Serious Sam: The Random Encounter
Skip · RPG · 2011
Steam Deck UnsupportedThe verdict
SKIP IT.
The value isn't there at $4.99.
- Length
- 1.6h
- Value
- $3.12/hr
- Reviews
- 49% positive
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Minimum on the Steam store: 1 GB of memory, 256MB Video Memory or higher, DirectX 8 or later, 102 MB of storage. Windows only.
Choose your weapons and take aim at the most random Serious Sam adventure yet!
What drives the score
How to read this
Every input gets a grade, S to D, read from the buyer's side. The score is multiplicative, so an input only counts as raising when it sits near the top of its own scale. Anything with real room left is holding the score back, because that room is the gap to 100. ▲ marks a lift, ▼ a drag or a dock, ? an input we do not have, • a fact this genre's score does not use. The exact weights stay secret.
The value story
July 2013 is where it bottomed out, at $0.49. It has been discounted 95 times in the 14 years tracked here, typically at 80 percent off, with about 6 weeks between sales. Today it is at full price. The last sale was about 3 weeks ago, and on this game's rhythm the next one tends to arrive within 6 weeks.
It is cheaper than 68 percent of its genre, and less well reviewed than 99 percent. On the same math Pit People® ($19.99, scores 88) and Soda Dungeon 2 (free, scores 84) are the better buys, and they are the games it most resembles.
The press liked it more than its buyers did, 64 against 49 percent.
Inside the two-hour refund window, 46 percent of the 505 reviews written there were positive, against 49 percent overall, and those are 77 percent of everything written about it.
What players say
Serious Sam: The Random Encounter, developed by Vlambeer in collaboration with Croteam and published by Devolver Digital, is one of the strangest and most experimental entries in the long-running Serious Sam franchise. Known for its chaotic first-person shooters, the series takes an unexpected turn here, transforming into a retro-inspired, turn-based role-playing game infused with bullet-hell intensity. This...
Most serious game OF ALL TIME! Contained absolutely no joking around, horsing off, rigamarole, goofin, flim-flam, ballyhoo, jim-jammery, ribbing, ribaldry, jesting comments, light banter, hoopla, slapstick, vaudvillian wisecracking, farcitude, slack-cutting, or campiness of any kind.
Player reviews from Steam: the most helpful all-time, plus the newest that clear the same quality bar, with the hours each player had put in when they wrote it. The mix of Recommended and Not recommended follows the game's Steam ratio. Rotates daily. Opinions are theirs.
No data upstream: achievement curve (Steam global achievements).
Cite this score
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Serious Sam: The Random Encounter scores 0/100 on the BANG Score (a skip). The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/201480/serious-sam-the-random-encounterThe BANG Score is one number for value, 0 to 100: price against how it reviews and how long it was built to be. It answers the money question and stops there; whether the game is for you is still your call.
Reviews set the ceiling and price moves you inside it, so a cheap game that reviews badly cannot climb. Ratings from few reviewers are shrunk toward the middle, so 100 percent from nine people does not outrank 96 percent from ninety thousand. Length comes from HowLongToBeat where it can be matched, measured against a per-genre floor so a five-hour narrative game is judged against other narrative games rather than against a sixty-hour RPG. Where no verified length exists the score says so and carries a dock, because the biggest input is then a guess. The full method, including where it is weak → Steam reviews as of Sep 6, price as of Sep 24.
A number here look wrong? Tell me what it got wrong and I will look at the inputs behind it.