Serious Sam: The Random Encounter is the kind of game that you enjoy while not really understanding why you’re enjoying it. It’s a Dude Where’s My Car title, where there’s something compelling and entertaining, but pinpointing those qualities is difficult and explaining them is even harder. At least initially.

At a base level, TRE offers a truly unique gaming experience with a refreshing, if completely bizarre and atypical, approach to “standard” RPG formatting, a profound sense of manic creativity that permeates the game design through and through, and pitch-perfect humor. It’s different in a good way…mostly.

While the story is nothing to really write about (Mental is attacking again, and Sam has to shoot things to stop him), and the two additional characters are basically just extra firepower and offer little in the way of character development, the game still tends to win you over on account of the little throwaway jokes and puns. For example, there’s a blink-and-you-miss-it joke involving a post-swim afro. The notion of puzzles in a game about shooting things is ridiculed constantly and mercilessly, almost to the point where I was wondering if it was all still in good fun. Even the puzzles themselves are ultimately solved by “shooting things.” The game consistently breaks the fourth wall but never feels too awkward when doing so, mostly due to its tongue being planted firmly in cheek the entire time. TRE’s action sequences lampoon the RPG genre, and its RPG elements lampoon the action genre. It’s a strange combination, but it absolutely excels in many ways. It kept me grinning almost the entire way through at least…a difficult feat, to be sure, given that I’m a hardened, cynical, antisocial bastard. Read more