Watch the teaser on YouTube: Serious Sam: The Third Encounter | Official Teaser
Some sequels arrive fashionably late. Serious Sam: The Third Encounter has turned up nearly a quarter of a century after the party ended, still insisting it only nipped out for a pint. Croteam and Devolver Digital have announced the game for PC via Steam, and it picks up directly where 2002’s The Second Encounter left off. Not a prequel, not a side story but, in the developers’ own words, “a true continuation.”
How exactly The Second Encounter wrapped up is something most players will need to look up, since the plot of a Serious Sam game has always been the bit you skip to get back to the Beheaded Kamikazes. The numbering hasn’t helped. By PC Gamer’s tally, this is the seventh mainline game, following The First Encounter (2001), The Second Encounter (2002), Serious Sam 2 (2005), Serious Sam 3: BFE (2011), Serious Sam 4 (2020) and Siberian Mayhem (2022), with the third and fourth instalments both being prequels. It is a counting system that would leave a medieval monk reaching for his abacus, which is fitting for a series that has sent its hero to ancient Egypt, Babylon and medieval Europe in search of something to shoot.
The pitch on the Steam page is pure Sam. Thousands of enemies, the classic arsenal plus some vicious new toys, alien worlds rather than archaeological ones, and a final assault on Mental’s Horde at its heart. You can play solo or bring friends, with online co-op and split screen both listed. The blurb also promises environments that shine like a certain crazy diamond, which suggests somebody in Zagreb owns a well-thumbed copy of Wish You Were Here. Croteam reminds everyone that it is the same studio that made the original First Encounter, and that Devolver is the same publisher that looked at that chaos and asked for more.
The emphasis on old-school purity may not be entirely unconnected to Serious Sam: Shatterverse, the recent co-op roguelite spin-off from Behaviour Interactive, which met a frosty reception. PC Gamer’s verdict was that its levels were cramped, its enemy counts underwhelming and its weapons dull, which in a Serious Sam game is roughly like serving a Sunday roast without the meat. Going back to wide open arenas and an unreasonable number of screaming headless men is the obvious fix, and Croteam seems to know it.
Don’t clear your diary just yet. Croteam stresses that the game is in early development, and the Steam page lists the release date as to be announced. The good news is that the minimum specification currently asks for a GeForce 970-class graphics card, so the tired old rig in the spare room may get one last tour of duty.
Twenty-four years is a long time to leave a cliffhanger dangling, but Sam was never one for subtlety or punctuality. Somewhere out there, a headless man with a bomb in each hand has already started running towards us. Listen for the scream.
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