Game Review: Serious Sam: The Second Encounter

I knew this day would come, the day where I have to do a post about a game that I have played before, and from that time, I already knew I would choose this game. This was the first first person shooter game that I have played, and I still love it up to this date.

No, I haven’t played the first Serious Sam, yet, and I’m serious, I am trying every means to dig that game out of the “Game Graveyard” and perhaps use a “Resurrect” on it. I want to play it, I need to play it, but first, the review for this game.

Serious Sam, is, ironically, not a serious game. It is comical, fun, cheery and out-of-this-world. The project on it’s first game started on 1996, but the release was on 2001. It was a long delay, but in my opinion, was totally worth the wait.

The plotline is simple, bad guy alien named Mental always fought with the Sirians, a race of ancient times, on Earth, Sirians pretty much got erased off Earth due to development of humans. But the Sirians left behind a set of architecture for the Humans to use so as to fight against Mental if the need ever arises.

In the 22nd centuiry, well, Mental comes and wants to kill all humans (as most bad guys do) and Human’s last hope, Sam “Serious” Stone, is sent back on a device known as the “Time Lock” to defeat Mental before all these had ever happened, and hopefully, alter time in the future.

Simple story, loads of action. This game is well known for it’s simplistic “Shoot anything that moves” Genre. the kind of games you want to play when you’re frustrated at work and feel like kicking some evil butt.

“Look Pa! I’m a Lumberjack!” Sam said with a childish grin on his face. Though Sam is heavy built and looks like the stereotypical G.I.Joe from your neighbourhood army, he is really, really childish inside. He gives the image of an adult that likes fun, the kind that I get along with.

Check out the telephone booth! With this, Sam does really hilarious phone calls, mostly to himself in the future. “Hello, who is this?” “Sam” “Sam who?”, “Serious Sam!”, “Hah, what a Joker, Sam I Am”. And the fact that he makes himself sound dumb enough to fall for his own trick is just plain comedy.

I desperately fell in love with the amount of atillery he is able to hold, especially the cannon. This shows how much originality and witty ideas the Croteam has in their mind. They aren’t afraid that people call them stupid or retarded, they just go with the flow, and prove themselves are artistically weird.

The graphics of The Second Encounter was interestingly high for a 2002 game. It is smooth, has widescreen compatibility and basically awesome. The frames per second does not go ridiculously low like Metal Gear Solid does. But then again, a lot of effects were added to MGS3.

The plot for Second Encounter is still the same, basically Sam that got sent back to the past got into some trouble, and now he is on his way to find the Holy Grail, which will lead him closer to Mental. Cruising through a Jungle, a Desert and finally, a snowy highland. Once again he fights mental’s minions and achieve victory.

What really satisfies me in this game is the view range. Sure, counter strike has a very large view range, but it is limited to really small maps. Not having played Half Life before, I would consider the view range for Serious Sam as number one. An enemy can be sighted running towards you from miles away, like on the other end of a valley, or the other side of the pyramid.

The add-ons are remarkable for this game, especially the blood add-on. To make the game less violent, there is an add-on to have no blood at all at the start of the game, also, there is the add-on to make blood an gore “hippie”.

Yes, I am shooting the enemies.

Basically, blood is turned into flowers, and remains (meat pieces and co.) is turned into friendlier items such as hamburgers and such. It cracked me up really badly and I would not be surprised to see anyone playing through the whole game using this setting.

I wonder what’s in store for him next. After replaying this game, (The other time I played it I was 14) I really feel like buying the previous game and the consecutive games. The PS2 and XBox spinoffs too. Being a Serious fan, let’s go Serious forever.

-Score Sheet-

Gameplay: 8.5/10 Smooth game for one it’s time. I was expecting much less and got much more. However, it cannot be compared to the games of today, perhaps it’s sequel will be even better?

Plotline: 4/10 Pretty much simplistic and carefree plotline, seems like the plotline guys aren’t really doing their job. But then again, this is a “shoot anything that moves” game, adding in an Alex (from half life 2) will just complicate matters.

Originality: 9/10 Weapon design wise, tres bien. I would love a revolver that runs on shooting energy like that, and the details put in to introduce the weapons is amazing. Seems like it’s even longer than the story itself.

Music: 7.5/10 I don’t know about music much, but I do know I kind of liked it, though slow at times, some of them really fit the mood of fighting hordes upon hordes of monsters at once.

Replayability: 6/10 Why not? But why yes? There isn’t much to be unlocked (Unlike stealth camo) but aside from the multiplayer mode, there really isn’t much to the game to replay. Perhaps you might want to replay it in a harder mode, or try to play through with flowers as blood? But it might get boring.