Category: Croteam

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Serious Sam: The Second Encounter Arrives on Vive and Rift

Serious Sam: The Second Encounter Arrives on Vive and Rift

Croteam is making good on its promise to virtualize the Serious Sam franchise; the second game in the series is now available on Rift and Vive.

The studio behind the bombastic shooter franchise today launched Serious Sam VR: The Second Encounter, a VR port of the 2002 original, featuring full support for position-tracked controls. The original game’s single and multiplayer modes — which support up to 15 players — have been brought into VR for the first time and even allow you to play with friends on traditional PC monitors. You can check out a launch trailer below.

If you didn’t know, Serious Sam is all about using big guns to blow up even bigger monsters. Set in massive environments, you’re drowned in ammunition and let loose to tear enemies apart with bullets and rockets. Players can either utilize a teleportation system or, if they’re up for the challenges, run around maps with trackpad/analogue stick movement. We’d say it’s an old-school shooter but, it technically already is from the old-school.

The game would normally cost $39.99, but there’s a launch week discount bringing it down to $29.99. You can also get it bundled with the other Serious Sam VR games at a discounted price of $82.47 instead of $119.97.

Last week, the Early Access edition of Serious Sam VR: The First Encounter left pre-release. Croteam’s first VR-only game, Serious Sam VR: The Last Hope, remains in Early Access but continues to get regular content drops. As you’d probably guessed, the studio plans to bring Serious Sam 3 to VR too, and will also be releasing a VR port of its puzzle game, The Talos Principle.

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Serious Sam Fusion 2017 Beta Brings Upgrades For VR & Non-VR Alike

Croteam have announced that they are working on fresh virtual reality (VR) rebuilds of the Serious Sam series of games. Serious Sam Fusion 2017 is out in Beta form, and available for free to owners of previous Serious Sam titles.

Croteam plan for Serious Sam HD, The First Encounter and The Second Encounter to be part of the Serious Sam Fusion 2017 bundle, as well as Serious Sam 3: BFE and VR versions of the older Serious Sam games. The developer have completely rebuilt Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter, which is the first game in the bundle to become available.

The new versions are 64-bit compatible with full support for SteamOS, Linux and OSX as well as PC. The new versions are using the new Vulkan API to replace DirectX9. There are a host of new features, including mod support, a new save game system and even a new physics engine.

The rebuilt games are available completely free for anyone who has previously bought Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter, The Second Encounter or Serious Sam 3: BFE. The current version of the Serious Sam Fusion 2017 bundle is still in Beta, so the developer warns that there may well be bugs and glitches still in the game.

The developers are currently working on implementing the other games in the bundle, which will all be playable from a common application, so there will be no need to quit out and go back in. Also, users with VR versions of the games will be able to play multiplayer games alongside those who have the standard non-VR versions.

You can find out more at the Serious Sam Fusion 2017 Steam page.

VRFocus will bring you further updates on Serious Sam and related videogames as they come in.

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Serious Sam 3, The Second Encounter, and Talos Principle All Getting VR Editions

Serious Sam 3, The Second Encounter, and Talos Principle All Getting VR Editions

Croteam did what Croteam does best and burst onto the VR scene last year with a surprise new game in the Serious Sam universe with Serious Sam VR: The Last Hope in Early Access and a port of the original Serious Sam, with added VR support and full locomotion, also in Early Access. Naturally, the studio’s next three VR projects were suddenly announced today, with little preamble, by way of company blog post.

As it turns out, the studio is also working on adapting the next two mainline entries in the frenetic shooter franchise, dubbed Serious Sam VR : The Second Encounter and Serious Sam VR 3: BFE. Each entry will be VR ports of the existing second and third installment in the long-running series. We don’t have anything else to go on at this time, but given how fast-paced, gory, and action-packed the games are on standard flat displays, they should be great additions to any VR gamer’s library.

Also of note is that Croteam will bring The Talos Principle to VR, which is a much slower-paced, surprisingly introspective, and thoughtful puzzle game. Intuitively, out of all the studio’s previously released projects, this one makes the most sense for a VR adaptation of them all.

For fans of Serious Sam VR: The Last Hope, the wave shooter iteration of the franchise, a large free update called the “Shanti” update is coming soon. “The update will include the new planet (Shanti), new weapons (one melee and one long ranged weapon), new feature (Sam’s personal shield) and a very scary new boss,” according to the blog post.

Among the remaining updates, Croteam also assures that the long-awaited Serious Sam 4 is still in development and non-VR titles are moving forward as well. Smaller teams have been established internally to focus on VR projects while SS4 presumably ramps up development towards the finish line. At this point, I’d say it’s a fair assumption it will have VR support.

Finally, the core engine used in their games is getting a big overhaul dubbed the Serious Sam Fusion 2017 update which enables better 3D audio, split-screen, more OS support, more controller support, multi-thread rendering, multi-monitor support, and improved overall visual fidelity.

What do you think of the existing two Serious Sam VR games? Will you be picking up the next two and any future Croteam VR projects? Let us know in the comments below!

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