Serious Sam Classic
Total Playtime: 33.6 Hours
TFE: 11.6 Hours, finished 19 October 2026.TSE: 13.2 Hours, finished 28 October 2026.
Bright Island: 8.8 Hours, finished 01 November 2026.
Played through all of the campaigns on Serious, with no other modifications to the difficulty or to the game. I was only familiar with TFE going into this; I only played the first level or two of TSE a long time ago, and Bright Island is essentially a fan campaign exlusive to Classics Revolution. I didn't go out of my way to get all of the secrets, but I did grab some (or do some gameplay cheese) and did all of the secret levels, which I had to look up how to access (some of them, anyway).
I don't think I've ever played all the way through one of the classic Serious Sam games; I've got quite a bit of time in HD TFE and SS3, but I just barely remember touching the first level or 2 of the original Classic TFE a long, long time ago. The gameplay isn't too far off from what I remember, mostly involving lots of large, angry enemy hordes charging at you while you slowly break your S key. Compared to the HD games that I'm more familiar with, the biggest differences are just cosmetic.
I wouldn't say that the Sam games are really known for having excellent gunplay and this definitely wasn't an exception. For a lack of a bettery way to describe it, a lot of the guns feel a bit "tinny" and hollow when you're shooting them. I'm comfortable with the sounds an all, but the feeling of impact and enemy feedback is sorely lacking at times. But more than that, a constant cause of complaint for me was how the actual firing of weapons is oddly delayed after your actual button press by a fraction of a second, which forces you to aim slower and hover over your target awkwardly. Since I tend to flick a lot while aiming in most games, the first few levels felt nigh unplayable until I got slightly more used to it, but it was pissing me off throughout all of the 33 hours I played. Getting smacked by a Kleer because your SSG fired 30 degrees to the right of where you aimed is a range-inducing experience if it happens frequently enough.
TFE was largely as I remember it, a fairly straightforward experience with lots of simple arenas and corridors and lots of tough fights. I forgot how often this game (even more than TSE) loves to spawn things right on top or behind you as a cheap way to chip away at your HP; it takes a number of levels to start getting used to it and walking into suspicious pickups backwards. There are some godawful corridors (I'm thinking of a particular hallway in Moon Mountains) that feel terrible to play and definitely were not heavily playtested, though beyond those I'd say this game does a decent job of maintaining high-pressure enemy waves that are solveable, while still requiring some degree of resource management. The arena in the last level was super fun, though the Pyramid run & final boss after it left much to be desired. I feel like this game was really missing a good, consistent long range option to take care of the annoying reptilioids quickly, but all told, while the level design is rather simplistic and encounters occasionally feel a little unbalanced, it was still a fun challenge for the most part.
TSE was mostly a new experience, since I'd only played the first levels before this. I originally went into it expecting that the entirety of TSE would take place in a "Mayan" setting, but it turns out that you actually go through phases of Mayan, Babylonian and Medieval European settings across the levels. This game introduced a number of new tools which filled some critical gaps in Sam's arsenal. The sniper rifle is exactly the long-range hitscan option that I was hoping for to clean up those pesky reptiliods, arachnids and the like, while the flamethrower is an ammo-efficient and extremely potent tool for managing large crowds at close range, which is especially useful for hordes of Gnaar, Kleer and divebombing Harpies. Also, the introduction of the Serious bomb gives you a proper panic button and various in-stage powerups help turn the tide in some really dire scenarios. There's also a hidden plasma gun and minelayer that are pretty decent, but don't add much key functionality to your arsenal.
From a level design perspective, it's pretty easy to see the ways the development of TSE took lessons from the more irritating and less balanced portions of TFE. Levels and arenas are far, far larger - you're typically given an enormous amount of space to kite enemies, almost to the point that a lot of big encounters start to feel a little bit empty and sparse given the sheer scale of the level. I found that I was very frequently conserving ammo for a massive enemy wave that never materialized. In fact, some of the arenas are so ludicrously large that enemies would actually lose detection on the other side of them, allowing you to just snipe them one-by-one at your leisure if you didn't feel up for a brawl. So in some ways, I feel like TSE swung the pendulum a little bit too much to the other side and gave you just a bit too much room to roam freely. I think the encounters in this game overall felt a little bit more balanced and varied than TFE, but I can't forget about the bouncehouse arenas in a couple of the Mayan levels that might just be the absolute worst fights in the entire series, completely random and abysmal dogshit encounters. Also, the last major arena in the game and the final boss fight are both super easy to cheese, which I found funny (so I don't have any actual comments on what those fights are like when done legitimately).
Bright Island is effectively a fan-made expansion for the Classic games, developed directly by Alligator Pit who were themselves fans of the original Serious Sam game and worked on this remaster with Croteam's approval. The collection of maps mostly takes its design cues from TSE, with more varied fights across large landscapes, rather than the oppressive and claustrophobic arena fights of TFE. There are some pretty interesting gimmicks, and the levels themselves are vast and absolutely gorgeous, striking near the limit of what the old Serious engine is capable of, yet the levels themselves are just fine, nothing too special except a notable lack of annoying-ass ambush spawns which is nice. Just like TSE, massive enemy waves often came with plentiful space and powerups to manage them, so even some of the larger maps with over 1000 enemies weren't much trouble at all. That's not to say there's no challenge, since the tiny arena near the end of the 6th (?) level would be nearly impossible to do without another easy cheese method. Cramped ground with constant spawns of heavy enemies from all directions is guaranteed to be a bad time.
One special note I want to make about the expansion is how unbelievably terrible the 2nd secret level is (Tropical Bluffs), entirely from a technical standpoint. The sheer scale of the map is insane, probably the largest in the entire Classics collection, but it's horribly optimized. The level looks like absolute ass because of how blocky the world geometry is, and the fact that it's all stuck rendering the entire time means that it was stuttering and lagging throughout the entire level, running at sub-30fps (and extremely choppy) on a very capable machine with a 5080. The ropeways between the different islands you visit are cool, but that doesn't forgive optimization so horrible as to make the entire thing nearly unplayable. Thankfully, the lag started to ease up a tiny bit after the first 20 minutes or so, and the level itself is extremely easy so it wasn't much of a challenge in the end. I just found it amusing that such a horrible level made it into the release without ever being adjusted afterwards.
Overall, I enjoyed my time playing through these old games; I didn't really originally plan to play through the classic versions of the Sam games (I always figured I'd just start at HD TFE), but the visual style of this game is more similar to SS2, which I plan to play at some point after this. Plus, it leaves a marathon of the HD games open for a lead-up to the release of the newly-announced Third Encounter, which might just end the Serious Sam series once and for all. My overall takeaways from my time here are that the ambush spawns suck and there's lots of spotty balance and game design choices made, probably largely in favor of showcasing their engine tech, but the overall feeling of mowing down hundreds or thousands of aggressive enemies charging at you in this game is a feel rarely replicated elsewhere.
