Serious Sam Next Encounter – PS2 – Review

Ever since the early 90’s
when I sat down and ran through Doom on a friend’s PC, I’ve been hooked on FPS
gaming. All the top titles, all the “under the radar” titles, you name it … I’ve
probably played it. A couple of years ago, a good friend of mine from work
brought me a copy of a little game called Serious Sam to try out, and honestly I
really didn’t know what to expect due to the silly looking t-shirt bearing hero
on the front and the goofy name. Well, after playing it for an hour I was hooked
into all of the constant firing and furious strafing and backpedaling that the
game had to offer, and I found myself cracking up at a lot of the one liners
that Sam tossed out during the game. I still play the original on PC, and you
can imagine that I was excited to get my hands on Serious Sam : The Next
Encounter for PS2 as well.

First and foremost, don’t think that this is a direct
port of the Serious Sam sequel for PC, because it’s a different game for us PS2
owners. That being said though, don’t think that the plot of the game is going
to get any different than it has been. Basically, Sam’s evil arch nemesis Mental
has once again used a time warp to send his minions through to such locales as
Rome and ancient China, and it’s once again up to Sam to grab his cuffed jeans
and skin tight t-shirt and use a huge arsenal of weapons to wipe out Mental’s
forces and once again save history and humanity. For Sam vets, you can expect
the standard “tons of guns and tons of enemies” routine as well, with Sam
getting into some tight situations with seemingly 50+ enemies being thrown at
him as your trigger finger gets a serious workout. 

For anyone who has or hasn’t
played a Serious Sam game yet, the PS2 controls do the job pretty nicely. PS2
FPS players will be familiar with the standard setup of the controls with the
left analog stick handling movement and the right stick providing the lookaround.
In addition, the developers have also added in a weapon wheel that is accessible
by pressing the R1 button, and it will also freeze the action for a second while
you select the gun you want to use. This may sound bad or sound like it breaks
up the action, but honestly it works really well considering it lets you pick
the gun you want to use quickly without getting mauled and is a good
consideration since us PS2 players lack the quick switch mousewheel of PC
titles.

On a big plus note to the
PS2 system (and one thing that I was really worried about since (I saw a lot of
it on the more powerful Xbox with the original Sam title release) is that with
all of the running that I was doing combined with all of the enemies and
shooting going on, I never once encountered any framerate issues at all … not
even the occasional explosion lag. Along the way in the game, there were times
where 20 or more things would be running across the screen, and each time
everything remained smooth.

One thing that I found to be
a big plus personally (and I know that some of you will disagree on this) is the
fact that there seems to be lots more ammo and weapons available lying around
than there have been in Sam PC titles. I remember narrowly escaping death more
than once due to low ammo or low health, but in Next Encounter, it really never
posed a problem. In every area, there were always lots and lots of crates loaded
with everything from bullets to bombs, and many areas that I came across had
tons of health pills, full armor suits, or combinations of the two so things
just never seemed to be much of a problem. Basically, for those of you who enjoy
a challenge but don’t want to worry too much about getting killed, this works
well. For those of you who are long time Sam fans and enjoyed the extra
challenge of the PC titles, this may not be the best news for you.

Another difference in Next
Encounter that I thought was neat was the addition of vehicles for Sam to use.
There is a Hum Vee, a Harvester – like plow machine, and a submarine, and all of
them are equipped with weapons like machine guns or rockets. On a positive note,
they can also be used directly as weapons themselves, and players will quickly
find themselves using them to flatten or shred opponents rather than trying to
shoot them all. Personally, I thought that the vehicles were pretty cool, but I
also thought that the controls on them were a little clunky, and they also
weren’t used that much at all to make a serious impact in the game. The places
that they could be found most of the time just didn’t really make sense (like
grabbing the Hum Vee all of the sudden in the middle of a grape field), and
before you knew it, the ride was over. Cool concept, I just wish that they would
have done a little more with them.

Lastly, and on a not so
great note, the whole mixture of lots of health and ammo really did make a
difference in the overall game length. While there are over 32 stages (and some
unlockable ones) that you can play through, the game really won’t take many
dedicated players long to run through if you really focus on it throughout a
weekend. Changing the difficulty of the game makes Sam easier to kill or bad
guys harder to kill, but for anyone who is a seasoned vet of the past titles
from the PC, they will be used to the fast speeds and furious movement that is
required to avoid getting stomped. Basically, the main thing saving this game
from being little more than a weekend rental for a lot of people will be the
online multiplayer mode, which didn’t have a whole lot of people on at the time
that I’m writing this review.

Overall, Serious Sam: The
Next Encounter for the PS2 provides a lot of fast paced, gun blazing action that
fans of the series will be familiar with. Unfortunately, the increased ammo,
health and armor factor combined with a single player experience that won’t last
much past a day or two over the weekend may hurt the decision to buy, but with
only a $20.00 price tag, it’s definitely worth checking out for you FPS fans or
Sam fans from the PC. Multiplayer fortunately will keep it going longer for
those of you with the connection, but let’s hope that more people get on and
start playing. 

Gameplay: 7.0
The overall
concept is repetitive (walk in area, door shuts, tons of monsters come at you
until all of them are dead), but the furious action keeps the game interesting.
Also, players like me who really don’t care to do a lot of puzzle solving will
be happy to know that there really isn’t much more than some jumping or put item
A into slot B style puzzles to do. The vehicles were neat, but weren’t used as
much as I thought they could have been, and the game won’t take most FPS junkies
longer than a weekend to complete.

Graphics: 6.1
Well, on a bright
note the framerate stays consistent and there is no slowdown that I saw,
unfortunately we all know that this means that the graphics had to take a hit …
and boy did they ever. The overall colors in the levels are flat and don’t
contain much detail or shading, and enemies look grainy when viewed up close.
There is also popup that occurs, many times a lot closer than you would expect.
Also, the M rating on the game due to violence probably isn’t as bad as it
seems, since blown up enemy’s body parts look like nothing more than red jello
molds and when blood is present, it looks like little more than an area where
someone just sloshed a red paint can around.

Sound: 7.1
The music will
fluctuate from more of an orchestrated soundtrack style to heavy metal riffs
when entering a combat area, and neither sounds too bad. Also, Sam has his
classic, Duke Nukem style one -liners present (Forget the wine, bring out the
BEER!) that we have all grown to know and love, although it didn’t seem to have
quite as much to say in this title as he has in the past, which was a personal
downside for me.

Difficulty: Medium
There are five
different difficulties to choose from in the game, but choosing one over the
other will only effect how easy Sam takes damage or how hard bad guys are to
kill. It won’t do anything to the number of monsters onscreen or the amount of
ammo and such lying around.

Concept: 7.3
While I was
excited to see a PS2 Serious Sam title, I know that this won’t be for everyone.
Hopefully this won’t be the last one they do, and Sam fans will at least feel
somewhat at home with enough of it to make it enjoyable.

Multiplayer: 7.5

The multiplayer mode is what will really determine long
time play value for anyone looking to buy the game, and offline players can team
up on the same PS2 to go after Mental or you can jump online to challenge other
opponents on the internet. At the time of this review there weren’t many people
on, but hopefully that will change.

Overall: 7.1
Since I’m a fan
of the series and like to play online, I would have to give this an extra point
myself, but as an overall I know that not everyone will dig Sam on PS2 like I
do. If you enjoyed the series on PC, then you should have a good time with it
for a while. If you are an FPS fan, it really doesn’t get anymore frantic that a
Serious Sam shooter, but for those of you who are doing a single player
experience only, just remember that you may not get much more than the $20.00
that you put into it.