I'll never forget it. Second Encounter was my first Serious Sam experience. Game starts. I crawl out of the pond into a serene, calm jungle environment. I start walking. I hear a distant aaaaaaaaaaaaaa sound. No idea what it is. Can't quite place the direction. Then it becomes a louder aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa. At this point I'm getting concerned. Then it turns into a blood curdling AAAAAAAAAAAAAA as the sound is very clearly approaching me. Still don't know where it is because of the dense jungle.

Then out of the foilage appears a headless man with bombs as hands that is somehow screaming without a head. Somehow knows where I am without a head. I was so shocked at what I was seeing that I didn't even react. I just kept staring as it reached me, exploded, and killed me. So my first experience with SS was dying, without fighting back, before getting a single kill.

Still my favorite enemy in gaming history.

Agreed.

I still play them. I have fun. But nothing has quite scratched the itch since First/Second Encounter. Specifically, the secrets aren't as good in the newer games.

Found a weird "bug" in SS4. In one level I found a way to jump out of the normal play area. Started running in a specific direction. After an hour I was still running. The normal play area had receded to a dot on the horizon that I could only see because I had gone up the slope of a mountain. It just kept going. So apparently in that game it just proceduraly generates more land indefinitely if you manage to get out of the normal play area. Or maybe it isn't procedural and they just created a massive background area that was actual traversible. Seems bad for optimization, but the game ran fine, so......I dunno.