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.