It's a rather risky approach-ever since Valve's revolutionary Half-Life in 1998, most shooters have focused on trying to justify everything about themselves, in an attempt to give you some sort of reason for all the shooting that's happening. Indeed, much like in these older games, Serious Sam even tallies a score for you based on your kills. In this way, the game is reminiscent of countless classic arcade games-Asteroids, Centipede, Galaxian, and so forth-where the reward for successfully completing a stage was the opportunity to fight your way through something even more difficult. The levels in Serious Sam are progressively more challenging, but most of them are very similar in their basic style. But all this is only to loosely justify the nerve-wracking action sequences in the game, as well as the consistency in the level design. There's some context to why the game is set around the ancient pyramids in Egypt, why Sam's facing an alien menace all by himself, and why his enemies can teleport into the vicinity without any notice. One look at the box-it features Sam wielding a gigantic chaingun against a horde of monsters-and you'll get a pretty good idea of what the game's all about. It's undoubtedly a simple game at heart-but Serious Sam does an excellent job with all the core gameplay elements that are essential to any action game. Then again, the game has a lot of other great qualities, such as its excellent multiplayer mode, its good sound effects, and even its low retail price.

Actually, the sheer numbers of foes you'll face is probably the single most remarkable thing about Serious Sam. It's got a good sense of humor and a distinct style, and it also boasts a very impressive 3D engine that's especially noteworthy for its ability to display a huge number of 3D characters onscreen simultaneously. It's an extremely fast-paced first-person shooter, featuring a great variety of weapons and monsters. You'd be hard-pressed to come up with a game that's anywhere near as intense as Serious Sam, from Croatian developer Croteam.

Serious sam 3 weapons