Individual pages:
- Serious Sam: The First Encounter
- Serious Sam: The Second Encounter
- Serious Sam: Next Encounter
- Serious Sam II
- Serious Sam: The Random Encounter
- Serious Sam 3: BFE
- Serious Sam 4
See also:
- Annoying Video Game Helper: NETRICSA, Sam's implanted AI, with the stupid blinking mailbox icon forcing you to go out of the game just to shut it up. It takes almost every opportunity to do this, not just every time you kill an enemy and pick up a weapon for the first time, but in response to countless environments throughout the game. And the information is always something the player either already knows or can figure out almost immediately or something completely unimportant. It doesn't help that Serious Sam is a game DESIGNED for First-Person Shooter veterans who don't need ANY of this help, and can easily fool someone into recommending a game to an FPS newbie —bad idea. And it gets even worse in II when she becomes Suddenly Voiced.
- Demonic Spiders:
- Kleers. They come in packs, soak up damage, require three close range shotgun blasts or fifteen assault rifle bullets to kill (which opens you up to attack from the other Kleers), move fast, leap fast, and deal a huge chunk of damage.
- Beheaded Kamikazes may go down in one or two hits, but they're utterly relentless, and if one of them manages to get close enough to you, there's no escape; they will carve huge chunks out of your health meter when they detonate.
- Werebulls are big, tanky, fast, and hit like a truck. They take two rockets to take down, but come in large packs and often come from multiple directions. Worst part is how relentless they are, never slowing down or even stopping; if you dodge them, they quickly start to circle back and attack you from behind.
- Fandom Rivalry: With Duke Nukem. Both games have had cameos of each other's protagonists being humiliated/killed. Fortunately, this rivalry is more memetic than openly hostile, and is more about which protagonist is cooler than which games are better.
- Friendly Fandoms: With DOOM, and it makes sense. id Software and Croteam were both really good friends back in the 90's, and that friendship continues to this day
. The fact that Doom Eternal and Serious Sam 4 both released in 2020 also helps. - Game-Breaking Bug: The Weapon Slowdown Bug in the classic games, caused by floating-point imprecision in the game timer after an hour and eight minutes, which affects the laser blaster, tommy gun and flamethrower. It's not truly experience breaking but it can be annoying. Thankfully, the open-source nature of the games means you can quickly drop in a mod that tweaks the rate-of-fire to not be affected by this.
- Gameplay Derailment: Using your co-op mate as a platform to get the secret above you both. BFE fixed this by making players simply clip through one another.
- Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Serious Sam, made in Croatia, has a very large following in Russia.
- Genius Programming: The Serious Engine was considered seriously impressive at release for its ability to render a large number of enemies in big environments with fairly modest system requirements, while still having enough overhead for special effects like dynamic lightning and sunglares. Outlets like Old Man Murray even hyped Croteam's chief technology officer Alen Ladavac as "the next John Carmack".
- Goddamned Bats:
- Kleers. They're vaguely bearable when they come in one or two, where you can unload rapid-fire ammo on them from afar, but anything more than three becomes Hell on Earth as they soak up all your bullets and swarm you with fast slashes that will kill you in three hits.
- Beheaded Kamikazes are running, beheaded dudes who explode on contact.
- The weaker Arachnoid classes, mostly due to being the only enemies in the game with hitscan projectiles.
- Sirian Werebulls (and their II counterparts, the Rhino Cybertoy) are like Kleers but worse, given that they have more health and tend to knock you around in massive hordes while dealing high damage to your health, though it's also generally easier to avoid them.
- The Aludran Reptiloids fire fast, homing green energy balls at you, usually from a high vantage point. They tend to do this while you're distracted by a horde of melee enemies.
- Memetic Mutation:
- Many of Sam's one-liners fall into this category, such as "SAM I AM!" and "Now I have some Serious firepower".
- Sam's tendency to overuse the word "Serious" is prone to spoofing as well.
- The Beheaded Kamikazes as well as their infamous "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH..." scream.
- Paranoia Fuel:
- Whenever you are in an area where there are inactive enemies either hiding or waiting to spawn, the game plays a randomised loop of growling, snarling and screeching. It stops the moment you've wiped the area clean of foes, but until then you'll find yourself treating powerups with the utmost suspicion and jumping at every single sound (especially if you're low on health).
- Any sudden change in the background music is the signal that a fight is coming. It's not uncommon for players to actually play with the music on in a genre where background music is considered an annoyance, regardless of how awesome the music actually is.
- Spiritual Successor:
- Sam could be considered an unofficial successor for Duke Nukem without all the sexual and toilet humor. The fact that the first game came out the same year as 3D Realms' "Duke Nukem Forever will be done when it's done" announcement doesn't hurt, either.
- Croteam have also stated that Doom was the main inspiration for Serious Sam. Quake was also likely an inspiration, given the similar weapons and gameplay elements.
- Visual Effects of Awesome: While they may not seem like much now, the first two games were technically lauded upon release for being able to render large hordes of enemies moving and attacking onscreen all at once without slowdown or frame rate jitters. In addition, Serious Sam 3: BFE has gotten note for having some very detailed graphics, especially considering that it's a downloadable game.
