What do you like about the Serious Sam games? What don't you like? I hated the one game I played, but I may try TSE

If I had to say something negative about the Serious Sam franchise it would be this:
1. It doesn't always know when enough is enough. Though the game's main selling points is stupidly huge waves of monsters there comes a time where it's dragging out the experience just for the sake of huge numbers. Worst example is the last level of Serious Sam 3. Yeah, the first couple of waves of Kleer, Mechanoids and whatever those big four-armed demon things are called are impressive, but then it keeps sending the same fucking wave at you for hours. It doesn't really make the game harder, just duller.
Most levels manage to keep their autism in check and mix it up a little (and give you a breather here and there), but occasionally (usually near the end) you end up with tiresome nonsense like aforementioned.
2. The game relies waay to much on teleporting in monsters. Yeah, I know it's sorta it's style, but it's so fucking lazy from a level design viewpoint. I would love for roaming monster to play a more significant role.

It's mostly the same, but some secrets won't work as originally intended, as they used crazy gravity-bending mechanics that the newer engine doesn't replicate.

i can die then

Remember last time someone said never ever?

the first encounter HD. The level design was terrible, it was all open areas or corridors. The weapons were all shit and felt pathetic, the enemy design is hideous and not very interesting. To me, it's a game lacking in such depth that there is almost nothing to engage with. Managing encounters with the pathetically slow movement speed makes them less interesting and more tiring to fight against, as it's less about how you move and control a combat scenaio, and more about hopefully you can take enough hits to end it and move on to the next once you find yourself in a situation where the slow ass movement speed isn't enough to meaningfully dodge.

I suppose the worst thing would be is how many people called it an old school style shooter. No, it's nothing like Quake, or Doom. Doom only has like, one or two notable horde shooting sequences in the classic games, and it's entirely about managing waves of enemies and projectiles in a frantic and exciting manner, not boringly sweeping your cross hair left and right until the green becomes red and slowly walking around. Quake had levels that felt like they were ripped from Ocarina of Time's playbook for dungeon design way before Ocarina of Time even existed. It had elaborate traps, interconnected vertical chambers and neat shooting sequences and some really fantastic enemy and weapon design that felt horrifying to fight against and satisfying to eliminate, with to this date some of the best weapons around.

If the rest are more of TFE but better/worse, this series is not for me and I question anyones taste who actually enjoys it.

What? You run pretty fast, enough to dodge every projectile and enemy that charges you.

Except headless kamikazes, but you aren't supposed to dodge those.

Thinking back to that frog room in the indoor temple, whatever level that was, no. It became a task of kill as many as you could until you're overwhelmed, then keep killing and slowly dodging until they are all dead or you happen to take a few hits too many.

The movement speed is a symptom of the problem. Many things along with the extremely simplistic and one-track enemy behavior all work together to make the game extremely unsatisfying to play.

Here's a tip, the first couple of levels in BFE are NOT what the game is like. I gave up on the game ages ago because it was muh brown shooter with cover, but they added that as a joke gimmick poorly done imo. After the first couple of levels you get the open fields with the hordes of enemies like a proper SS game

Yeah, that's one of the problems with BFE. It starts off as a corridor shooter till a few levels in and then it gets to the good arena shooter bits. Whereas TFE you had your first Kamikaze wave and a few Kleer skeletons and werebull at the 2nd level and TSE you had quite a few waves of enemies for a first level.

Another problem I have with Serious Sam is that some of the secrets are absolutely retarded. Finding pockets of goodies by scrounging what appears to be a desolate corner of the map is great, but shooting a rocket or hugging a specific section of the wall and taking only a specific powerup is retarded.

I haven't played BFE, no interest. Seems like everything croteam tries to joke about is poorly done and is taken a bit too far with too little impact.

is it like an arena shooter or is it like serious sam where there's just tons of empty open space and enemies home in on you

did you have a tommy gun? tommy gun is essential against frogs

yep, otherwise I doubt the encounter would be possible on the difficulty I played it on.

it wasn't a joke. the game was supposed to actually be a military shooter then was reworked into a SS game. when people say SS3 had a budget of half a million, they're looking over the fact that the game was mostly done before it was even being made as Serious Sam.

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The thread's dead you STUPID FUCKING NIGGER

All 3 of the main series games are fun as fuck. I know everyone says everything's fun with friends, but Serious Sam is probably some of the best co-op gameplay ever. You and your buddy versus huge fucking armies of enemies. No finding keys, no meandering bullshit, just running and gunning.

It's a very specific type of FPS that I wish were more common. The only other horde killing game like this I can think of is Painkiller, and that doesn't have massive horders like Serious Sam.

What am I missing? Are there other games like this out there?

Don't you think they get a bit repetitive and samey? Perhaps that is why there's so few imitators. I'll be honest, however, I think most modern shooters that are made as "throwbacks" to old school shooters are just serious sam clones.

Also, didn't BFE have doom 4's glory kills before doom 4?

Just make another Talos Principle, Croteam, it was surprisingly good.

Amazing engine, tedious and tiresome gameplay. It's a mindless shooter game series with some lazy design and bad animations. Some autists may enjoy them, but I couldn't get myself to. I wish the engine could be used to make something more worthwhile.

I don't usually have any trouble with the repetition because it's pretty much exactly what I want when I feel like playing Serious Sam. I mean, they are repetitive but when I'm in the mood it doesn't really bug me.

And yeah, BFE did have glory kills but the difference was they didn't provide you with any health and became virtually useless after the first level because you could still take damage while going through the animation.

That was more annoying than anything considering how fast the fuckers move, and then the final boss was lame as hell too

First time playing SS
Kinda hard on normal though, but heck it is fun mowing down hordes that actually do have a chance to kill you if you're not paying attention. I hate the dickmoves putting before a corner or just plain Kleers in general, fuck those clopping sounds and there stupidly durable bones

*putting Kleers on the corner
Fug

1st encounter is the only good one but it's really good.

you mean Painkiller clones

Serious Sam games, just like Doom, has monsters with different strengths and weaknesses that take different approach in attacking player, forcing the player to adapt

in games like nuDoom though, the monsters just kinda run at you. think zombie games with faster enemies

git gud

BFE didn't have piñata enemies as a substitute for health regeneration as a substitute for competent level design, no.

I had physical copy of first encounter and now i have second encounter on steam
also SS3:bfe, which I aint gonna touch (because I heard good things about it :^)

I liked the games even thought they started to feel pretty monotonous after some time
The game feels hollow, filling those broad plains with repetitive enemies doesnt help but to make you feel very much alone.

The gun variety is great but not much effort were put into them.
There isnt much kick behind the weapons, with the exception of the cannon. Every other gun feels very lackluster.
The most interesting thing in Serious Sam games, is the enemy variety, their design choices are very bizarre and occasionally pretty creepy. The game could be "serious" horror shooter, but instead wants to be a silly circus with big guns, one-liner spewing protagonist and colorful well lit places.

They're decent games but not "out of the ordinary".

I recently played through TFE and TSE for the first time a few weeks ago. I thought they were a lot fun. I played it on Serious, and looked up the locations for secret guns, because fuck you I'm not missing the fucking minigun and rocket launcher when I'm playing on Serious difficulty. BFE is also good, but it takes way too long to get going.

Also, I wanted to add to this:

I was joining random multiplayer games a few weeks ago and luckily ran into a Holla Forums co-op group. They play one of the SS games every saturday. It's fun. Search for serious saturdays on steam.

I don't see the entertainment in getting frame perfect at such a boring game

What I like about Serious Sam is the oldschool shooter style of one player versus many, many varied enemies, mowing them down in hectic fast-pased action.

What I don't like so much about Serious Sam is the oldschool shooter structure in most every other regard. Each mission is a disconnected map, you can never go back to a previous mission, there are exactly a certain amount of enemy spawns and weapons/ammo/health items ever. Call me a heretic, but I'd really like Serious Sam's style of action in a more modern adventure/FPS overall game structure instead. Maybe even with more equipment to find and equip and the like.

Also, nothing against the enemy ideas or anything, I like the wacky mess of crazy things that Mental threw together with magic and science or just made because he say them on a horror movie. I like that Serious Sam isn't boring serious business nothing but other generic human soldiers garbage A LOT. But the actual designs of most monsters never did much for me at all. So I'd keep the enemy concepts, (or make them even wackier,) but redesign their visuals.

With that said, if I were going to just make one small mod-level change, it'd be to simply raise the caps on health/armor/ammo. It's always bugged me since day one of playing original Doom how shooters like to give you more health/ammo/etc than you can actually hold. If I do real good and get to a loot-filled spot in good shape, why shouldn't I be rewarded by being in even better shape after scooping it up? Instead, with the caps, whether you came in barely alive or doing great, you'll often get refilled to the same capped state either way. Simply having to leave more stuff behind isn't much of a reward for doing better in the previous big battle. Looser caps would fix that.