By Ian Abbott

Dear Sam,

It has been most enjoyable to join you on your recent time traveling adventures to Ancient Egypt and the Jurassic period, plus a quick stop off to visit the Mayans. Your new compilation of 4 titles is like a series of postcards from a near and distant past, tracking our joint adventures through time and space. In the early days during Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter, we embarked on our first trip to the land of the pharaohs. It was great to see the old place has been given a lick of HD paint and consequently, it looks much better than it did when first encountered in 2001. Some of the ageless valleys and temples actually helped me reminisce about my own adventures to Luxor in the same year, though I didn’t shotgun any napalm soaked skeleton Kleers on my personal travels. Blasting their bones into pillars with you has evoked such a fond memory. Didn’t you think the waves of enemies were pretty relentless? Sometimes they just kept on coming and coming so we had to strafe, side step and shoot at the same time to stand a chance of getting to the next level.

The weapons were a lot more fun in Serious Sam HD: The Second Encounter and I loved the fact that this time we went to all sorts of crazy places like the jungle, and some snow-capped mountains. It’s a good job we found the flame thrower early on which helped burn those pesky Cucurbito Pumpkins. Damn those dungaree wearing humans who had pumpkins for a head and charged at us with their chainsaws; how could we let them live? It did feel quite lonely sometimes though because the aliens seemed to have recruited lots more friends this time and we fell over a few times. Thank goodness for that instant save function that came in handy to help us on our way. Running around historical sites (hadn’t we been to a few similar places in the first game?) with you mindlessly shooting aliens was really fun in short bursts, but did get a little boring after a while.

 I’ve got a little bit of bad news; I really didn’t dig Serious Sam 3: Before First Encounter and I wonder what you had got up to for ten years since your Second Encounter back in 2002? It felt like you were trying to be a little bit too fancy pants with your semi realistic lighting and 3D environments – Sam it really doesn’t suit you. We had just gotten used to a winning Sammy formula which felt like manageable insanity, until someone took their time and changed it all around. Out went the fun and it became all a bit too serious. Number three felt like a shop soiled bullet proof vest, holes a plenty and no one really wants to play with it.

So we both felt a little flat after wasting too much time on number 3; however the final offering from your travels in Serious Sam Double D XXL left us with huge smiles on our faces – it was great to see you’d got your swagga back. I like the fact that your parents (Croteam) let somebody else play with you to see if they could bring the fun back and those clever folks at Mommy’s Best Games did something really special. They made you into a 2D side scrolling platformer – keeping all the same enemies, guns and locations – but this time I could bring our friends Huff and Tracey with us. We were all happily popping bullets like tictacs until we found the craziest new invention - the Gun Stacker. Did you ever imagine that we’d be fighting dinosaurs and flying cats in the Jurassic period with a stacked up arsenal that consisted of a flamethrower, 2 shotguns, a chainsaw, a tommy gun and a rocket launcher? I particularly liked the Femikaze – a big headless and topless woman who had two strategically bombs – who would often coming running towards me looking for a hug, though Tracey always shot her first. Good times.

Well that’s all for now on, it was good to see your old nemesis Mental each time and if the rumours are true, if you really are coming back in 2014 for Serious Sam 4 then here’s a little bit of advice: keep it fun, let the dialogue be witty and crude, there must be rivers of blood and somehow you’ve got to beat the Gun Stacker.

Your ever loving Ian

PS. There are other places in the world to visit – so stop going back to Egypt every time.

PPS. The Serious Sam Collection is out now on Xbox 360