Serious Sam: The Second Encounter

Some years back, Croteam, an unknown garage development team from Croatia released the surprise hit of 2001. Hailing back to the formula of DOOM, the game was welcomed by everyone for its wafer-thin plot, tongue-in-cheek humor and run-and-gun game play. The colorful and bright setting and graphical eye candy made it a real blast to play. Croteam now serves up another dose of adrenaline with Serious Sam: The Second Encounter.

This time, Sam Stone has some new enemies and new guns in a while new settings (you explore Mayan, Babylonian and Medieval lands). We could tell you more about the story, but that’s hardly the point. Rest assured, you will have a lot of Mental’s minions to kill. The Second Encounter (TSE) builds on the ides laid out in the original by adding more things to shoot at, more levels, more wacky secrets, and more of that unique humor that has become a trademark of the original.

If you haven't played Serious Sam I, you’re in for a visual treat. The serious engine is just amazing. Glorious lighting, gigantic levels, bright colors, and hundreds of enemies on the screen at once—with no drop in the frame rates. No one else has attempted to create a game with such wide, open areas and locations since the first Serious Sam.

There are four new weapons for TSE: the Chainsaw, Sniper Rifle, Flame Thrower, and the Serious Bomb, in addition to all the fun weapons of the first game. The game play usually revolves around getting a gun and killing things. Get a bigger gun and kill some more. You’ll be hunting for switches, and/or objects to open doors but unlike Quake, you’ll be warding off hundreds of monsters at the same time. There’s a bit of puzzle solving involved too and the level design will test your reflexes as well as your brain.

There’s nothing like the screen of a Kamikaze coming from far off to send waves of panic through you. Or having a 50-foot tall Mechanoid shoot rockets at you. The sound effects have been done exceedingly well, considering the budget Croteam would have been working with. Extra points for the background music, which switches to metal/industrial mode when enemies appear up or close.

There’s a whole bunch of multiplayer options that come with this game—LAN, Internet (Gamespy) or Cooperative deathmatch. You also get some really cool mods for multiplayer, such as Seriously Warped Deathmatch, Scorematch, Cooperative, Fragmatch, Thief, Rugby, Teamplay and Capture the Flag, all of which are bundled with the game.

While all the other shooters out there are trying hard to be realistic, Serious Sam tries to make the game as much fun as possible. And fun is what you get. For Rs. 699, TSE gives you single player, cooperative, multiplayer and other game play modes, which will keep you busy for a long time. If you have a decent PC with a 3D graphics card yearning to be pushed, go get this game!

Genre: First Person Shooter
Developer: Croteam
Rating: «««««

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