Hotsuma's Reviews: Serious Sam: the next encounter

[~~~~Closed~~~~]

Title: Serious Sam: the next encounter
Developer: Climax (you read it right)


Graphics: lets dive right in shall we? good. the graphics are something right out of a PS1 game. simple as that grainy, low quality things generally wiggle at you alot and there isn't much of any way to tell when you get hurt, or when you walk off a cliff, or if your even touching something...actually there's no way to tell. 6/20


Sound: where to start on the sound? how about the voice acting, it's bad...real bad, you can't under stand anything sam says...not that you'd want to...but the sound effects aren't much better, it's pretty much the same shot sound for every gun. and the music? there isn't any. 2/20


Story: not much to say here, I couldn't see any actual story...only a cut scene in which the camera zooms in on an egg...thing...0/20

Gameplay: normally I put gameplay at the top of the review...well I was saving the best for last...thats not saying much though...whenever I booted up the game my controls were inverted, so I'd have to navigate through an annoying interface to change that. and the aiming is incredibly twitchy, it's almost impossible to dodge attacks, because apparently they hurt you even if they aren't aimed at you. swimming is a pain, and for some reason the chainsaw has about a 3 foot range BEOYND the chain...yeah...no comment. the enemy design is shitty, I encountered bats, big ugly...things, little ugly...things, flying...things, fish, roman soldiers, burly gladiators, headless wizards, and screaming headless people who explode on you. wait...what was that?

screming headless people who explode on you

you read it right...there's so many things wrong with this game it's actually kind of hard to tell what's bad and what isn't...wait, yest it is...there is no good. I'm confused...why am I playing this? is this some kind of sick joke? I honestly don't know, what I do know is that Serious Sam: the next encounter has become the game of which all other bad games will be judged by.  7/20


Score: 15/80
Pros:
+...
Cons:
-grapics, gameplay, sound, story...everything pretty much...

Final Verdict:
I thought I was crying when I was playing this game...it turned out my eyes were bleeding.

[Malaul]

HAHAHAHAAAAA

[Trollax]

Final Verdict:
I thought I was crying when I was playing this game...it turned out my eyes were bleeding.

That happened to me with red faction two, A game that bit so much ass everyone in the world has teethmarks on their left buttock because of it.

[MedeoPlusPlus]

LOL

I watched him play this for the first time last night... I haven't laughed that hard for a LONG time....

...

WHY WAS THIS GAME MADE?!

[Trollax]

LOL

I watched him play this for the first time last night... I haven't laughed that hard for a LONG time....

...

WHY WAS THIS GAME MADE?!

Probably the same reason Max payne was made, Salvaging 10,000 man-hours of game engine coding. Funnily, this one sucked.

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WHY WAS THIS GAME MADE?!

damn, I forgot that one...

[BADGE OF HONOR]

I watched my cousin play that game.  The only semi-redeeming feature was the bloody skidmarks that get left behind when you die...is that even a redeeming feature?

[Horab Fibslager]

Final Verdict:
I thought I was crying when I was playing this game...it turned out my eyes were bleeding.

That happened to me with red faction two, A game that bit so much ass everyone in the world has teethmarks on their left buttock because of it.

you know i didn;t think red faction 1 was all that bad, cept it ended 1/3 of the way through the game(by that i mean suddenly i was fighting only bosses, adn there are only two of em), adn the so called completely destructable environment was only slightly destoryable, and mostly only at the beggining...

yeah it sucked. i heard good things about serious sam. this review convinces me tehose people who told enm thsoe good thigns were either mac/linux users or are digital sadomasochists who probaly run win 3.0/dos on their 386x, then complain that broadband isn't any better than 56k...

[CannedLizard]

One important question. Did you like the first one?

I've not played this one (or even heard of it), but I happen to know that the first one (and the second...although that was just a copy of the first) were quite intense, and fun for people who remember the good ol' days of gaming.

To quote the first paragraph of the review:

Remember the days when the first person shooter was young and the fragging was pure and unspoilt? Days before the likes of Thief forced us into the shadows, before the true complex horrors of life were exposed to us by Deus Ex. Memories that bring us back to the days of Doom when all we had was a double barrelled shotgun and a will to live; Serious Sam is a hark back to those days, except of course Doom was never as intense as this.

(Find the rest of the review at www.epigamer.com/article.php?a=26 )

The point of the game is not to be realistic, but to be fun. Fun is an object missing in many of today's games. Deus Ex was art, and it was entertaining, but it wasn't sheer, unadulterated, distilled, fun. Serious Sam, from what I've played of it, and from videos I've seen, is.

screming headless people who explode on you

Oh man, you gotta love those. They come from beyond the hills, running straight at you, and you have a "holy shit!" moment when you have to kill all of them before they kill you. At higher difficulty levels, there are more.... It's...chaos (and I'm sure you guys should appreciate that).

I've no idea about how this one (never heard of it, before now) compares. As a matter of fact, there are no reviews out on many of the game sites (also, it's console only, *bleck*). Judging from the screenshots, I have to agree about the graphics. It's a step back from the original, from the looks of it.

Also, can I point out that I dislike a set "20 marks for graphics, 20 marks for story" marking system. Many games with bad graphics (or no graphics) are great and revolutionary (Uplink was a masterpiece, and Deus Ex wasn't exactly good looking either). Also, the original Serious Sam wouldn't get much in the way of story either, but face it, in some cases, trying to make a story gets in the way of the fun.

P.s: By the looks of things, this was developed by a completely different developer than published the first two Serious Sam games, so that would explain differences.

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A.) All ratings are final.
B.) I don't rate games based on the merrit of it's prior installments, so it wouldn't matter if I've never played, nor heard of the first.
C.) The point of the game may have been to have fun...but it wasn't fun.
D.) the screaming headless people are great, if only for the sheer stupidity of them.
E.) you don't have to like it, the fact is that graphics, story, sound, and gameplay all make up equally imporant parts of the game. if the graphics are that of a low quality PS1 game, it doesn't matter how good the story or gameplay is...your not likely to have fun. likewise if the story and grapics are the best thing the world has ever seen but the gameplay is so bad that it's nearly unplayable...it's not going to be very good.
F.) like I said in B, I don't base the rating on the merrit of it's predesessor. so it doesn't matter if it was made by a diffrent team.

[CannedLizard]

Hmm, but what about a game like Uplink, which has pretty bad "graphics" but extremely good gameplay. It is a revolutionary game, that invented a niche market for "hacking simulations". The story is interesting, in a paranoid way, but only if you're good enough to discover it (I played through the game to finale but only completed one of the 5 or so story missions).

To continue, what about a primarily-multiplayer game, like UT2003 (or 2004, but I don't own that)? It has pretty much no story, but it's not supposed to. Would you expect a decent story from the Mario games? Stories can be very good in games (ie: Deus Ex), but not neccessary for them to be entertaining and playable.

The reason I kept pointing to the predecesor was because I thought it might be from the same company, hence issues you had with the game might be in regards to the style of the game, but it turns out it's a spin-off game from a different company, which probably explains it's crapiness.

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I don't give a crap about PC games, I review PS2 games. it could be the best PC game ever made, but if it still sucks on the PS2 then, oh well.
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SOCOM 2 is a primarily multiplayer game, and it still has a story. UT2K4 allready takes up 7 gigs of space, if the developers couldn't bothered to include a half decent story in all that, then I'm not going to bothered to give them as good of a score.
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[CannedLizard]

I don't give a crap about PC games, I review PS2 games. it could be the best PC game ever made, but if it still sucks on the PS2 then, oh well.
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SOCOM 2 is a primarily multiplayer game, and it still has a story. UT2K4 allready takes up 7 gigs of space, if the developers couldn't bothered to include a half decent story in all that, then I'm not going to bothered to give them as good of a score.
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*Sigh* I can't believe I'm arguing against stories in games. I used to love stories in games. Still do. But there is no need to tack on a poorly done story with cutscenes filled with bad dialogue when I could be having FUN shooting things.

You say SOCOM 2 has a story? What is it "terrorists have stolen a nuclear/biological weapon, kill lots of them to track it down"? Perhaps I'm being unkind, but many games try to pass that off as a story. Frankly, I'd rather they drop all pretence in some cases, as it hinders the game. Stories in games can be good, like (as I have been constantly espousing) Deus Ex, but in many cases they get in the way of gaming, which is what I came to do.

And if your view is that "If they spend all their time making a game, rather than a story, they don't deserve a decent look", then it looks like we may need some new reviewers.

[~~~~Closed~~~~]

You say SOCOM 2 has a story? What is it "terrorists have stolen a nuclear/biological weapon, kill lots of them to track it down"? Perhaps I'm being unkind, but many games try to pass that off as a story. Frankly, I'd rather they drop all pretence in some cases, as it hinders the game. Stories in games can be good, like (as I have been constantly espousing) Deus Ex, but in many cases they get in the way of gaming, which is what I came to do.

I never said it had a good story, but at least they were thinking of the people who couldn't play online. and also pay notice to the fact that I said DECENT story, if the developers are to lazy to add a decent story, then I'll just give them a score to match.

in today's gaming world, where the development costs can reach into the millions, and a team can spend several years making a game, there's just no excuse not to have a moderatly good story. the writers need to do their job.

And if your view is that "If they spend all their time making a game, rather than a story, they don't deserve a decent look", then it looks like we may need some new reviewers.

I'm not doing this because someone wants me too, I'm doing it so the poor peoples of this forum don't have to suffer through games like Drakenguard like I did.

[CannedLizard]

Mmm, fair enough. I suppose it's a matter of opinion. I mean, I'm happy with no story in UT2003/4 (the reason the writer's aren't doing their job is probably because there ARE no writers, except for the manual/level descriptions/taunts, which could be done by normal programmers), and I still have lots of fun with it, but I'm also enthralled when I'm deep in a well-crafted game world with a wonderful story involved (as I've always been using as an example, Deus Ex). But when I'm playing things like Spy Hunter (the remake), I can't help but think that they'd loose a lot of baggage if they just cut the pretense of a story and gave us pure action. I mean, when you have a game that's supposed to be simulating car-chases (5% or so of an action movie), why bother trying to emulate the rest of the action movie? It's fun in it's pure, naked run-'n-gun mode.

Also, warning people away from bad games is gooooood. However, due to monetary restraints, I tend the stick to the straight-and-narrow, mainstream, popular, good reviewed games. Except for cases like Republic: The Revolution (good potential, bad execution), which I often end up regretting.