putting on lipstick just to go to the grocery store and wear a mask

So last night I played some Serious Sam past midnight, checked socials later to find... Nintendo takes down Splatoon 3 video for mentioning sex.

So during a time when Half-life and Halo have led fps games away from one-liner spouting, 90s fps games to ones that focused on a narrative, Serious Sam was a series that stood in defiance of the changing tides with hordes of screaming headless mobs running towards you the player.

The hordes arent really an exaggeration as for the time, croteams first game featuring the tshirt wearing warrior, The First Encounter, was notable in pc gaming for having tons of enemies swarming you on screen, across various arenas and an array of explosions.

My first entry though was infact The Next Encounter on the gamecube before I eventually grabbed the HD remasters as well as 2 and bfe on steam. Beaten First Encounter on normal difficulty and sometimes play the other games from time to time. 2 was the one that repelled me the most due to how cartoony it looked. It was presented like a saturday morning cartoon with corny jokes and all whiched clashed with the bloody carnage. It just didnt mesh well and neither did Before First Encounter and that was for opposite reasons.

BFE from what I heard from rumours was originally meant to be just another military shooter that croteam was working on before it got canned and they repurposed a lot of the enviroment assets for a Serious Sam game instead. Its just a rumor but it does explain why it was all in modern Egypt. But yeah that game felt a bit too grounded at times with the story and graphics being a bit drab. Also it has glory kills? You could melee some enemies with a prompt and just kill them outright, without the need to use your guns, just press the melee when your close enough and you'll blink towards an enemy, kill them outright and move on. Also BFE seems badly optimised for Switch since i've seen a lot of graphics pop in whenever I turn around a corner.

So early parts of First and Second encounter? Fine enough, you go through arenas, face several enemies, you run backwards at times, its serious sam... maybe I dont like Serious sam that much? I like it enough and there are times when it becomes tense and yet.. I often just lose interest nowadays. Could be that I often play on Normal since to me it feels.... fair. You want to play Serious Sam in a way that makes you dread every healing item and ammo pickyp you come across? Play them on Serious difficulty, the highest difficulty thats unlocked from the start, and you will definatly develop some new phobias. I tried playing on Serious for TFE and, there is, never a time where you can reliably let your guard down. Every corner, every hallway, EVERY ITEM, there will be a chance of enemies being spawned. Sometimes right in your face. Go watch a playthrough on Serious difficulty or play it yourself and you'll understand why.

Actually, the games story at first was going back in time in order to find and stop Mental right? Thats what the early games before BFE were about, travelling through the timelock to try and stop an alien overlord who is trying to destroy humanity right? Right? Because I dont think time travel is really utilised much as a narrative device in this series. All the time periods you could potentially visit and fight enemies in. The first encounter only had Egypt. The second encounter had some time periods to go through. The next encounter also had that but that wasnt really made by croteam. 2 didnt had time travel instead going by multiple worlds and BFE onwards was just in modern times on earth. Seems like only croteam only did 2 games that barely scratched the surface on time travel and then just dropped it. Isnt that strange.

Just to wrap this segment up, I will say one more thing. I also went and played the two serious sam ports on steam, Classics Revolution and Serious Sam Fusion... beta.
CR seemed to be focused on the classic versions of TFE and TSE while Fusion is based on the HD remasters and BFE, both of course have workshop support. And you know what, its nice to play Serious Sam with mods, playing through a remastered version of TFE's maps with Overwatch weapons was neat.

So moving on to news, Nintendo. That company has garnered a mixed opinion nowadays. On one hand making great games and on the other hand striking down any form of appreciation shown by their fans. This however does come off as a bit silly though in my opinion, A video by Splatoon youtuber Liora Channel was struck down for "Sexual Content"? So Liora did a video called Splatoon Girls which focused on women who played Splatoon and talked about themselves and their personal lives. Some of these women have admitted they dated some high-profile splatoon players and engaged in casual initimacy. Nintendo didnt like that so they struck the video down.

Now, I'm aware the series is rated around 3+, its very much marketed towards kids but, to be honest I dont think the playerbase is mostly just kids. I guess it was more around late teens to early 20's maybe and with the lobbies allowing for miiverse style picture posts allowing anyone to post any drawn image, I wouldnt think the fanbase is that prudish. Then again I dont play Splatoon so I could be very wrong and Nintendo could be right but if this video that Liora made was to interact with women splatoon players and they admit to having initimate relations, is it really right to strike it down because it clashes with intended marketing. I dont know but i'll leave you the article from gonintendo.com and you can decide for yourself.
"Nintendo has splatoon 3 video taken down due to sexual content"

Thank you all reading, feel free to leave some feedback and game suggestions. Anons are currently on.