While it’s possible to head into options and enable free movement this feature has been left untested for this preview because No, just No, and No again. Push up on the gamepad and Sam teleports a short distance in the direction you’re looking, or hit a button to highlight a piece of ground and run towards it.
What this means in Serious Sam is that turning is done in 90-degree increments and forward motion has both teleportation and limited-range running options. Some people can handle running freely about but they’re in the minority, so Comfort Mode is enabled by default. Movement in first-person in VR is a problem that seems like it’s as solved as it’s going to get at this point.
The same menu also has quick-save and load off to the sides, plus an options menu with a huge number of configuration selections. Hit a button and the action pauses while the menu is overlaid on the screen, choose a gun for each hand, then let go to dismiss and instantly resume shooting with the new loadout. The possibilities are left to the player to discover, but the gun selection screen is designed with experimentation in mind. Dual-wielding the pistol even makes it a useful weapon against the large chicken-walkers, seeing alternating fire from one hand to the other lets you do a nice stream of damage while also shooting its missiles out of the air. It’s a little strange to see how huge the chainsaw is in VR-scale, but absolutely awesome to use against a horde of the ape-like gnaar while keeping the pistol in the other hand to clear out headless soldiers. Dual wield two of the same weapon or mix and match for best effect against a mix of enemies, the choice is yours. There’s no way for the player to be as fast and agile as in the non-VR versions so instead they’re given a weapon per hand, with the enhanced firepower making up for the limited mobility. Serious Sam: The Last Hope set the template for VR-ification of the original games. The real question, then, is how well it migrates to VR. It’s also been around in various forms for 14 years for as little as $2.00 or less during sales, so odds are good that if you’re interested you’ve played it already. All the old guns and enemies make an appearance, joined by plenty of destructive new toys and monsters, and the level design is even more creative than the first game’s. Lush green hills and mountains with giant trees make for a welcome change of venue, and the adventure explored three different eras before its final climactic encounter. After finding a way off planet at the end of the first game Serious Sam promptly crashed back on Earth, but at least it was nowhere near ancient Egypt. It wasn’t exactly Shakespeare, but seeing as the story was an excuse to throw lots of enemies at a heavily-armed player it didn’t need to be. Serious Sam: The First Encounter told the “story” of Sam Stone, last hope of Earth against the overwhelming might of alien overlord Mental’s twisted freakshow horde. In this case, it moves us to Serious Sam: Second Encounter VR, which is as big, explosive and ridiculous as it’s ever been except now the player is inside it all.
It’s a circle of life, and it moves us all. The remasters paved the way for Serious Sam 3, VR allowed for the creation of Serious Sam: The Last Hope and fan desire to move around The Last Hope‘s maps led to experimenting with VR in the HD remasters. It had an amazing engine for the time, capable of rendering huge areas and populating them with tons of enemies, but not so amazing that the HD remasters a few years back didn’t need to rebuild everything from scratch.
Serious Sam: The Second Encounter came out only a year after The First Encounter, way back in 2002, and like the first it was a mere $20 for some of the finest Doom-style first-person shooting available. Serious Sam is known for shooting up Egypt, but his best adventure actually started in Central America.