Serious Sam: Next Encounter

Seriously old school he may be, but Sam is no slouch...

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Well, here we are with yet another first-person shoot-em-up. Is it the most popular genre of game out there at the moment? Possibly, if not then it certainly feels that way at times. In which case, a new FPS game really does have to do something different in order to stand out from the blood-splattered crowd. And so we come to the first mention of Serious Sam: Next Encounter. No motley prizes for originality with regard to the name of this sequel to a well-received PC game, released back in 2002. Although perhaps just an ironically raised single eyebrow. If you are not an avid follower of the Croatian game development scene then you might not be familiar with the previous efforts of Croteam, the studio behind the Serious Sam franchise. Clearly they are fans of ancient videogames and this is very much apparent in both previous Serious Sam titles. But has the transition from PC to PS2 been a challenging one?

Serious Sam has a fantastic old school feel to it and I suspect the designers had a barrel-load of fun during the short process of making it. To all extents and purposes, this is how I envisaged a 3D FPS remake of Smash TV to resemble. It has the familiar design of entering an apparently empty room and then dealing with the hundred or so enemies that teleport in front of you. A large yellow X on the door stops you from leaving until everything is dead, then you can proceed to the next room. Nice & simple, and perhaps an arcade style escape from the increasingly complicated and abstract FPS's that have been appearing in the past few years - many of which require you to know the genre conventions for them to be accessible. Imagine this kind of gameplay matched with the feel and humour of Duke Nukem and possibly even Doom, and you have Serious Sam locked down. However, as anyone who indulges in emulated games will mostly testify, nostalgia does have its limits.

As you might expect from a hair-brained, all-action arcade FPS, the player receives some big guns to play with; two-handed Uzi 9mm, double-barrel shotguns, rocket launchers, XM 4000 mini-guns. They are all present and correct. Are they satisfactory to use? Damn straight they are and there is never really an absence of ammo due to the immense number of pick-ups floating around each level. Of course, where would the fun be in using a super large armoury unless there are some cool enemies to dispatch them with? Many of the bad guys make it across from the PC versions of Serious Sam. The kamikaze bomber, for one, certainly left me feeling rather perturbed when the sound of his blood-curdling scream first reached my ears. Upon turning around (in the game, of course) to witness the source of the horror, I found the insane bomber speedily running towards me, carrying two explosive devices! I thusly aimed my twin Uzi's at the unfortunate being and plugged him before he got too close to cause me damage. Needless to say, I had the last laugh.

Mostly, the enemies are a mixture of good and bad. Generally the worst and most irritating fodder are the little green alien chaps who sprint or fly towards you in their thousands. Aside from these and a few other alien species, the enemies are designed to fit with the whole mythological theme of the game. On the second level, for example, which is a large and open vineyard valley, several gargantuan and very angry stampeding bulls charge at you without giving you much time to respond. If ill-prepared, you might like me, find yourself momentarily spooked as an unexpected collision takes place and you end up hurtling backwards through the musky grape-filled air. Scary stuff indeed!

The player has a choice of switching between various control configurations, although I stuck with the default method that has been tried and tested within a large number of previous PS2 first-person shoot-em-ups. It uses a slightly fiddly method of utilising the left analogue stick for movement/strafing and the right stick for aiming. R2 is the trigger button while L1/R1 switches between the weapons in the player inventory. Unfortunately, as a result of insufficient brain cells, I often found myself accidentally switching between weapons when under-fire. Which is never a good thing. Oh and another rather annoying aspect of the control system is having to press L3 to jump, which creates some horrendous results when attempting to leap out of the watery sections in later levels.

It is abundantly clear that the designers had a real easy ride on this title. Aside from the odd puzzle that could easily be solved by a problematic infant redneck, it is the same formula repeated over and over. Occasionally you will find a token vehicle thrown in for the sake of variation, such as the Hummer, which is perhaps an ironic nod to a far superior game that I won't even mention. But such quirks are not really necessary when you are dealing with a simplistic arcade shooter. While the action is all pretty linear, there is an occasional juxtaposition of wide-open environments with smaller, confined rooms and corridors. Along these sometimes-sparse levels, there is always a wealth of secrets to collect if you wish to. The learning curve is pretty much non-existent, due to the incredibly simple gameplay mechanics and it isn't that difficult to complete. However, there is never much time to stop and think so it rarely gets boring. A multiplayer death-match option is also included, which is slightly fun but nothing new and certainly won't be the first thing that springs to mind upon returning from the pub for a game session with your mates.

Graphics, sound and presentation in Serious Sam are less than good. It has a very low end feel to it, from the tacky presentation screens in-between levels to the texturing on the enemies and lack of polygons. This is vaguely understandable when you consider how many enemies appear at any one time, however some clever coding could and should have been used to cover up some of the overtly apparent weaknesses. However the engine does maintain a consistent frame-rate and slowdown is rarely noticeable. But overall it really does feel rushed in every way and this possibly points towards it being developed in a year or under. Now this is a remarkable achievement for a game in this day and age, but it does resemble a PSone game at times. I just pray that Croteam work on their PS2 engine a bit more before their next release!

Serious Sam is an ode to an old game genre that appears to be dying out. Looking around the videogame market place tends to reveal a trend for FPS games to revolve around realism and war. Otherwise you need to have a game of true genius to succeed, as seen with the likes of Halo or Half-Life. The classic shoot-em-up is not a mass-market seller any more and the moneymen appear to lack interest in financing such products. However, to succeed they will have to spend a bit more time on development than they have done here. Next Encounters is a budget label game, so take that into consideration when you wander past it in your local game store. It is cheap and cheerful but it ultimately fails to do itself justice on the PS2. Still, I shall be keeping an eye on where Croteam go from here and I expect big things from them sometime soon.

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By Richard Pomfret