This may be the worst game that I enjoyed playing and would still recommend. But only to fans of boomer shooters. There's a lot of bullshit that many FPS gamers (rightfully) shun these days. The whole game is essentially this:
1. You enter a large, empty space.
2. Dozens of enemies spawn in front of you, and another dozen spawns behind you.
3. You kill them all.
4. You approach the key item or door.
5. Steps 2-4 repeat (maybe more than once).

If you play this, make sure to start on Easy since that's what the devs intended as the "Normal" difficulty (even though there is a difficulty called Normal; baffling decision there, I know).

Serious Sam, even today, radiates its charm, albeit likely through rose-tinted nostalgia glasses. In terms of gameplay, it mostly boils down to "keep your finger on the trigger," spend most of your time running backwards, and occasionally strafe. While the weapons are wonderfully diverse, there's little reason to switch between them other than "Weapon A deals more damage than Weapon B." The levels are beautifully designed, and the time-travel setting takes you to impressive locations that felt incredibly vast for their time.

Where the game truly shines is in its multiplayer co-op mode, especially when played with a group of silly friends. That's when beautiful chaos unfolds, and together you hack and slash your way through hordes of hundreds and hundreds of enemies. All of this is underscored by a banging soundtrack. Nowadays, Serious Sam may not appeal to everyone, but it certainly holds a special place in my heart.

Funny guy with guns 😂👌
Ahora en serio, me sorprende la mala leche que tiene este juego con el jugador, es un no parar de retos absurdos que en un principio parecen imposibles. Eso sí, técnicamente está muy bien para su época. Y es que de hecho es un producto de su época, para demostrar cuantos enemigos podían poner a la vez en una misma pantalla y que tan grandes podían ser los mapas. A día de hoy algunos aspectos importantes llegan a cansar, pero su jugabilidad arcade es lo suficientemente divertida.

Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter is not only a good game, but an absolutely great game, and definitely the best game to ever come out of Croatia (sorry, Doodle Jump). It has all the bombastic action and weapon/encounter variety of 2016's DOOM (our modern watermark FPS) in a 2001 game. It created a "horde management" niche that has to this day been largely untapped in the arena of campaign FPS games. You even see its influence today in releases like MachineGames's "Call of the Machine" campaign for Quake II.

In Serious Sam, each enemy is visually distinct and has a specific way you need to deal with it. Certain weapons make short work of certain enemies, and mixed hordes are common. You will use all of your arsenal pretty consistently throughout the game, which sets it apart from a lot of shooters. Some enemies lunge at you when they get a certain distance. Some shoot slow moving projectiles. Some will charge mindlessly, locking you into a matador duel regardless of whatever else you're currently contending with. The sole hitscan enemy is all but stationary, making him incredibly avoidable with proper footwork. Shooting is key in this game in that you need to always be doing it, and movement is key in that you need to always be thinking about it. Levels are universally wide-open arenas, some of them literally featureless, and all with an ancient Egyptian theme. There are health/ammo pickups littered about in seemingly random spots, and you are going to need most of them to make it through. The series is famously characterized by the sheer number of enemies thrown at you at once. Even Painkiller pales in comparison--you slay entire armies in this game. There were multiple times I just lost it, cracking up at how ridiculous the on-screen action was. In terms of game mechanics, it feels like a game designed by geniuses. In terms of tone, style, and level design, it feels like a game designed by five year olds. The juxtaposition is so sincere in its presentation that I can't help but love Serious Sam.

If the entire game was designed like the first half, this would unquestionably be my favorite FPS game. Unfortunately, in the back half the cracks really start to show in the formula. The sheer number of enemies the game throws at you combined with the openness of the arenas leads to mindless save scumming as you frequently find yourself in unwinnable scenarios. These levels need to be designed with a healthy respect for the mechanics that were crafted with such care. The final level in particular is so poor and thoughtless that I'll admit I would have rated the game five stars if it ended one level earlier. The final boss left a sour taste in my mouth--in a game with fantastic boss encounters, he was the worst part of the experience. I am fairly certain a scripted event bugged during my playthrough as well, and I had to cheat to proceed.

That aside, I'm certain that the 2016 DOOM developers played and studied this game, and now I have as well. Serious Sam: The First Encounter demonstrates that you can design a first-person shooter so well and make it so fun to play that you barely need to have levels. It makes me think back to the early id Software games that are actually held back by their level design, and how differently I might have felt about a Sam-style Wolfenstein 3-D.

First Encounter tiene uno de los diseños de niveles más raros que me topé en un FPS, tanto que no sabría bien cómo hablar de él. En ocasiones llega a ser muy creativo con sus secretos usándolos como atajos y el hecho de que haya usado los antiguos glitches out of bounds del original como lugares totalmente legales para acceder hace que el juego se vuelva un survival bastante estratégico, encima tienes mecánicas muy curiosas como jump cancel que sirve demasiado para llegar a lugares altos sin usar el rocket jump o estar safe de los enemigos en las oleadas, pero otras veces se pone muy tosco con algunas oleadas y abusa demasiado del chiste de las trampas en ocasiones que era mejor no hacerlo, rompiendo muchisimo con su curva de dificultad. Entiendo que el juego tenga un toque humoristico y haga estas trampas, pero llega un punto que quema muchisimo el chiste y prefieres evitar cualquier item de vida o armor oculto.

Los enemigos son un hit or miss también. Es muy popular la opinión de que los esqueletos se ponen super bullshit en grupos y es algo que comparto también, y la combinación de enemigos no suele ser la mejor. Pero adoro los clones del ATAT, los kamikazes, las harpías y los escorpiones, fueron enfrentamientos muy buenos, y en cuanto jefes la oleada de sapos y la primera fase del jefe final son muy buenos.

Otra cosa que si bien no me molestó cuando me acostumbré al juego, pero sí es muy grave para un jugador que recién empieza es que la velocidad base de Sam, sabiendo lo adrenalínico que es este juego le faltan cosas como el dash del Unreal o una opción para correr.

Se nota a leguas que es el primer juego debido a estas irregularidades, y espero que en las próximas entregas esto mejore de alguna forma. Estuvo corto y entretenido al menos.

Idk, game aged poorly. After Doom Eternal and tons of modern retro shooters this game is like a joke, tecno demo of an engine they say, and it is. I was enjoying it in childhood, but know, after all this years, when i try to replay it with my friend we was so annoyed of it. I like exploring and finding secrets, i'm playing games very pationedly for details and literally walk everywhere i can reach for and checking every pixel that i can, and secrets are fine, even if 90% of them is death traps on highest difficulty or just very annoying situations. But gameplay... gunplay is OKAY, and you forced to switch your weapons very often, BUT GAME IS DO NOT LIKE IT and animation is veeeeeeeeeeery long, also level design very unstable: sometimes level is interesting and fun, but sometimes... Anyway, it has too much different versions and i replayed it in coop so idk, maybe not all versions that bad. Anyway most of level and game design is very... niche? And gunplay and gameplay overall for modern standarts is just weak. Play Siberian Mayhem))) It's much better)

Despite several attempts I don't see the pull for this game despite that fact it's very, VERY difficult fps. I swear it's like someone put something like this to try and force competition with everyone. I really don't see any story or why people seem to love this game so much.

Update: going back and accepting I don't have the mad (or Serious) reflexes needed for this game I lowered the difficult from Serious and found I had a lot more fun with it and have advanced through many different temple stages, though difficulty still amps up quite high, especially with Kamikazes attacking you!

Honestly though, this game is pure gold. I love it's humour, I love how it's never static where creatures spawn. If you try being smart like I try to be, you get attacked by that damn Kamikazes so I suggest headphones or decent speakers as you will need to listen for the "AAAAAHHHHH" before it's too late and you get blown to pieces.

There are many things to love about this game with it's design and the design of some of the strange otherworldly creatures who see you as an immediate threat and attack you in their own ways, the monster logs making this more fun to learn about these creatures and where they come from.

I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to play an old-school FPS. No school like the old school with FPSs imo. Especially on the PC where we've had classics like Doom and Wolfenstein back in the day that invented the genre.