izigame.me

I just finished up second encounter, but the store page for that no longer exists. so instead, I'll write up my review on the original (which I played some time ago in full) then tack on my thoughts about TSE at the end.
in 1992, four high school kids from croatia wanted to make their own video game and formed a company called Croteam to do so. the problem was, they didn't have the kind of money necessary to license out a big game engine like Idtech or unreal. at the time there was no unity equivalent. so they did what any aspiring 90's game programmer would do and made their own. enter the Serious Engine. The serious engine is mostly known for being the first 3D engine that could render hundreds of fully polygonal 3D enemies on screen at once while maintaining decent performance.
serious sam was made specifically to show off this feature, and as a result relies on enemy number moreso than anything else. why put ten enemies in an arena when you can put a hundred? the level design was more flat and linear than say, doom, essentially being a series of rooms that you clear the enemies from.
this game is also known for its weapon system. garnering a huge and satisfying variety including a chaingun, shotgun, laser gun, cannon, and more. and you'll need them all, trust me. the actual variety of enemies on display is staggering even without the sheer number of them on screen at once. headless gunners, bulls, skeleton werewolf kleers, vaguely human gnars, it's amazing how many kinds of enemies there are even in just the first encounter.
and the reason you need so many weapons to combat them is due to how uniquely they all act. shotguns or pistols are best for headless gunners, who stay back and shoot from afar but are very low on health. gnars rush you but are a bit beefier, shotguns work best against them. a single rocket can take down the walking laser-shooting tanks.
switching weapons frequently, managing your ammo, prioritizing your targets efficiently, clearing each spot room by room, it all adds up to a gameplay loop vaguely reminiscent of SMASH TV, but in first person.
there are a few problems, some of which were addressed by The Second Encounter. first of all, the random difficulty spikes. Kleer alley is harder than anything else in the game, even the final boss. TSE adds powerups and some new weapons that help immensely in this regard, but it doesn't iron out all the kinks.
environments are flat and static. I'll admit I never thought about it while playing TFE, but the walls and floors are never part of the combat. in TSE they make greater use of things like moving floors and bounce pads. sometimes for the worse, admittedly, but it adds much needed variety to how combat encounters play out.
some of TSE's new weapons would also be a hearty addition to backport to TFE. the flamethrower alone would make that one frog boss fight infinitely more manageable. and the sniper rifle was their answer to just how cheap "scorpions on rooftops" can be.
finally, the ending. it's lackluster in both, but at least TFE's final boss felt like a final boss. TSE's feels like more like there was supposed to be another chapter, then there just wasn't.
highly recommend both games if you're a fan of arcadey shooting and can put up with some weird difficulty choices. also, online co-op. it has that and it's fun.