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Serious Sam: The Random Encounter is a turn-based action role-playing video game developed by Netherlands-based indie development studio Vlambeer and published by Devolver Digital. Part of the Serious Sam indie series, it was released for Microsoft Windows on October 24 2011.

Plot[]

Sam "Serious" Stone, after traveling back in time, returns shortly after and reports that "The First Encounter didn't go so well". So, he is sent into the future in order to assassinate Mental. After finding an ally, Sam fights off hundreds of monsters on his way to Mental's temple, but instead of Mental he finds another ally within. The trio exits the temple, only to be ambushed by Ugh-Zan III. He chases them all the way to the Pyramid and even into the spaceship they go aboard. The trio manage to kill Ugh-Zan as they leap from the exploding ship, after which the game promptly ends.

Characters[]

Allies[]

Other[]

Enemies[]

Weapons[]

Gameplay[]

The Random Encounter functions as a mix between an action role-playing game and a Japanese role-playing game. During the open world sequences, the player may roam around freely, but can eventually hit on a randomized mob wave of enemies. These mob waves consist of ridiculously high numbers of enemies of all kinds, where the player is given the task to gun these down. The gun combat is the game's JRPG part, where the player may switch weapons and shoot the weapon selected, choosing a direction, radius, or position to shoot at, as well as using one of the previously gathered items.

During gameplay, the team grows from one to three people, all of them having a turn each, giving the player more ability to take down incoming enemies. Additionally, the action RPG element adds to the combat's turns, where, while enemies are coming nearer, the player may move their characters, as a group, up and down in order to reach out of the aiming boundaries, previously set in the turn's preparation.

Modes[]

There are two modes to choose from in Serious Sam: The Random Encounter. The first mode is

  • The singleplayer campaign, which consists of 3 chapters with 3 levels each.
  • Endless Mode, which pretty much explains itself and is unlocked after beating the campaign once.

You can have up to 3 save files for singleplayer, but you can choose to delete them from the options menu.

Development[]

The Random Encounter was developed from an early sketch Vlambeer made for a game that was set to become a Japanese role-playing-like game. It was released as part of the Serious Sam indie series to promote Serious Sam 3: BFE. However, Vlambeer did not have enough time to make the game before the release of Serious Sam 3. This lead to the game being worked on in several places, including a hotel room, a plane back to the Netherlands, and at home. After a delayed phase in development, the game was released on for Microsoft Windows platforms.

Reception[]

Serious Sam: The Random Encounter received mostly mixed to positive reviews from critics, where Metacritic gave the game an above-average score of 64/100, based on 11 critic reviews,[1] and GameRankings a similar score of 64.43%, based on 14 critic reviews.[2] Soon after the game was released, Ryan Hodge from GamesRadar criticized the game, stating that it "banks so much on the players' collective nostalgia for Serious Sam that it forgets to actually be a good game."[3] However, Christian Donlan from Eurogamer praised the game, and stated "if [the game]'s not enough to get [the player] excited, fans of Croteam's magnificently straightforward blaster should also note that Vlambeer [...] has also crafted the purest game yet when it comes to the pleasures of running backwards and shooting things."[4]

The game's graphics were also praised, Eric Neigher from IGN said "as what's essentially a marketing device, TRE could've ended up in the less-than-glorious ranks of games released to promo fast-food chains, but instead ended up being a really innovative take on an FPS conversion."[5]

References[]

External links[]

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