Croteam did what Croteam does best and burst onto the VR scene last year with a surprise new game in the Serious Sam universe with Serious Sam VR: The Last Hope in Early Access and a port of the original Serious Sam, with added VR support and full locomotion, also in Early Access. Naturally, the studio’s next three VR projects were suddenly announced today, with little preamble, by way of company blog post.
As it turns out, the studio is also working on adapting the next two mainline entries in the frenetic shooter franchise, dubbed Serious Sam VR : The Second Encounter and Serious Sam VR 3: BFE. Each entry will be VR ports of the existing second and third installment in the long-running series. We don’t have anything else to go on at this time, but given how fast-paced, gory, and action-packed the games are on standard flat displays, they should be great additions to any VR gamer’s library.
Also of note is that Croteam will bring The Talos Principle to VR, which is a much slower-paced, surprisingly introspective, and thoughtful puzzle game. Intuitively, out of all the studio’s previously released projects, this one makes the most sense for a VR adaptation of them all.
For fans of Serious Sam VR: The Last Hope, the wave shooter iteration of the franchise, a large free update called the “Shanti” update is coming soon. “The update will include the new planet (Shanti), new weapons (one melee and one long ranged weapon), new feature (Sam’s personal shield) and a very scary new boss,” according to the blog post.
Among the remaining updates, Croteam also assures that the long-awaited Serious Sam 4 is still in development and non-VR titles are moving forward as well. Smaller teams have been established internally to focus on VR projects while SS4 presumably ramps up development towards the finish line. At this point, I’d say it’s a fair assumption it will have VR support.
Finally, the core engine used in their games is getting a big overhaul dubbed the Serious Sam Fusion 2017 update which enables better 3D audio, split-screen, more OS support, more controller support, multi-thread rendering, multi-monitor support, and improved overall visual fidelity.
What do you think of the existing two Serious Sam VR games? Will you be picking up the next two and any future Croteam VR projects? Let us know in the comments below!
