{"id":57,"date":"2007-02-28T12:28:57","date_gmt":"2007-02-28T17:28:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/archives\/57"},"modified":"2019-07-05T14:25:47","modified_gmt":"2019-07-05T21:25:47","slug":"serious-sam-the-second-encounter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/archives\/57","title":{"rendered":"Serious Sam: The Second Encounter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/02\/ss2e-beginning.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/02\/ss2e-beginning-300x225.png\" title=\"Not Chichen Itza\" alt=\"Not Chichen Itza\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-3215\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/02\/ss2e-beginning-300x225.png 300w, https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/02\/ss2e-beginning-768x576.png 768w, https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/02\/ss2e-beginning.png 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>This time around, I was in the mood for something mindless.  It&#8217;s been a while since I played a first-person shooter, so I pulled out <em>Serious Sam: The Second Encounter<\/em>, which is not to be confused with <em>Serious Sam 2<\/em>.  They&#8217;re both sequels to <em>Serious Sam: The First Encounter<\/em>, but this one is older and uses approximately the same graphics engine as the original.  &#8220;First, Second, Two&#8221; isn&#8217;t the best numbering scheme in the world, but I&#8217;ve seen worse.  (<em>Dark Forces<\/em>\/<em>Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight<\/em>\/<em>Jedi Knight 2<\/em> comes to mind, as does <em>Heretic<\/em>\/<em>Hexen<\/em>\/<em>Hexen 2<\/em>\/<em>Heretic 2<\/em>.)<\/p>\n<p>Like the original <em>Serious Sam<\/em>, this is a big, loud, dumb game that knows it&#8217;s big, loud, and dumb, and sets out to be the very best game it can be without sacrificing the bigness, loudness, and dumbness.  At the time when it was released, games like <em>Half-Life<\/em> and <em>Deus Ex<\/em> were starting to turn the FPS genre into something more sophisticated, something where the action was part of a narrative set in a coherent world, where there was more to the player&#8217;s actions than shooting everything. <span class=\"footnote_referrer\"><a role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" onclick=\"footnote_moveToReference_57_1('footnote_plugin_reference_57_1_1');\" onkeypress=\"footnote_moveToReference_57_1('footnote_plugin_reference_57_1_1');\" ><sup id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_57_1_1\" class=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text\">1<\/sup><\/a><span id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_57_1_1\" class=\"footnote_tooltip\">In a way, this was not so much a new development as the genre returning to its roots.  <em>Ultima Underworld<\/em> is a game in this more story-driven and less action-based mode, and although it&#8217;s not usually classified as a FPS, it was the inspiration for <em>Wolfenstein 3D<\/em> and thus for the FPS genre as a whole.  But after the phenomenal success of <em>Doom<\/em>, this kind of design took a backseat to emphasis on graphics technology.<\/span><\/span><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_57_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_57_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top right', relative: true, offset: [10, 10], });<\/script>  The designers of <em>Serious Sam<\/em> consciously and deliberately rejected all that.  This is a game where the thought &#8220;Should I blow that up?&#8221; is immediately followed by &#8220;Sure, why not?  It couldn&#8217;t hurt.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>To the extent that <em>Serious Sam<\/em> added anything important to the genre, it&#8217;s because of its improved technology and its perspective on what&#8217;s gone before.  The technology is obvious: the graphics take advantage of advanced techniques that couldn&#8217;t have been done practically in <em>Doom<\/em>.  There&#8217;s even a special demo area with <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Utah_teapot\">Utah teapots<\/a> to show off what the engine can do.  But the perspective on the past, while less obvious, is just as important.  When <em>Serious Sam<\/em> was released, most people took one look at the guy on the box and concluded that it was a <em>Duke Nukem<\/em> clone.  This is wrong: it&#8217;s an <em>everything<\/em> clone.  The designers seem to have chosen a distinctive element from each major old-school FPS written up to that point.  <em>Duke Nukem 3D<\/em> provided the template for the macho, wisecracking player character.  <em>Quake<\/em> provided the leaping Fiends, the obvious model for the Kleer Skeletons, one of the best monsters in the game.  From <em>System Shock<\/em>, we get Autobombs, remade here as Headless Kamikaze.  From <em>Rise of the Triad<\/em>, the dual pistols.  From <em>Powerslave<\/em>, the ancient Egyptian setting.  I could go on.<\/p>\n<p><em>The Second Encounter<\/em> isn&#8217;t set in Egypt, though.  It starts near a Mayan temple, which is rougly equivalent to Egypt from a level-designer&#8217;s point of view, except that the texture maps are different and the exterior scenes contain vegetation.  I think this is the first FPS I&#8217;ve played in which you can actually use your <em>Doom<\/em>-style chainsaw to cut down trees.  Or, of course, you can pull out your rocket launcher blow them up.<\/p>\n<div class=\"speaker-mute footnotes_reference_container\"> <div class=\"footnote_container_prepare\"><p><span role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" class=\"footnote_reference_container_label pointer\" onclick=\"footnote_expand_collapse_reference_container_57_1();\">&#x202F;<\/span><span role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" class=\"footnote_reference_container_collapse_button\" style=\"display: none;\" onclick=\"footnote_expand_collapse_reference_container_57_1();\">[<a id=\"footnote_reference_container_collapse_button_57_1\">+<\/a>]<\/span><\/p><\/div> <div id=\"footnote_references_container_57_1\" style=\"\"><table class=\"footnotes_table footnote-reference-container\"><caption class=\"accessibility\">References<\/caption> <tbody> \r\n\r\n<tr class=\"footnotes_plugin_reference_row\"> <th scope=\"row\" class=\"footnote_plugin_index_combi pointer\"  onclick=\"footnote_moveToAnchor_57_1('footnote_plugin_tooltip_57_1_1');\"><a id=\"footnote_plugin_reference_57_1_1\" class=\"footnote_backlink\"><span class=\"footnote_index_arrow\">&#8593;<\/span>1<\/a><\/th> <td class=\"footnote_plugin_text\">In a way, this was not so much a new development as the genre returning to its roots.  <em>Ultima Underworld<\/em> is a game in this more story-driven and less action-based mode, and although it&#8217;s not usually classified as a FPS, it was the inspiration for <em>Wolfenstein 3D<\/em> and thus for the FPS genre as a whole.  But after the phenomenal success of <em>Doom<\/em>, this kind of design took a backseat to emphasis on graphics technology.<\/td><\/tr>\r\n\r\n <\/tbody> <\/table> <\/div><\/div><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> function footnote_expand_reference_container_57_1() { jQuery('#footnote_references_container_57_1').show(); jQuery('#footnote_reference_container_collapse_button_57_1').text('\u2212'); } function footnote_collapse_reference_container_57_1() { jQuery('#footnote_references_container_57_1').hide(); jQuery('#footnote_reference_container_collapse_button_57_1').text('+'); } function footnote_expand_collapse_reference_container_57_1() { if (jQuery('#footnote_references_container_57_1').is(':hidden')) { footnote_expand_reference_container_57_1(); } else { footnote_collapse_reference_container_57_1(); } } function footnote_moveToReference_57_1(p_str_TargetID) { footnote_expand_reference_container_57_1(); var l_obj_Target = jQuery('#' + p_str_TargetID); if (l_obj_Target.length) { jQuery( 'html, body' ).delay( 0 ); jQuery('html, body').animate({ scrollTop: l_obj_Target.offset().top - window.innerHeight * 0.2 }, 380); } } function footnote_moveToAnchor_57_1(p_str_TargetID) { footnote_expand_reference_container_57_1(); var l_obj_Target = jQuery('#' + p_str_TargetID); if (l_obj_Target.length) { jQuery( 'html, body' ).delay( 0 ); jQuery('html, body').animate({ scrollTop: l_obj_Target.offset().top - window.innerHeight * 0.2 }, 380); } }<\/script>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This time around, I was in the mood for something mindless. It&#8217;s been a while since I played a first-person shooter, so I pulled out Serious Sam: The Second Encounter, which is not to be confused with Serious Sam 2. They&#8217;re both sequels to Serious Sam: The First Encounter, but this one is older and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[102,105,109,106,108,80,103,81,107,104],"class_list":["post-57","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fps","tag-doom","tag-duke-nukem","tag-powerslavve","tag-quake","tag-rise-of-the-triad","tag-serious-sam","tag-serious-sam-the-first-encounter","tag-serious-sam-the-second-encounter","tag-system-shock","tag-ultima-underworld"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5833,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57\/revisions\/5833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}