Croteam said this was coming, and here it is. The plucky Crotian indie developers have announced Serious Sam 3: BFE is coming this Summer, and you’ll find all the screenshots plus the (really quite good) press release after the jump.

Turns out it’s a prequel, shares the Egyptian setting of Serious Sam: The First Encounter and will feature up to 16 player co-op. 16! That said, the press release still doesn’t explain what BFE actually stands for. Big F**king Enemies? Battlefield Earth? I like the commenter over at PC Gamer who suggests “Budget FPS Entry”. Words and pictures follow…



Click on ’em to make these shots SERIOUS (bigger). I’ll tell you what, seeing those one-eyed creatures re-imagined for a modern engine has made me come over all giddy. I must have really liked the original game.

I kind of want to restrict my professional analysis to “What the shit is going on with that helicopter in the second picture?” But I guess I’ll also say that this all looks quite high poly, doesn’t it? It strikes me that with visuals like this you’d have trouble fitting quite as many enemies on screen (not to mention keeping the action as smooth) as Serious Sam has always been famous for. Then again, the first shot shows quite a lot of enemies. Course, it could be staged. Ah! I think I’ll just have faith and wait for some footage to surface.

Hey, does everyone remember the temple full of graphical effects you could access through the main menu of Serious Sam? It was just a little pyramid where each room showed off something the engine could do, like reflections, particle effects, fog and so on. I’d love for that to catch on.

So it turns out that thing’s crotch is quite unassuming after all. I can go to sleep with the lights off again!

And here’s the press release, featuring the best publisher quote ever.