Intervue Digest Net Party: Serious Sam (V3.0)

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Serious Sam from June 16, 2001 Net Party

Serious Sam Stats

	Game Play
	Environment
	Speed (P3-450)
	Networking (w/AMD K62-400 Dedicated)
	Dedicated Server: Yes
	Players Require CDs: Yes, only to load the game.
	The Good: Nice graphics and large levels. Varied monsters and environments. Just plain fun with co-op play. If you ever thought fighting your way out of hell would be fun, then buy this game. It will be. The Bad: Seriously tanked sometimes on a AMD K62-550 Processor with TNT2 Ultra card. Seriously Sucked on AMDK62-500 with Voodoo 3 card. System requirements warned of having AMDK63 at least. No Save Game for Co-op with a dedicated server.

Serious Sam Resources

Current Version:

USA V1.02 / EURO V1.02 (6/16/01)

Map and Mods:

None downloaded yet. (6/16/01)

Serious Sam Home Page
The usual stuff. Patches, downloads, and other support. (6/16/01)

Croteam Home Page
Developers of Serious Sam. Detailed FAQs for troubleshooting and workarounds. (6/16/01)

Gathering of Developers Home Page
Publishers of Serious Sam. (6/16/01)

About Serious Sam
by Joseph Delgado (Jaded Joe)
I'm going to stop with the serious puns now before I disgust myself. The past couple of net-parties have been kind of stale. We get together, play some games, and then when six o'clock comes around we wind down and Pezboy gets ready to go home. We say "It was fun." with as much enthusiasm as going food shopping.

That wasn't the case with Serious Sam, we were all glued to the game and it was well after eight o'clock when we stopped playing. Keep in mind we start playing games at 11 AM or so. By the time we got to Serious Sam we already had a few hours in with other games.

At six, seven, and even at eight o'clock Pez kept saying in a few minutes I have to go, then half-an-hour later we're still playing. Even Miss Bad, who I thought retired, liked the game, but she had to suffer with the poorest performance using a AMDK62-500 with a now dated and out of business Voodoo 3 card. I felt really bad and there was nothing I could do, the settings were already at the lowest detail and resolution possible.

I can probably surmise the game in one paragraph. You fight hordes of increasing harder monsters with some serious firepower (alright I slipped on one). There's no objectives other than going to the next area and killing monsters. I know, I thought it was a dull idea too, but the co-op play brought us back to the days of Quake 2 Co-op and being able to play the game for the first time together--everything was fresh and a lot of fun.

Miss Bad made a good point, that after the first time through it might stop being as much fun. I'll have to double check that one. I tried playing single player and it felt kind of boring, so she might be right.

I still recommend it, it's cheap, has a great graphics engine, and is a lot of fun. It also has a model importer and map editor built in. Just make sure your system can handle it. I didn't have any bad slow downs with a Pentium III-450 and a TNT 2 Ultra card. I also had the settings turned down to the minimum. AMDK62 and Celeron based computers may have some trouble, see I didn't say serious trouble. (6/16/01)