Serious Sam: The Second Encounter

"One word: OVERKILL!!!!"

For a $3 bargain bin game, Serious Sam: The Second Encounter is one of the best games ever! Croteam and GOD games have certainly raised the bar (for bargain bin stuff anyway)! But I must admit (for the second time) that I am writing a review on first impression, after plowing through the first Act or so of the game... on with the review!

Story... hmmm... WHAT STORY?!?! If you want a story, try Soldier of Fortune, Half-Life, Rainbow Six, Halo, Die Hard: Nakatomi Plaza and countless other recent FPS games, but not here. The flimsy half page introduction is the game's story: you are some Redneck named Sam ''Serious'' Stone hell-bent on kicking some major alien ass after they take over the world. You're sent back in time to kill them in Egypt and after the mass murder of several billion of these odd-looking creatures, you finally find their big ass space ship and you're going to head to the alien's home planet and kill their leader Mental.... or not? Your ship crash lands in South Africa! Now you have to find your way AGAIN through 12 levels of non-stop fragging madness!!!!

Gameplay isn't as repetitive as many people say it is, but it DOES get boring shooting the same headless zombies, flying witch-thingies, pumpkin-head lumberjacks and walking scorpion-like creatures with shoulder-mounted Rocket Launchers. You only pause to analyze areas or use switches or for Sam to say some quip like ''Look Ma! No head!''. Often there are insane jumping puzzles -- not for those afraid of heights. There are three Acts and twelve levels filled with hordes of drooling, butt-ugly baddies to fill with lead! The big wide areas make for lots of walking -- plenty of exercise for Sam! The puzzles aren't too hard, but many of them aren't very easy either. You can score points too and you can keep beating your own high score! An added bonus is NETRICSA, a program in Sam that tells him about certain areas, weapons/enemies and tallies up your game stats! Now, one really annoying thing about the gameplay is the way the monster-killing is structured. First you go absolutely postal on billions and billions and billions of enemies, expending most of the ammo of your valued weapons. Then, repeat several more times 'til you're stuck resorting to the shotguns and eventually the six shooters. And only THEN do you get an ammo pack.

Ahhh..... what would a Redneck hero do without tons and tons and tons and tons and tons of weapons... with tons and tons and tons and tons of killer aliens to use them on? There are 14 massive weapons, which makes four more than the first one: the knife; the chainsaw (melee classic); the single/double six shooters; the shotgun; coach gun, which is basically a sawed-off; a minigun; Tommy Gun (haven't seen that in a while...); rocket launcher and grenade launcher; a flamethrower and sniper rifle (my personal favourites); plus a Quad laser gun; a cannon (like on a pirate ship) and a Serious Bomb, which is a proximity weapon, blowing the living crap out of everything within it's range!!!! And the aliens that come in the package: GRUESOME!! They include headless zombies/kamikaze bombers/missile launchers, rabid mutant dogs, rabid mutant fish, giant scorpion-like creatures with shoulder-mounted missile launchers, ugly green ogre-like things, lava-chunk-throwing things, green glob throwing things, walking skeletons and gigantic charging bulls just to name a few!! And this is HOW you score points -- by wasting baddies, so keep your trigger on your minigun! The amount of points you can accumulate range from 200 to 50000 FC -- and that's just for regular enemies!!! And the staggering amount brings one word to mind: OVERKILL!!!!

Graphics are surprisingly good for bargain bin... (clears throat) uhhhhh... product.... yea, that's it.... anyway, the graphics are good -- REALLY GOOD! And most computers with hardware/software 3-4 years old should be able to play. There's practically no bugs but it tends to run sloppy when there are many enemies on screen. The cinematics run smoothly and the levels are realistic (for a shooter almost as unrealistic as UT). The weapons and enemies are all modeled very nicely and the map design is awesome! The textures will be hard to rival (again, for bargain bin)! Rounds from you pistol(s) will leave bullet marks in the walls! Croteam has done an amazing job!

Sound is nice and crisp. The sound effects for each gun are ok, but some of them could be better. The high points are the music and Sam's sayings. The music is nice and slows down when there are no enemies... then, all of a sudden it speeds up and plays rapidly as enemies approach.

I seriously wonder: what were the developers on when they made this?!?!? Read the hilarious profile of the pumpkin-head lumberjack, or find the secret phone booth at the VERY beginning of the level and you'll see what I mean... and just look at the monster design! And some messages from NETRICSA are veeeeeery humorous! What about the sayings from Sam: ''Look Ma! I'm a Lumberjack!'' or ''To be or not to be: that's a SERIOUS question!'' He's no Duke Nukem but he's getting there!

Multiplayer is nice and solid, and there are standard player modes like Deathmatch, plus one that hasn't been seen in a while: Co-Op mode! Also, there's Split-Screen so two players can play on one computer (but it's not as fun). Plus, as an added bonus, the CD contains one of the most popular mods for Serious Sam: Seriously Warped Multiplayer -- and you can pretty much guess what that's like!!

Overall Serious Sam is the BEST mindless FPS ever, bringing back memories of the Doom and Quake series, Duke Nukem 3D and countless other ''murder simulators'' from the mid-late 90's and also takes all the stuff that's been claimed as ''revolutionary'' in FPS gaming like Half-Life, sticks in the toilet and flushes! SAM I AM!!!

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 11/17/03, Updated 11/22/03