definitely, some of the best coop games around in my opinion :)

the mini gun in this game (and the cannon) coupled up wit the aurora interactor was pure bliss

Greetings from Croatia 😉😊☀️

Great Review,you will review Unreal and UT someday?

Fantastic reviews!

And I come back to this video again! Still great.

Always heard great things about this game...looks so fun, and if it is anything like the new Doom then I am definitely interested

An excellent review of an excellent game.

Just found this video; I loved Serious Sam first and second encounters even though I never really got into Doom, Quake, etc. (my only other in that line was ROTT. I mostly did games like Portal and Descent/FreeSpace.) My ex and I would play coop games with per-player extra enemies and infinite ammo (we were stuck in the land of very slow dialup so no netgames were happening.) Hippi Blood setting was my favorite. It was spectacular in a particular room in the demo of The Second Encounter where you slid into a room, typically picking up a double-barrel shotgun and serious damage as you did so (without trying) and a reptiloid appeared directly in front of you. One shot killed him and, for a second, the entire screen was full of spray of flowers.

"And I still dont know what have of this (graphic options) means, but I still LOVE IT" 🤣🤣 man this is why you are a great reviewer. You remind me of a humble unapologetic geek from my older brothers generation in the best possible way. Keep doing you

Love this game and SE....was SO happy when they did the HD remakes! one of my most played games on my steam list. I also learned to NEVER EVER pick up the lonely single health or armor from this game...If I ever see an unused bandaid laying on the ground by itself...I will run far away.

Hello from Croatia ;)

I just love pausing the video, and taking a look at all the games you have on shelf! It's just so beautiful, can't stop looking at it! Maybe you should make a photo/wallpaper of you whole shelf, or something :P ;)

Discovered it late - thanks to you? Love it!

SAM I AM!

You liked shopping at Walmart as a kid, right :) ?

Watched this video 3 times now and it still pops in my recommended !

Really great review, Clint. I'd love to see more reviews of Serious Sam games. Or a retrospective on the whole series, should that ever seem appropriate.

Tropico at 2:33 Please do a video on the Tropico series!

Hey, can we get a review of Brutal Doom?

I still have the case and disk in perfect condition on my shelf. This was my first experience with video games when I was about 4 or 5. It's still my favorite FPS. Everything about it is good. Especially hippy blood. There are so many secrets that I'm still finding some today while trying to beat the secret, and aptly named, "mental" difficulty. I want to say though that it never really becomes samey until the last level which is just an absolutely insane gauntlet that makes the sameness fun. I do agree that you start to understand what happens exactly as you describe with the rules etc. and as you said, it's a good part of the game. I still know exactly the amount of shots every enemy takes. What a game.

Me and my friend co-op'd this game SO many nights all night long. I can still hear the bomber guys screaming with no heads as they ran toward us. Died so much. Totally worth it. Wish we could get co-op games like this now days.

Wait so Clint is Duke AND Serious Sam!!? How many action game protagonists have you voiced in total you rogue? :D

Jesus, 2001?! I'm getting too old! I remember playing it at the "internet cafe" with friends, one said it's a Croatian game(I live Serbia), and we where like "Who cares, this is great!"

I love how sincere this review is. When he talked about his nostalgia for first playing you really feel the magic of the memory.

I played this and second encounter on hard as an 8 year old kid and loved every bit of it. Watching this video, nostalgia hit me hard from all these amazing open levels set in ancient Egypt

that was so serious. seriously.

The HD remasters are beautiful and stay true to the original game.

Great video as always ♥

You covered my favorite game of all time and I did not know about this

looks like serious sam is trend for children to play with their dads :-) like me

What happened to the female lazy game reviewer? Lol she had a part talking about serious Sam in your top 10s

You mentioned Smash TV and it brought back memories of a little cheat book sized novel with an intro story to smash TV that was at my grandparents house, probably left by an older cousin. I didn't know it was a video game until now