Serious Sam
SERIOUS SAM
By Steven Ho
Key Contribution:
Although the title is Serious Sam, the game relied heavily on humor to sell the game. The main character Sam would spew out jokes constantly. It also had nonsensical monsters such as headless suicide-bombers who would yell loudly. Besides humor, the game environments are bright, sunny and beautiful. Serious Sam also had its own game engine designed to display far distances and lots of enemy models.
Controversy:
Serious Sam was generally praised by game editors and consumers. It won IGN’s “Game of the Year” away for 2001 (pc). It also scored 8.9 at Gamespot. Serious Sam took a different approach then other games such as Doom. It consisted of large wide-open areas with swarms of monsters instead of small claustrophobic corridors with very few mobs. The game also won over consumers with high quality that would run smoothly on mid-tier pcs. Serious Sam also had a 4 player cooperative mode which was pretty rare on a PC FPS.
Designers:
Croteam were the designers for Serious Sam. They are a small indie team consisting of 6 full time programmers and 3 part-timers. They developed football glory in 94, and five-a-side soccer in 95. Both games didn’t do too well. Serious Sam was released in 2001. Serious Sam was influenced by other games of the same genre, such as Duke Nukem and Doom.
Legacy:
Serious Sam spawned a sequel titled “Serious Same: The Second Encounter”. Shortly after that they produced a gold edition, which contained the first and second game, plus a fan-made level pack. The first game was also ported to the Xbox, Ps2, and Game cube with a couple of tweaks. There was also a spin-off game of the game boy advanced titled serious Sam Advance. Serious Sam 3 is also in development with a 2010 release date.
Further Reading:
No
Online research:
http://www.croteam.com/
http://www.indiegames.com/
Research questions:
What made the developers decide to create a FPS versus their previous sport games?
Why is Serious Sam considered a throwback to its genre?
What are the pros and cons of creating your own game engine?
Ref:
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/serioussamthefirstencounter/review.html?page=2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serious_Sam
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