Serious Sam is the title of a series of first-person shooters created by the Croatian development team Croteam.

Serious Sam is the title of a series of first-person shooters created by the Croatian development team Croteam. Originally released for the PC market only, Serious Sam's rising popularity resulted in the porting of the series to a number of different platforms, including the Microsoft Xbox, Nintendo GameCube, Sony PlayStation 2 and Xbox Live Arcade among others.

The series follows the adventures of hero Sam "Serious" Stone and his fight against the forces of the notorious extraterrestrial overlord Mental who seeks to destroy humanity.

The series' gameplay could be seen as a bit of a throwback to earlier first-person shooters. Released during a time where shooters were becoming increasingly realistic and more concerned with "authenticity", Serious Sam offered up traditional, Quake-style shooting. However, the more modern technology of the time allowed for a new take on that classic formula. Closed-in corridors are mostly replaced with wide-open environments, small groups of enemies are replaced by dozens attacking at any given time, and there are many hidden areas and treasures to find, often in obscure and counter-intuitive locations. Combat makes up most of the games, with Sam's only help being NETRICSA (NEuro-TRonically Implanted Combat Situation Analyser), an advanced computer AI surgically implanted in his brain.

NETRICSA serves as an in-game strategy guide, cataloguing encountered enemies and weapons, and at the same time providing bits about the background story and hints on how to progress. Ammunition and weapons are plentiful, and guns, for the most part, do not need to be reloaded. Enemy designs are whimsical and often take inspiration from mythology and fantasy, and include anything from flying harpies, to giant bipedal cybernetic monsters, to headless suicide-bombers.

Serious Sam features cooperative gameplay, something not commonly seen in modern PC first-person shooters. Besides network/online play, Serious Sam also allows for split screen action supporting up to 4 players and this is an even rarer multiplayer feature for PC games these days, although very common in gaming consoles.

Screenshots.

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About Giampaolo Rossi.

Fond of computer and video games. Stay informed of the latest news on games for Linux and Android. The future of gaming is in Linux. All you need to know about How to play Windows games on Linux.