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Serious Sam spreads to more consoles.
A few years ago Gathering of Developers (GoD Games) decided that first person shooters were getting a little too complicated and picked up Croteam’s Serious Sam game for PC. They offered it for a mere $20 and made players fall in love with the game’s non-stop simple-yet-amusing action. In late 2002 Gotham Games (the now deceased Take-Two division) released both Serious Sam PC games on Xbox. Now, Global Star (Take-Two’s new budget division) has released a new Serious Sam game made by Climax (not Croteam like the others).
A quick course on Serious Sam: the game is basically a simple shoot-a-ton. Instead of carefully planning moves and what not, you are given ample amounts of ammo and even more ample amounts of enemies to waste. The game throws enemies at you without mercy, and you won’t be able to move on until you have beaten a certain number. Once you do this, you enter a new room where you do the same. Sometimes, you’ll enter a move and find only a few enemies and think that it’s going to be easy. It really isn’t since the enemies pop out of thin air.
Serious Sam: Next Encounter features other gameplay features to control the non-stop shooting. There are some simple platform sections but they are rather simple and you’ll get through them with no problem. You can also drive in the game, a first for a Serious Sam game, that lets you run over enemies and shoot them and such, until you run out of gas. It’s nothing major and keeps with the game’s relaxed feeling but removes some repetitiveness.
The guys at Climax also added a new Super Combo Mode. Here, you get rewarded for making twenty kills in a row. Once you do, you become a super Sam for ten seconds where you will be faster, stronger and more powerful. It doesn’t work all that well though since there is no way to keep it going. Often, you’ll get it when there are no more enemies in the room.
The game’s multiplayer mode provides some fun for a while but there is nothing to stand out. You can play co-op or deathmatch.
The visuals in the game are pretty bad. They look like high-res Nintendo 64 games for the most part. Nonetheless, the game is bright and colorful but there are dozens of enemies in the screen at once, so it balances out. The enemies range from Romans to headless guys to all sorts of weird things.
The game’s sound is made up of techno tracks that speed up when appropriate. There are a number of sound effects to complement the wacky scenarios you’ll find yourself in.
Serious Sam: Next Encounter is still a very fun game but ultimately weaker than previous Serious Sam games. The Croteam-developed games developed a sense on tension because it was a bit tougher. Here, you are given much ammo to destroy the enemies so it becomes even more of a shoot-a-thon. Nonetheless, if simple fun is what you’re looking for, you can’t get much better than Serious Sam. -- Jose Liz, PGNx Media
---- Apr 30, 2004
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