Ureview by: Eraser
Ureview points: 28
Ureviewer since: April 2006
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Reviewed On: Monday July 3, 2006
Price paid: $30.00
| Rating: 8 | Recommends product: Yes
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Introduction
By now Serious Sam has become a widely appreciated franchise that many gamers consider to be simple but huge fun. Serious Sam games have been available on both the PC and XBox for some time now, and with the upcoming Serious Sam 2 for the PC, the GameCube and Playstation 2 couldn't be left behind.
Global Star Software took the task on them to develop an all new episode (or encounter) for Sam to blast through. The result is a Seriously thrilling shooter that has everything you can expect from a Serious Sam title, but adds a few extras as well.
Note that this review is based purely on the GameCube version of the game as I haven't had the chance to play the PS2 version.
Graphics
Since this game was developed to run on the both the PS2 and GameCube some compromises had to be made. Compared to the PC versions of Serious Sam the open terrain bits of the game look a lot less detailed in The Next Encounter. There's no real foliage and the canyons often appear less gargantuan than those found in especially The Second Encounter.
However, contrary to what many people were led to believe by some early screenshots of the game, the textures are of very high quality and when viewed from close up, a whole new layer of detail becomes apparant. Massive areas are still present and hordes of quite detailed monsters are still there.
The Next Encounter also has it's fair share of new visual effects. Explosions bring forth a nice shockwave ring which kind of warps the air like a rock ripples water in a lake. The water effects itself in TNE are quite decently done as well.
Gameplay
What is there left to be said about gameplay? This is Serious Sam, period. For the uninitiated (do those still exist?) here's a brief explanation. Serious Sam is a first person shooter that's all about mowing down hordes of monsters or shooting them to bits with huge rocket launchers and other devices. The monsters come at you in waves counting such huge numbers of enemies that you'll be holding down those triggers for minutes at once, trying to dodge incoming enemies, rockets and bullets at the same time.
Levels
TNE features 32 "normal" levels and an addition 10 secret levels. You can unlock these secret levels by scoring enough gold medals. Gold medals are awarded when your performance in a level is good enough. Usually this means finishing the level under the par time and making enough kills. Additionally you can make combo chains for extra points. If you kill 20 enemies quickly enough after each other, you get about 10 seconds of "super combo" time. During this time all kills you make score you double the amount of points and you can move slightly faster.
All the levels are set in three different ages. You start off in ancient Rome where you cross Roman cities, lush green fields and even a colloseum. After that you're transported to feudal China. Here you'll cross gloomy temples, caves and high mountains. Finally you'll end up in the mythological lost city of Atlantis. A place where you'll encounter some of the weirdest effects of gravity you have ever seen.
A number of the enemies in the game are featured in each era, but there are enemies that are specific to one time era as well. In Rome you'll find undead skeleton legions throwing spears or creatures that are half man, half chariot. In China you'll encounter ancient spirits and the like and Atlantis features huge crabs that can hurt you quite a bit.
Weapons
TNE features some of the common Serious Sam weapons like the pistols, shotgun (the double barreled one), rocket launcher, grenade launcher, sniper rifle, chaingun and flamethrower. There are new weapons as well such as the Sirian Power Gun which shoots a continuous beam of energy that does a lot of damage. Another "new" weapon are the Uzi's, although this is more of an alternative to the "old-fashioned" Tommygun that used to be in the PC Serious Sam games.
New are the alternate fire modes for some of the weapons. The Uzi's can shoot normal bullets as well as ricochet bullets. These bullets bounce off the walls a few times hoping to hit something after all. The chaingun can fire homing bullets which is a terrific sight. You can see the bullets bend off and follow enemies in a stream of lead. There are a few types of rockets as well, including homing rockets and sonic rockets. The flamethrower can now shoot liquid nitrogen to freeze enemies as well as laughing gas additional to it's normal napalm ammo.
Additionally you can hop into a vehicle from time to time, such as a jeep that can fire dual homing rockets.
Controls
The controls are decent for a first person shooter. Control stick moves forward, backward or sideways, C-stick looks up/down/left/right, A button activates triggers and buttons, B button switches ammo for alternate fire or zooms with the sniper rifle, R-trigger shoots, L-trigger jumps and X and Y are used to swap weapons. One handy feature is that if you hold down the Y button a weapon selection dial shows up and you can instantly select a weapon to hold. The game pauses while the weapon dial screen is up but this can be disabled.
The downside is that the controls lack any form of configuration. You cannot remap the buttons to different functions, which is a shame. I was used to this control scheme from playing Timesplitters 2, but I had the X-axis functions of the control stick and C-stick exactly the other way around in TS2, which made it tricky to get used to this.
Multiplayer
TNE features four player deathmatch multiplayer which I must admit I haven't even tried yet. The more interesting part is that the game features a two player cooperative mode as well, which is always interesting. Serious Sam has proven itself as the ultimate cooperative game since the release of the original First Encounter.
Unfortunately TNE does not support the GameCube's LAN capabilities so you're stuck to split screen, but I guess that's something most console gamers will be used to.
Conclusion
Serious Sam: The Next Encounter is a true Serious Sam game like we've all come to know and love. The only downside of the game is that it gets a bit repetetive after a while, but IMO this has been true for every Serious Sam game so far. Even though this is the fourth game in the Serious Sam series, it does offer some of those genuinely original "cool!" moments, especially in the weird gravity parts of Atlantis.
A game that's certainly worth it's price at only 30 dollar for both the experienced and new Serious Sam players.
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| Pros: It's Serious Sam, 2 player co-operative, 4 player deathmatch |
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| Cons: Repetition, no LAN support |
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