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Serious Sam Advance (Serious Sam in North America) is a first-person shooter video game that was developed by Climax Group and published by Global Star Software, now known as Take-Two Interactive. The game is a spin-off of the Serious Sam series for the Game Boy Advance.
Plot[]
After the events of Serious Sam: The First Encounter, Sam warps back to Earth. A while later, Earth's scientists figure out how to manipulate the Time-Lock so that it can be used to warp to any time period. The scientists use it to both check out other time periods and to ensure that Mental will not try to warp them in order to change the course of history. Everything seems normal, until three agents don't return from an expedition. Concerned about this, a group of scientists decide to send Serious Sam back in time in order to examine what's going on.
Sam is warped back to Ancient Egypt in order to start his quest. However, soon after he finds Mental's forces up to no good. He fights through Egypt and eventually reaches the Sirian Sphinx. Sam manages to eliminate him and gets ready to warp home. However, he is instead teleported to ancient Rome, thanks to Mental's meddling.
In Rome, Sam continues to fight off Mental's forces, and discovers that Mental is trying to twist Ancient Rome for his own purposes. After reaching Caesar's Palace, Sam finds the cause of the problem; the Wolfiator. Sam manages to eliminate the Wolfinator, which spells the end of Mental's forces in Ancient Rome. Now that his assignment is complete, Sam travels back in time to the present.
In-game description[]
- 2113 AD, Abu Simbel / Egypt, Planet Earth / Solar System
The Sirian space ship blasted off and disappeared into the heavens. Sam Stone made his way back to the Timelock, set the Timelock to 'Return' and used it to travel back to his own time zone.
Initially when the scientists had figured out how to work the Timelock, they could only use it in one of two ways. They could send people back in time to Ancient Egypt, where the Sirians first sent the Timelock, and they could return them to the present from that time. A battle-scarred Sam returned to the present and began his convalescence.
- 2020 AD
Scientists studied this marvel of futuristic technology for some years and slowly but surely managed to decipher more of the inscriptions from the tombs of Egypt. Eventually this enabled them to gain greater use of the Time Lock, and allowed them to specify dates and destinations for time travel. Brave men were selected to test the new features of the Timelock, risking their lives in striving to discover the unknown. Unfortunately many souls were lost trying to perfect the machine Notorious Mental's spies, living amongst humans in the present day to observe how sophisticated the human race was becoming, were monitoring all this and reporting back to their leader. The officials knew full well the capabilities of Mental and his hybrid armies – after all many men had fought long and hard to ensure that the human race survived – Sam being the sole survivor. With the Timelock perfected, more and more expeditions were undertaken. Undercover agents were sent to times long gone to learn more about Earth's own history. Their mission was to see if Mental had been sending his hybrid armies to any other ancient civilizations, to try to corrupt the course of history. These missions were trouble-free and the discoveries very rewarding for two years – until one fateful day when three agents failed to return. A rescue team was sent after them in a vain attempt to bring them back; this failed and no one returned.
The officials quickly assembled a crisis meeting and decided that the only person qualified to be sent was Serious Sam Stone. He has been there before, and is about to embark on his greatest adventure yet:
The destination is Rome. The year is 512 BC. Good luck Sam, if anyone can stop the dreaded evil that is presumed to be Mental again, you can!
Characters[]
Allies[]
Other[]
- Mental (Not seen)
Enemies[]
- Aludran Arachnoid
- Aludran Reptiloid
- Beheaded Kamikaze
- Bladder Beast
- Cyclops
- Gunrilla
- Hermit Crabuloid
- Methug Commander
- Methug Soldier
- Sirian Sphinx (Boss)
- Sirian Werebull
- Wolfiator (Boss)
Weapons[]
- Chainsaw: An average chainsaw. It has a limited range, but when the user gets close to an enemy, it will start slicing into the target.
- Double Barrel Coach Gun: A double-barreled shotgun that fires 14 pellets and uses two shells every time the gun is fired. The pellets are spread in a wide box-shaped pattern. However, the pellets' wide spread makes the weapon ineffective past short range.
- Schofield Pistol: A six-round cylinder revolver with unlimited ammunition, though it deals little damage to the target.
- Minigun: An eight-barreled automatic weapon. The constant barrage of bullets allows it to cut down any enemy with ease.
- Rocket Launcher: A rocket launcher that fires chemically powered rockets. The rockets themselves do a lot of damage if they hit a target, and the explosion it makes can harm any enemy near the impact site, even if the rocket hit an enemy.
- Rogue Prion Gun: A strange weapon designed around the principles of the mad cow disease. It fires a projectile that will drive an enemy into a frenzy when it hits the laser.
- SBC Cannon: A portable cannon that can attain various levels of power and speed depending on how long it is charged, low power shots are still capable of piercing through multiple enemies, and dealing heavy damage to stronger ones.
- Thompson submachine gun: Fully automatic submachine gun that fires highly accurate bullets.
- Time Strike: A handheld teleportation weapon that uses stable time loops to kill enemies.
- Uni-Directional Microwave Transmitter: An energy weapon that will cause anything within 20 meters of the blast to have their water molecules raised to their boiling point, which eventually kills them. However, if a target is right next to the user when the weapon is fired, they will not be harmed by it.
Gameplay[]
Like many other Serious Sam games, Serious Sam Advance is set in early time periods, though this time it is set in ancient Egypt and Ancient Rome. Gameplay-wise, it is very much like other games in the Serious Sam series, in that the player needs to kill a large amount of enemies in order to reach the exit of a level, which is represented by an ankh. Points are rewarded for killing enemies as usual, but there's also a bonus for the amount of ammo the player has left and if the player managed to get under the par time. There are no checkpoints in levels, so if the player dies, they are sent back to the very start of the level. In addition, the player has a limited amount of lives, and the player cannot gain extra lives, like in Serious Sam 2.
At the end of each time era, the player must defeat a boss. When the boss is defeated, the player will either be warped to the next time period or complete the game, depending on the boss.
Unlike other games, the player cannot save their game. Instead, the player uses passwords given at the start of a level, which saves the weapons, stats and level the player is on. If the player turns off the system and wants to continue playing later, they need to input the password given in the last level they were on to continue their progress.
Graphics are much lower quality than the other games, but this is because of the hardware the game uses. Some of the graphics are either taken directly from or modified from other Serious Sam games, like Serious Sam: The First Encounter and Serious Sam: The Second Encounter.
Modes[]
Serious Sam Advance only has two game modes; single-player and death-match. Death-match is played by linking up to four units via a link cable.
Reception[]
Compared to previous Serious Sam games, Serious Sam Advance did not have such a positive outcome. Shortly after release, the game was met with very mixed reception, as GameRankings gave it a score of 45%,[1] while Metacritic gave it 51 out of 100.[2]
Trivia[]
- Serious Sam Advance is the only Serious Sam game in which the Kleer Skeleton is not present.
References[]
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