Serious Sam: The First Encounter

A promotional image for Serious Sam featuring the game’s logo in bold yellow text with red outline at the top. Below is a stylized bomb icon with an angry face on a yellow starburst badge with red border. In the foreground stands the protagonist Sam “Serious” Stone in a white t-shirt and jeans, wielding an oversized minigun, set against a black background.

It’d been a long time since I’d thought about Serious Sam but at some point I had added it to my GOG wishlist and when The Gamer’s Tavern Secret Santa 2025 came around, I was gifted a copy. I knew right away I was going to dive back in because I, still to this day, think about the headless guys screaming AHHHHHHHHHHH! as they run at you. If you’ve played, Doom, Hexen/Heretic, Wolfenstein 3D, or any of the myriad of games that Serious Sam pays homage to, you’ll feel right at home here. The games whole vibe is pick up gun, point at enemy, click, repeat but with a dash of humor that most of the other games listed don’t provide. In fact, that’s the key differentiator here.

First-person shooter gameplay set in a bright desert environment. The player aims a shotgun while moving across sandy dunes toward several humanoid enemies approaching from mid-distance. Blood stains and debris dot the sand. In the background are rocky mountains and a small stone temple-like structure. A classic HUD overlays the screen, showing score, ammo, health, armor, and a central crosshair.

It didn’t take long for me to feel the age of the game just in that it’s definitely of a specific era in terms of technology. It took some tweaking to get working properly on Linux through Heroic but once I did, the game ran pretty flawlessly overall. I don’t think I’d ever finished Serious Sam so it was nice to blast my way through the various levels and stumble upon some secrets, even if I never did go actually looking for any of them.

A towering, horned demon-like creature stands atop an ancient Egyptian-style temple at dusk, framed by stone pillars carved with hieroglyphs and lit by flaming braziers. The monster raises its arms in a threatening pose, looming over the monumental architecture beneath a darkening sky.

At the end of the day, is this going to blow your mind? No, but it’s not meant to. It’s the perfect “I’ve got 10 minutes” kind of game where you can just pick it up and put it down at any point and I think that’s its biggest selling point even to this day. In a world where we’re given games where sometimes it’s an hour between save points, it’s refreshing to be able to get in and get out and laugh while doing it.