Serious Sam (series) - Uncle...?. 10 Games in Which USA Saves the World
- Top 10 Games in Which Americans Save the World
- Code Name: S.T.E.A.M. – Abraham Lincoln will teach you a lesson
- Wolfenstein (series) – hunting down Nazis
- Alpha Protocol – Top Secret and Highly Confidential
- Metal Wolf Chaos – mecha-president
- Saints Row IV – A president with a pair
- Broforce – strength in numbers
- The Bureau: XCOM Declassified – green men attack again
- Tom Clancy's The Division 2 – Apocalypse, again
- Serious Sam (series) - Uncle...?
Serious Sam (series) - Uncle...?
SERIOUS SAM:
- Developer: Croteam
- Publisher: various, including Gathering of Developers, Take 2 Intractive, Devolver Digital
- Genre: shooter
- Platform: various
- Release: original release in 2001; the series is still active
It's hard to find a game that would be further from reality than this one. The adventures of "Serious Sam" have about as much to do with seriousness as a porcupine with a cable-operated excavator. That said, it doesn't stop it from being a great game, or, in fact, a great series of first-person shooters – corny, simple in principle, and devilishly hard during the actual gameplay. In these games, agility and a good eye are more important than logic, reasoning, and... well, pretty much everything, except maybe a sense of humor.
What about Prince?
Sam "Serious" Stone shows great resemblance to another video game character – the Duke from the once-cult Duke Nukem series. The hero created by 3D Realms had a slightly more subtle sense of humor and showed a distinct weakness for cigars, but that's actually the only (relatively) noticeable difference between the two. The heroes could just as well be brothers – they're both big-muscle dudes who only think about killing aliens, and sleep with a shotgun under the pillow.
The title Sam is a very American American – he walks and talks as if he was taken straight from a parody of action films of the 80s. Even his name is a pun on an American stereotype (who hasn't heard of Uncle Sam?). You're a soldier with has only one goal – the ultimate extermination of all sorts of alien creatures, the legions of the main villain of the series, the ominous Mental. The actual scenario of Serious Sam itself is – oddly enough – more complicated, and involves, in particular, time travel and... the search for the Holy Grail. The plot, however, is a mere pretext for a continuous, unrestrained, and bloody saving of the world, using a mechanical saw, a machine gun, or a grenade launcher.
Why is it worth it?
Serious Sam provides endless deposits of bad guys to mow down, combined with a solid dose of humor. It's the perfect game to relax after a long day at work. Higher levels of difficulty will be a challenge even to the most demanding fans of first-person shooters – for example, opponents periodically become invisible in the Mental mode. Real serious business.
