Not-so-serious publishers Devolver Digital have announced today in a not-so-serious post that they've acquired Serious Sam developers Croteam. Seriously. Well, the tone of the announcement isn't serious but it has seriously happened. It's a business love story for the books.
]]>Sam Stone Cold Serious has a new adventure Serious Sam 4 coming out shortly but if you're looking for a bit of the old before you sample the new, you can grab Serious Sam: The First Encounter free to keep. It's free for just two days as part of GOG's autumn sale. A deal so good you just want to "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"
]]>Google have now made their cloud gaming service, Stadia, completely free to anyone who has a Gmail account. That means you no longer have to buy their pricey Premiere Edition to get started, all you have to do is sign up online.
On top of that, to help keep people entertained in isolation they've made their premium subscription service, Stadia Pro, free for two months. It's basically a free trial that gives you full access to nine games, which sounds like a pretty good deal to me.
]]>Here's one for the space-goggles crowd to jump on. Croteam, the plucky studio behind the Serious Sam series and the lovely philoso-puzzler The Talos Principle, are running a 26th anniversary Steam sale for the next two days. While offering good deals across the board, the most surprising thing is a bundle of all their virtual reality games, currently going for 92% off its usual price. A cheap and cheerful way to pad your library if you're skint after spending hundreds of quid on exotic headgear. Below, the must-haves of this sale.
]]>The unpausing yell of a headless bomb-handed man charging towards me should fill me with dread, and yet I'm happy to see the daft gits again in a new trailer for Serious Sam 4. Four years after the game was once due to launch, developers Croteam are finally starting to open up more about their frenetic backpedalling first-person shooter. It's called Serious Sam 4: Planet Badass now, for starters, in case anyone missed how daft it's all meant to be. And it seems to be leaving deserts behind, venturing into lush countryside. Here, watch this morning's new trailer.
]]>AAAA AAA AAAAAA? A A AAAAAA AAAAA AA AAAA AAAAAAAAAAAA. AAA A AAA, AAAAA AAA AA AAA AAAA, AAAAAA AAA AAA AAAA.
]]>Serious Sam 4 is not at E3 this year but Los Angeles still echoes with a familiar yell of "ᵃᵃᵃᵃᵃᵃᵃᵃᵃᵃaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAＡＡＡＡＡＡＡＡＡＡＡＡＡＡ!" Y'see Croteam have announced Serious Sam VR: The Last Hope [Steam page], a cybergoggle spin-off from their monsterblasting FPS. It's another VR wave shooter, sure, but with Serious Sam's over-the-top action amplified by waving two motion controllers as cartoon guns.
]]>Do you remember Hammerwatch? It was a fantasy-themed hack and slash that survived the greenlight and released to great reception back in 2013. Developers Crackshell (formerly Transflash) have taken the same formula, applied abundant doses of ᵃᵃᵃᵃᵃᵃᵃᵃᵃᵃᵃᵃᵃᵃᵃᵃᵃᵃᵃᵃaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAA, and shook firmly.
What came out is Serious Sam's Bogus Detour [TIGSource thread] a frantic 2D shooter, all action and no philosophy, unlike its bigger brother. There is no planned release date, but there are plenty of videos and gifs to watch.
]]>Believe it or not, this month sees Croteam's Serious Sam [official site] series celebrate its 15-year anniversary. If, like me, that realisation makes you incredibly feel old, the Croatian developers have just the thing to perk you/us up: they've released the engine that powered Sam "Serious" Stone's first and second outings at the turn of the millennium free-of-charge.
]]>I'm with Graham on Make Frivolous Fun Things Day. I respect developers who come up with goofy jokes for April Fools' Day then actually follow through on them, though I'd like 'em even more if they made goofy things whenever they wanted rather than wait until the sanctioned day, a day when I'll be suspicious of everything odd even when its makers swears blind it is real.
So I was wary when The Talos Principle [official site] Croteam announced they'd added the voice of Serious Sam from the eponymous shooty shooty murderfest series to their quiet puzzle game. But no, they really have, and it's free for a few days. The game's on sale too.
]]>We should be seeing and hopefully playing Serious Sam 4 by the end of this year, but until then you'll just have to make do with fan remakes of the series' first two games with an entire new campaign, bosses, an upgraded engine, 64-bit compatibility, Steam trading cards, and buzzword buzzword buzz buzz buzz I am a bee. It's a bit odd given that Croteam already released remakes of its own in Serious Sam HD, but here we are. The team at Alligator Pit has Croteam's full support, so it's not like anyone is stepping on anybody else's toes. Serious Sam Classics: Revolution is now on Steam Early Access, and you can see it in action below.
]]>How many bundles are there? So many bundles. And here's another from the folks at Indie Royale. This time it's what they're calling a Lightning bundle, perhaps because it falls outside their normal release schedule. These types of bundle will, I believe, focus on one series or developer and for the first it's Serious Sam. So, what do you get?
]]>Some companies' DRM is stupidly cruel, punishing only those who have legitimately purchased the game, and not those who pirate it. Well, most companies' DRM is that. Serious Sam 3's DRM is brilliantly cruel, punishing only those who pirated it. By relentlessly pursuing them with a giant invincible armoured scorpion. As revealed by Dark Side Of Gaming, only those who unlawfully duplicate the game encounter this immortal enemy, who haunts them from the opening moments. You can see it in action below.
]]>Serious Sam: Double D is the side-scrolling indie spinoff to the irreverent FPS series. Sort of like the inverse of a ‘90s shareware sidescroller evolving into an irreverent FPS series, with continued 2D spinoffs. There are scattered pop culture references, gouts of blood and a wisecracking, macho hero. Observe as I try to give you my thoughts without referring to Duke Nukem even once.
]]>Not too long ago, John brought you words and pictures in an attempt to describe the madness of Serious Sam: Double D. Now, Mommy’s Best Games have sent an ambassador forth to describe things in his own words. And he has some footage for us all. It’s trailer time and I’d highly recommend having some tranquilisers on hand for when this one’s done.
]]>Serious Sam: Kamikaze Attack! It's a Unity based horizontal platformer. You're in the role of one of the series loveable Headless Kamikaze's, chasing after our man Sam.
]]>There's a lovely promotional initiative taking place for Serious Sam 3. Quintin brought news of it back in March. A few indie developers, whose games Devolver and Croteam enjoy, have been asked to make a game in their own style set in the Serious Sam universe. I've had a chance to see one of them running - Serious Sam Double D from Mommy's Best Games. Vuvuzelators, chimp amputees and gun stacking within.
]]>We all love the Serious Sam games. Who doesn't enjoy clicking on bad guys in the face to make them die? But it's hard to take them too seriously when Sam's always been limited to one weapon per hand. What self respectable action hero doesn't dream of wielding a small army's worth of firearms at any given time? Serious Sam: Double D looks like it's set to rectify this heinous design oversight from the rest of the series. I introduce you to Gunstacking.
]]>A great thinker, when first confronted with the teenage delirium of Doom, made one of the most astute, piercing and brilliant observations ever to be applied to a videogame. Yes, this is pretty good.... but imagine if you could talk to the monsters. Now that would be something. And it would. It would be a glorious thing, a dream only yet partially achieved, that hundreds chase. But I come not to talk of the future - I come to talk of a present. A present where hundreds chase you.
]]>Oho, we've not said too much about the rejiggery of Serious Sam, have we? I fear it got a little lost amidst all the wartorn modernity, ages of dragons, deadly leavings and lands of borders of recent weeks, alas. But it's here now. As in, right now, as of today. Steam is its only current home, where it's busy pulling the crab most muscular in the hope of earning $20/£18 (damn you, exchange rate) of your esteemed funds. I'm in two minds about Sam HD. On the one hand - been there, done that. On the other, well, you know. Serious Friggin' Sam. Don't make 'em like that anymore, and all that. Sniff. Below, a glut of agreeably insane promotional videos that we really should have put up earlier. They won't improve your understanding of the game one bit, but they will brighten/strangen/unsettle your day. Bless you, Crotream, you mad fools.
]]>Now here's an especially strange little tale. The actor responsible for the voice of Serious Sam (i.e. like Duke Nukem, but not) has major money troubles. To fix 'em, he's selling his gravelly tones for a mere buck a word. Maybe you're a game developer in need of a cheap voice actor; maybe you're a mod team about to make the critical mistake of getting your sister's lisping boyfriend to record all your project's dialogue. Maybe you'd just love a personalised, unique Serious Sam voicemail message. Or maybe, just maybe, the idea of getting a part-time stripclub DJ called 'John J. Dick' to record any dialogue you ask of him is too good an opportunity to pass up.
]]>
