Serious Sam

[XoPachi]

Holy. Shit.
I LOVE these damn games.

I've been playing Serious Sam since a classmate let me borrow Next Encounter on GameCube in 6th grade and I was hooked ever since.
Of the main games (none of the spinoffs interest me) I like all of them. I haven't tried 4 and it looks like ass, but that would likely be the first one I actually don't like if it plays how I think it would.
I'm going back through 1, 2, and NE and they've all just been so much fun. 1 is WAY the Hell harder than the latter 2, but those make up for the drop in frenzied pace for more variety in the actual levels so I still appreciate them just as much.
I might go back to 3 later when I have the time. I remember that being the hardest one.

[Air Master Burst]

Always loved Serious Sam, but Ugh-Zan was one of the crappiest final bosses in FPS history.

I was all excited when he first showed up for the chase to the pyramid, which probably made the shitty gimmick "fight" against him that much more deflating.

[XoPachi]

One thing I like about the bosses of the series at least is just how all of them are huge. Varying degrees of huge with final bosses usually being FUCK huge. That's an ideal for me when it comes to video games.
Just make them bigger then me.

[Air Master Burst]

Have you tried Lost Planet 2 yet? Most of the game is kinda shit but the bosses are impressive as hell.

Lost Planet 1 was a much better game, but it didn't have bosses on the same scale.

Apparently Lost Planet 3 is a thing that exists.

[Mischief Maker]

I haven't tried 4 and it looks like ass, but that would likely be the first one I actually don't like if it plays how I think it would.

4 has the best weapon balance in the series and the enemies are pretty uniformly fun. The level design can be a little anemic in spots. There are some great combat setpieces, but there's a lot of levels that just don't feel like they've reached their full potential. I'm one of the lucky few who never had any trouble running the Serious Engine 4 at playable framerates so I can't speak to stability, apparently it's a big CPU hog.

Serious Sam: Siberian Mayhem is the standalone expansion to 4 with level design by enthusiasts from the mod community and it is hands-down the best Serious Sam game ever. Ideas that were half-assed in 4 are more than full-assed here. And the engine has seen a series of optimization tune-ups that never reached 4. Note that like Second Encounter, the difficulty is tuned for someone who already beat 4, but if you're already a Serious Sam veteran you should easily pick up on the nuances.

[XoPachi]

4 has the best weapon balance in the series and the enemies are pretty uniformly fun. The level design can be a little anemic in spots. There are some great combat setpieces, but there's a lot of levels that just don't feel like they've reached their full potential. I'm one of the lucky few who never had any trouble running the Serious Engine 4 at playable framerates so I can't speak to stability, apparently it's a big CPU hog.

Serious Sam: Siberian Mayhem is the standalone expansion to 4 with level design by enthusiasts from the mod community and it is hands-down the best Serious Sam game ever. Ideas that were half-assed in 4 are more than full-assed here. And the engine has seen a series of optimization tune-ups that never reached 4. Note that like Second Encounter, the difficulty is tuned for someone who already beat 4, but if you're already a Serious Sam veteran you should easily pick up on the nuances.

You know what? That's my next Steam purchase then.
If you know anything about me, FULL ASSED is what I live for.

[BryanM]

I've been playing Serious Sam since a classmate let me borrow Next Encounter on GameCube in 6th grade and I was hooked ever since.

Make me feel old by putting dates on things : (

Back in highschool, when the demo for the original game dropped, me and my friends thought it was very cool. Bullet points!

* The engine was amazing. 60+ frames per second on normal hardware. And in an era where the Silent Hill fog and pop-in was haunting every game under the sun from dinosaur hunters to feisty bobcats, being able to see to the horizon was mind-blowing.

* The stage just kept going on and on and on. You could fit like 30 copies of DOOM's first level into that thing.

* Croteam growing up in a different culture had them make decisions that felt fresh. "Notorious Mental" is a wonderful bit of engrish.

* The arcade style shooty-shooty gameplay was nice. This was right when FPS's just universally abandoned single player altogether, too: Quake 3, Unreal Tournament Hyper Fighting, Duke Nukem was taking a little nap, etc. PvP used to be a stapled-on extra, but has now subsumed the genre. It reminds me of the worst of the gacha games: maximizing profit while minimizing labor put in, of course the corpos would make the FPS go that way...

[Sir Ilpalazzo]

Serious Sam 3 absolutely rules. I think it's one of the best games in the genre; the only one to match (and exceed, in some ways) the classic Doom games. It does have its weaknesses (a couple lame enemy types, a weak intro) but it's leaps and bounds above the earlier entries in the series; its level design benefits tremendously from being properly built around checkpoints instead of marathons loosely structured around save-anywhere play.

I've really got to play Serious Sam 4 someday.

[Mischief Maker]

I've really got to play Serious Sam 4 someday.

Honestly you should skip 4 and go straight to Siberian Mayhem.

[Air Master Burst]

Serious Sam 3 absolutely rules. I think it's one of the best games in the genre; the only one to match (and exceed, in some ways) the classic Doom games. It does have its weaknesses (a couple lame enemy types, a weak intro) but it's leaps and bounds above the earlier entries in the series; its level design benefits tremendously from being properly built around checkpoints instead of marathons loosely structured around save-anywhere play.

I've really got to play Serious Sam 4 someday.

While my nostalgia always prefers SS1, I would generally agree with this sentiment, although I personally put Strife and the first Quarantine above Doom 2.

I also really need to play 4.

[guigui]

I’ve never tried this series, or any FPS seriously anyway.

I like myself some nice action games, where a bit of thinking is required to improve your performance.
There is a collection of Serious Sam titles ont the Switch. Description says "Serious Sam Collection includes all content from Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter, Serious Sam HD: The Second Encounter and Serious Sam 3: BFE, including The Legend of the Beast and Jewel of the Nile expansions."

Any goodness for me in here ?