Suddenly... Serious Sam 3.

[Multidirectional]

So, anyone finished it yet? How is it compared to The Second Encounter?

 

[NoAvatar5digitNewfag]

I wonder how it plays on the hardest difficulty. After years of watching through popamoles I feel justified to doubt my once leet skillz.

 

[The_Pope]

I've finished it.

The game is visually less varied than second encounter, but the weapon balance and encounter design feel better. Letting you carry all the guns and having balance based around single player gives it a fair bit of ammo management depth you don't see in modern popamoles - is the fight hard enough to use your minigun or devastator (like a rocket launcher with much faster projectiles), knowing that wasting important ammo might leave you in trouble later on? Also, there are less bits where you fight kleers until your fingers get cramps, which is a nice change.

Melee is an enjoyable gimmick which provides a lulz but doesn't really change the game. Same with iron sights. As far as I could tell, all they do is halve your movement speed so you can larp being a tacticool commando. The reloading actually adds quite a bit of depth to the headless kamikaze waves - when you're running low with your assault rifle, do you reload or quickly switch to a pistol or shotgun? Sprinting is also a good change as it lets you backtrack for ammo/health very quickly but doesn't really effect combat much.

The doom style hitscan zombies it adds are also an interesting change; they aren't particularly dangerous but will wear your health down. Deciding whether to shoot them or the kleers, which are easy to dodge but will maul you if you don't, adds a bit more depth to game.

 

[BLOBERT]

BRO I CAN TAKE POPAMOLE BUT THANK GOD HIS HAIRSTYE IS THE SAME

 

[MetalCraze]

There is not a single facepalm to describe the shittiness of what they did to Serious Sam

Even 5 seconds of a random walkthrough video is enough to see what's wrong with it.

Serious Sam WALKS INSTEAD OF RUNNING
And to RUN you need to press a fucking button
And when he runs he CAN'T SHOOT
And running speed is SLOOOOOOW (walking speed is like a snail crawl obviously)

Serious Sam runs just as fast as a dude in Hard Reset walks. And yet Serious Sam can't shoot even at that speed.

What the fuck is this retarded shit?

 

[Multidirectional]

Even 5 seconds of a random walkthrough video is enough to see what's wrong with it.

Hey now, not everyone is as gifted as you.

 

[Oriental European]

That thing is called "sprinting".
And Sam always was slow, don't fuck around Skyway.

 

[Excidium]

There is not a single facepalm to describe the shittiness of what they did to Serious Sam

Even 5 seconds of a random walkthrough video is enough to see what's wrong with it.

Serious Sam WALKS INSTEAD OF RUNNING
And to RUN you need to press a fucking button
And when he runs he CAN'T SHOOT
And running speed is SLOOOOOOW (walking speed is like a snail crawl obviously)

Serious Sam runs just as fast as a dude in Hard Reset walks. And yet Serious Sam can't shoot even at that speed.

What the fuck is this retarded shit?

But does it take two key presses and a fucking eternity to switch between weapons?

 

[MetalCraze]

Congratulations you've found a whole one thing that isn't shit in Serious Sam 3.

That thing is called "sprinting".
And Sam always was slow, don't fuck around Skyway.

Of course he was. If one is 2011 member who pretends that he played the game.

Serious Sam 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZnD4Jen1NI

Serious Sam 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHVhQ0P3 ... ure=showob

Compare normal speed of SS1 to the running speed of SS3 where Sam CAN'T shoot.
Yes running Sam in SS3 is slower than normal-speed-Sam of SS1.

Hey now, not everyone is as gifted as you.

Obviously not when your menu consists of nothing but slowass shit like DXHR, Borderlands, Bulletstorm, Mass Effect, GoW, Alpha Protocol, Fallout3/NV and all other console shitters coming out every month.

If trv3 l33t h4rdcor3 Codexers actually played games from back in the day they fap to, and did not just repost screenshots from other sources in "guess the game" thread maybe they would've noticed the difference.
And I've played SS1 like many years ago.

 

[Oriental European]

Congratulations you've found a whole one thing that isn't shit in Serious Sam 3.

That thing is called "sprinting".
And Sam always was slow, don't fuck around Skyway.

Of course he was. If one is 2011 member who pretends that he played the game.

Serious Sam 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZnD4Jen1NI

Serious Sam 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHVhQ0P3 ... ure=showob

Compare normal speed of SS1 to the running speed of SS3 where Sam CAN'T shoot.
Yes running Sam in SS3 is slower than normal-speed-Sam of SS1.

Normal speed? In SS1 you can run and you can walk. Which one is "normal" speed? And even if it is slower, so what? Again, it's two different games, i'm sure they have changed the scale of Sam and other objects.
Also,

2011 member

BUT IVE BEEN LURKING FROM 1985 MANG!!! IM TOTALLY MORE HARDCOVER THAN YOU!

 

[Excidium]

Congratulations you've found a whole one thing that isn't shit in Serious Sam 3.

 

[Metro]

Skyway admitting there's one thing that doesn't suck about a game is equivalent to a score of 8/10.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

Serious sam has always been shit.

 

[shihonage]

There's no such thing as "classic Serious Sam gameplay". There's "classic Doom gameplay" and "classic Duke3D gameplay".

And then there's Serious Sam. Created by a bunch of guys with technical knowledge, and zero understanding of what made games like Doom actually fun.

Hint: placing player in a large spaces and swarming him with enemies on all sides is fucking retarded. Especially when you use "new-gen" rigid scripting to lock him in some crypt until he fights off "waves of enemies". Where's "gameplay" in that? Does it lie solely in your ability to "aim fast" and "decide which enemy is closest to you at the moment" ?

Poorly thought out weapon and enemy mechanics, zero level design, no wisdom in enemy placement, the formula degraded into pointing a pointy thing at a moving thing and pressing the button while running backwards. There's no environmental cleverness, no strategy-on-the-move, no subtle interaction mechanics, nothing.

Plop some random square building here and there, place some random lulzy enemies, and give player a shooty thing that shoots things. The SS series has always been an insult, rather than homage, to the old-school FPS.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Poorly thought out weapon and enemy mechanics, zero level design, no wisdom in enemy placement, the formula degraded into pointing a pointy thing at a moving thing and pressing the button while running backwards. There's no environmental cleverness, no strategy-on-the-move, no subtle interaction mechanics, nothing.

The SS series has always been an insult, rather than homage, to the old-school FPS.

Because thinking about picking off the most lethal targets, while running the fuck away from that massive mob of Kleers and kamikazes, all the time trying to evade zumbul rockets and zorg lasers flying everywhere and attempting to shoot down those reptiloid projectiles and mechanoid rockets when your minigun is chewing through ammo reserves like a son of a bitch ALL AT ONCE is none of those mentioned above. Right.

 

[shihonage]

Poorly thought out weapon and enemy mechanics, zero level design, no wisdom in enemy placement, the formula degraded into pointing a pointy thing at a moving thing and pressing the button while running backwards. There's no environmental cleverness, no strategy-on-the-move, no subtle interaction mechanics, nothing.

The SS series has always been an insult, rather than homage, to the old-school FPS.

Because thinking about picking off the most lethal targets, while running the fuck away from that massive mob of Kleers and kamikazes, all the time trying to evade zumbul rockets and zorg lasers flying everywhere and attempting to shoot down those reptiloid projectiles and mechanoid rockets when your minigun is chewing through ammo reserves like a son of a bitch ALL AT ONCE is none of those mentioned above. Right.

is right.

It's a very tired and stupid approach that relies only on "arcade reflexes". Doom was more than that. Duke3D was more than that. And it was because they had designed levels, to start with.

Enemy placement, powerup placement, hazard placement, scripting, level architecture - that's where GAMEPLAY starts. Then you start making sure that your weapons actually have unique uses based on distance, crowd effect, stun properties, enemy types around you, ammo you have left, and that your skills as a whole matter (rather than just your reptilian brain), that enemies are not placed so far you can't even see them as you pick off tiny dots in the sky... it's where things take off. In giving player the opportunity to make somewhat meaningful decisions, instead of just "pressing on his reflexes".

It's a list that Croteam never even had. They just put "things" into "a space" and then it became a "game".

 

[Darth Roxor]

An arcade shooter relies on arcade reflexes? Unpossible!

Enemy placement

'Those fucking reptiloids throwing their fucking spells at me, where are they hiding?!'

powerup placement

'Time to make a near-suicide run through all the kleers to that +50 hp on the other side of the map'

hazard placement

'motherfucking bouncing walls'

scripting

'Well, let's leave this place alrea- FFFFUUUUUUUUU DAEMONS APPEAR FROM THE WARP'

level architecture

'SCREW YOU, NEWTON'S NIGHTMARE'

Then you start making sure that your weapons actually have unique uses based on distance, crowd effect, stun properties, enemy types around you, ammo you have left

Revolvers that are often underestimated and good at eliminating kamikazes. Shotgun that is good for close engagements and often makes stuff stagger. A double-barrel that can backfire super-easily because it can either instagib or leave you reloading for half a minute. An accurate and fast tommy gun useful for sniping squishy zorgs. A minigun that EATS THROUGH AMMO INSTANTLY but is good all-around. A self-explanatory rocket launcher. Flamer, excellent for short ranges against squishy enemy masses. Sniper rifle, very good for taking out those goddamn reptiloids, slow as fuck though. Laser - better damage than minigun, eats less ammo, worse in other aspects. Cannon - slow as fuck, requires charging, not much ammo, instagibs everything.

- that's where GAMEPLAY starts.

You were sayin?

 

[shihonage]

Yes.

Serious Sam has weapons that are not the same weapon repeated several times.

Serious Sam has enemies that are not the same enemy repeated several times.

Those enemies are placed at some points in space from which they can attack player.

It has hazards that are also placed in space!

And walls!

And spawn triggers!

...

Star Wars episodes 1-3 had pretty much everything from Star Wars episodes 4-6.

Jedis! And Ewoks! And flying thingies! Yoda! Darth Vader! C3PO! R2D2! Emperor! Obi-Wan! And light sabers' n'shit, dawg!

Yet the problem was never in the laundry list of the individual props. It always comes down to implementation.

And you may try and amplify the weapon specializations in Serious Sam, but without cohesive interplay of surrounding designs, it all falls apart.

Weapons may be good at certain distances, for what it's worth, but when the level fails to provide an adequate balance of such distances, or sufficient freedom for player to choose which battles to pick, when it mixes enemy types together so switching weapons to address one corridor or the other loses meaning... it all becomes a pile of shit.

Which is what Serious Sam always was.

 

[Oriental European]

You were sayin?

That was... beautiful. Bravo, bravo good sir!

 

[Oriental European]

shihonage crawls away with bleeding anus, whole dirty and wet.
FLAWLESS VICTORY BY DART ROCKS-ON!

 

[Gragt]

Derperie aside, does Serious Sam 3 follow up where Serious Sam 2 left off or does it skip it and start where The Second Encounter ended? I ask because Croteam pretty much acted as if Serious Sam 2 didn't exist these last years — and who could blame them? — releasing both the First and Second Encounter on Steam as well as their remakes but there is no sign of the dreaded 2.

 

[Oriental European]

Oriental European runs up to shihonage and puts 5$ into his devastated colon.
"Keep the change, I'm feeling generous tonight".

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I never noticed that Serious Sam was trying to be brilliant, it was mostly trying to be different from the norm of the time, and a throwback to the more hectic types of FPS games that were around at the birth of the genre, not to mention action games in general. SSam has more in common with Robotron than with most FPS games, come to think of it.

The games mostly succeeded due to lack of any worthwhile competition. And... as far as FE and SE go, they're actually quite fun, especially in co-op with friends.

They were actually worth their money ($20 each), but with the abysmal failure of SS2, I'm still on the fence with forking over twice that amount for SS3.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

There's no such thing as "classic Serious Sam gameplay". There's "classic Doom gameplay" and "classic Duke3D gameplay".

And then there's Serious Sam. Created by a bunch of guys with technical knowledge, and zero understanding of what made games like Doom actually fun.

Hint: placing player in a large spaces and swarming him with enemies on all sides is fucking retarded. Especially when you use "new-gen" rigid scripting to lock him in some crypt until he fights off "waves of enemies". Where's "gameplay" in that? Does it lie solely in your ability to "aim fast" and "decide which enemy is closest to you at the moment" ?

Poorly thought out weapon and enemy mechanics, zero level design, no wisdom in enemy placement, the formula degraded into pointing a pointy thing at a moving thing and pressing the button while running backwards. There's no environmental cleverness, no strategy-on-the-move, no subtle interaction mechanics, nothing.

Plop some random square building here and there, place some random lulzy enemies, and give player a shooty thing that shoots things. The SS series has always been an insult, rather than homage, to the old-school FPS.

Serious sam = keeping one finger on the back key and the other on mouse 1 and throw as many rounds into the gelatinous blob of enemies as it moves towards you. Dogshit enemies, dogshit level design.

Balkan neck slitters go home, you fail at game design.

 

[shihonage]

 

[visions]

I'm in the middle of the First Encounter right now (5th level, have only played the Second Encounter demo before that, a long time ago) playing on hard (the second hardest option) and it seems to require quite a bit more skill than DN3D main episodes and The Birth on the second hardest difficulty, which I did last year (had only played the Duke It Out In D.C. episode before that a few years ago). Overall, I have to think more in Serious Sam. Duke did have better level design though, but the quality of Duke's level design seems to be a little overstated by people (except for Duke It Out In D.C., which had very enjoyable levels, but was independently designed anyway).

Weapons may be good at certain distances, for what it's worth, but when the level fails to provide an adequate balance of such distances, or sufficient freedom for player to choose which battles to pick, when it mixes enemy types together so switching weapons to address one corridor or the other loses meaning... it all becomes a pile of shit.

"Sufficient freedom for players to choose which battles to pick" in DN3D?

The levels are fairly small and straightforward (not talking about D.C. here), you kill everything that gets in your way, epic choice right there.
Duke does have the advantages of shrinking, use of Z axis, somewhat destructible environments (and secret levels) and lacks the annoying aspect of level design often relying on locking you into a room with a bunch of enemies but the difference in traversing the levels is not very big - you move through fairly straightforward levels (that would benefit from being less restrictive) in both, while killing everything that gets in the way. Enemies and their usage seem better in Sam (nothing, nothing, in Duke made me fuuu as much as hordes of Kleer skeletons do in Sam) since the mobs tend to be bigger and better mixed, the ratio of pushover fights is lesser than in Duke on the equivalent difficulty.

 

[Sceptic]

There's no such thing as "classic Serious Sam gameplay". There's "classic Doom gameplay" and "classic Duke3D gameplay".

And then there's Serious Sam. Created by a bunch of guys with technical knowledge, and zero understanding of what made games like Doom actually fun.

This I can agree with. Everything afterwards, no.

I was always puzzled by the "SS is a throwback to Doom" crowd, though when you think about it it was much closer to the early FPS's than what was becoming the usual formula when FE came out (namely "let's copy Half-Life"). But as much as I love Doom I also find great fun in FE and SE, for all the reasons Roxor listed. It probably helps that I never played through the whole games in SP - coop on hardest difficulty is SO much fun, especially with 4 LAN-connected PCs in the same room. Good times.