One objective: save the world; one way: Kill Everything That Moves.
The story begins as one day you are just chillin’ when a call comes in. An alien mothership is putting out a radio signal and you soon learn those signals are coming from the past. Oh no, time travel. Time to kick it into high gear and stop your evil-archnemisis Mental from destroying earth the stealing the time travel device.
That is it, that’s the storyline. Now in the simplest of terms (and simple fits this game), all you have to do is kill hundreds of thousands of Mental’s monsters for level after level. It’s time to lock-and-load, Sam is heading for the past to fight the largest battle yet.
"All you have to do is kill hundreds of thousands of monsters"
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Presentation
The menu is very simple. Select what type of game you want to play (single player, online, multiplayer, etc.) and then you’re ready to go. The problem is that you select a player for the single player game and technically everything is saved under this player. The first time I played I didn’t figure out that I had to reselect my player in the single player to load the game. I was confused and loaded a different character and had to restart. I think a "Load Game" option would alleviate this problem.
Other than that Serious Sam: Next Encounter runs just like every other PS2 first person shooter. Everything is laid out fine on the controller and the HUD (heads up display) gives you just what you need and nothing more.
Graphics
The graphics are very cartoonish. In this case though, cartoonish graphics fit the feel of the game. Serious Sam looks like your regular old American Hero, blue jeans and a t-shirt. All other characters (such as Buzz the astronaut) look alright as well. The monsters look good whether they are flying around, charging you, or standing atop towers through balls of fire. Amazingly, no matter how many monsters were on screen there was never once a frame-rate problem or a small draw-distance. I could always see what was coming no matter how many monsters were on scene.
The kill sequences while simple are graphically impressive and rather amusing. Monsters explode. There are these little ones with hats that can fly in. I’ve killed 20 at once and the PS2 never missed a beat and every one exploded into green mush. Overall, Climax Studios did a good job getting decent graphics into this game without overloading the console.
Sound
Three words can sum up how I feel about the sound: "It gets old." The guns make nice sounds, but the background music and monster sounds get old fast. There are suicidal bombers that come running it from every direction that make this annoying scream. It’s good because it makes you aware that they are coming and how far away they are but after a few minutes the noise gets annoying. On that note, the game does do a good job with making far away monsters have far-away sounds and those that are close sound very close. That is impressive for a game that only costs $20.
Gameplay
Let me sum up the gameplay for you: "You walk into an area, the door behind you closes, monsters come from everywhere, and you have to kill them all." You get to accomplish the mission of killing monsters everywhere in the past from Ancient Rome, to Feudal China, to Atlantis.
"There are 12 totally awesome weapons to use."
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There are 12 totally awesome weapons to use. You have everything from Chainsaws to Grenade Launchers. You can carry double Uzi’s and lay down cover fire or be accurate and use a 16mm Sniper Rifle. To really pack some punch try using the XM4000 Mini Gun packing a whopping 1200 rounds per minute. Before you worry about running out of ammo there is plenty in every level to go around.
There are two types of levels; large open areas and narrow passages inside buildings. Both types have large amounts of monsters for you to kill and the strategy for either is to never stop moving. There are a series of events in each level. First, all the doors lock and you cannot get out until you kill all the monsters. Thankfully, after you kill a bunch (normally 3+ minutes worth) more ammo will appear. These melees in each area of a level can easily last 10 minutes and really don’t require any strategy to pass except that certain guns work better on some monsters than others. Certain levels have awesome attributes though, like vehicles. For example, the Serious Jeep is a lot of fun to use. With homing rockets you can devastate the enemy and moving at 120mph levels go much quicker. Also, if the homing rockets aren’t cutting it, just squish the enemy with the jeep. There are two other vehicles, The Serious Combine and the Serious Sub that are also available in certain levels and bring a new element of fun to the game.
In an effort to make the game last longer Climax Studios included a scoring system. You receive points for killing enemies, picking up treasure and just about anything else you do in the game (except dying, you lose points that way). In addition, if you kill a whole lot of enemies in a very short amount of time you get more speed for about 10 seconds. Medals are awarded according to the number of points you receive and these can open secret levels and things of the sort.
"Killing your buddy beats killing monsters any day"
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Multiplayer action exists both in split-screen multiplayer mode as well as online with seven other people. Four multiplayer modes exist, Deathmatch, Hold the Flag, Pass the Bomb, and Co-operative. I’m glad they included co-operative because many FPS games need that mode and don’t include it. Deathmatch is amusing because killing your buddy beats killing monsters any day. Hold the flag is just that, you race to the flag and try to hold onto it for as long as possible. The person who holds it the longest, wins. Pass the bomb is a game where you race to give someone else the bomb before it explodes (also known as hot potato).
Final Words
Serious Sam: Next Encounter is one of those games that I would classify as amusing. For those days when you are bored or pissed and just want to do a lot of killing, this game is perfect. If you’re looking for a game that requires you to have a brain (or use it) this game is not for you. For $20 it is amusing but it’s a game you probably won’t play for hours straight but instead pick up every once in a while to amuse yourself with.
