Serious Sam was one of the best games to grace the genre of FPS- Fast paced, high octane, full of energy action were some of the staple ingredients that made it so awesome. Looks like we will be getting more of the same after so many years, but this time in VR, exclusively on the HTC Vive (For now).
One thing that you might want to note is that the game is being marketed as an Early Access title, considering that Croteam is a well established developer and I have come to expect fully released games by them, but then again, VR itself is in experimental stages and I can’t comment on that much. As for why they are going the Early Acces Path, here is a transcript from the Steam page:
Why Early Access?
“We love VR! And what better way to showcase that love other than making Serious Sam in VR!
Now, we are eager to share Serious Sam VR: The Last Hope to the VR community even before the game is fully finished and ready for Gold (full version) release. We believe SSVR in current state has already the potential to satisfy all VR fans looking for some serious VR love.
Meanwhile, we will be adding lots of content and features, while also believing that our community could provide valuable feedback during this EA VR development.”
Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?
“The game is planned to achieve it’s full potential in the next 6 months, but could be longer depending on the users feedback.”
How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version?
“Full version is planned to have:
- more planets with multiple locations in each,
- more enemies,
- more weapons,
- more bosses,
- more powerups,
- shielding ability,
- new difficulty mode,
- introduction of player skill tree.
”
What is the current state of the Early Access version?
“SSVR is already playable and relatively stable right now, but bugs and crashes might still find their way into the builds.
We will also constantly fix bugs and crashes, while also continuously work on overall game performance and VR tech optimizations.”
Will the game be priced differently during and after Early Access?
“We plan to raise the price during some of the large content development milestone updates, such as adding a new planet.”
How are you planning on involving the Community in your development process?
“Player feedback is important to Croteam. We are known in the community to be strong in supporting both games and our Serious Engine tech, while we are also active on Steam forums, reading every post, replying and fixing reported things. We are continuing this practice even stronger with this Early Access title.
We might also ask players to continue feedback discussions, until we nail down reported issues.”
As for the store page, you can view it here.
Not surprisingly, the Minimum System Requirements have also been mentioned, which can be viewed below:
OS: Windows 7 64bit
Processor: Intel Core i5 – 4590 equivalent
Memory: 6 GB RAM
Graphics: AMD R9 290 or NVIDIA GTX 970
DirectX: Version 11 Storage: 10 GB available space
Additional Notes: HTC Vive VR headset plus hand controllers
It is not surprising considering that the minimum requirements for the Vive had already been revealed to be this much. Though i do think that the GTX 1060 (Which comes at about the same price as a GTX 1060 in India) will be a much better choice and will give you significantly better performance in normal games as well. The benchmarks are not out yet and I’ll not be able to tell how this will perform or how will your experience be on hardware lower than the suggested specifications, but I’ll try to find out more.
So what do you guys think about Serious Sam: The Last Hope VR? Let us know in the comments below.