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Serious
Sam: The Second
Encounter
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...continued
Though
the original Serious Sam has a reputation for being
a mindless action game, The Second Encounter has
some real depth that lurks just beneath the game's
lighthearted, frenetic surface. Serious Sam: The
Second Encounter expects you to be constantly
prepared to face off against dozens of different
types of monsters, many of which demand different
types of tactics. Fortunately, each weapon in your
arsenal is well balanced and useful, whether
against certain types of foes or in certain
situations. You'll use a majority of your weapons
during each level. Some battles seem to stretch on
indefinitely, never letting up, only escalating and
never giving you the opportunity to conveniently
reach over to quick-save. Even if you do know
what's in store around the next corner, defeating
wave after wave of monsters is never an easy task,
as your reflexes, your precision, and your
endurance will constantly be put to the test.
You'll also need to keep your ears open as each
enemy makes distinctive noises, and you'll often
hear your foes before you see them. Time seems to
stand still during some of the more hectic battles
in The Second Encounter--it'll seem like you're
fighting an endless onslaught of foes, burning up
all your ammo for all your weapons in the process.
Suddenly it's over, and you'll hear yourself exhale
as though you were holding your breath for all
those minutes. The action in Serious Sam: The
Second Encounter is some of the best you'll find in
any shooter to date. Calling it mindless is selling
it way too short.
If
the action itself weren't incentive enough, Serious
Sam: The Second Encounter is loaded with unique
secrets--there are tons of them in every level, and
discovering them yields absurd, funny, and always
rewarding results. This is a genuinely funny game
with a truly inspired sense of humor, and you'll
know it not just because of the secrets, but also
because of some of Sam's amusingly self-conscious
one-liners. "I hate running backwards," he exclaims
on more than one occasion as you're desperately
trying to fend off a tidal wave of monsters,
fleeing for dear life.
The
Second Encounter has a lot of really great, unusual
sequences in it. In an early scene, a bridge
crumbles beneath your feet and you start bouncing
uncontrollably on an elastic floor. Sure enough,
the room fills with monsters, including those
ubiquitous beheaded kamikazes. As you're spraying
the whole room with your flamethrower, bouncing
around on a giant trampoline along with countless
monsters, hearing the cacophony of the kamikazes'
screams pitching higher and lower due to the
Doppler effect, you'll be downright stupefied. The
whole game goes on like this--it's pure sensory
overload and incredible fun, and while some parts
are especially good, every level is rife with them.
As you play, you'll be struck by the sense that the
designers must have really had a lot of fun making
the game.
The
production values in The Second Encounter are even
better than those in the original game. Each
enormous level is colorful and boasts plenty of
beautifully detailed high-resolution textures
everywhere. Ambient lighting is used to excellent
effect, and in general, the game's special effects
are top-notch. The three boss monsters you'll face
all look great too, and as in the first game, even
when you're fighting hundreds of enemies at once,
the frame rate remains smooth. The Second Encounter
also sounds great--the game features an excellent,
effective musical score. Each level has its own
music that fits perfectly with the pacing and the
theme, grows more intense when you're fighting, and
cools down when the coast is clear. The sound
effects themselves, many of which are recycled from
the first game, are as good as ever. Like the
original, The Second Encounter uses audio as a
vitally important part of the gameplay.
The
single-player mode of Serious Sam: The Second
Encounter is easily worth the low price of
admission all by itself. But just like the
original, the game comes packaged with a complete
multiplayer mode, plus mod-making tools for anyone
inclined to use them. Once again, the cooperative
mode steals the show. You can easily find
multiplayer servers running co-op Serious Sam and
jump right in with friends or strangers to fight
even more enemies than usual. It's tremendously
entertaining, and The Second Encounter's bigger,
better levels make it even better than the co-op
mode in the first game. The Second Encounter sports
an excellent deathmatch mode too. Croteam provides
eight different deathmatch maps (obviously much
smaller than the game's standard levels), but The
Second Encounter also comes packaged with Seriously
Warped Deathmatch, a mod featuring more than 20
deathmatch levels, variable gameplay modes
including capture the flag, new weapons, and more.
There are already plenty of Internet servers
running all these different multiplayer variations.
Serious
Sam: The Second Encounter is one of a very small
percentage of games that can be wholeheartedly
recommended to everyone, especially because it
retails for less than $20, just like its
predecessor. While there were many outstanding
shooters in the last year, most of them had to be
recommended with a caveat or two: "This is a much
better game in multiplayer," "This game isn't as
realistic as you might expect," and so on. In
contrast, there are only pleasant surprises to be
found in Serious Sam: The Second Encounter.
Regardless of what sort of action you
prefer--whether you like it lighthearted or
visceral, whether you want to play solo or with
others, or whether you want a quick fix or a game
with real lasting value--you'll find virtually
everything there is to like about action gaming in
the stunning sequel to Serious Sam.
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