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Serious Sam: Next Encounter Review - PS2

Take off Duke Nukem's sunglasses and dye his hair black and you've got Serious Sam. Both characters are hugely alike, bearing muscle-laden chests, a grudge against aliens, witty one-liners, a deep voice and, of course, a huge arsenal. It's obvious that developer Climax gained there inspiration for Serious Sam from the tough and iconic game hero, but can they better him? Unfortunately not.

I've never played the first Serious Sam game, and hearing of its popularity I expected Serious Sam: Next Encounter to be quite an enjoyable First-Person Shooter, improving upon its predecessor in almost every way. But boy was I given a shock when I was thrown into the first level of the game!

The evil being, Mental, has sent his hordes of monsters from deep within the universe back to Earth in search of ancient Sirian artefacts, but this time back in time to the days of the height of the Roman Empire. Modern-day scientists have tracked the monsters' journey to Ancient Rome, and once again Serious Sam is sent back in time to eradicate them.

Gameplay

Serious Sam: The Next Encounter's thirty-two levels will take you throughout time. You'll come across historical landmarks such as the Coliseum in Ancient Rome, the Great Wall of China and more, each enhanced by some of the game's levels that are set outdoors and are huge in scale.

Unfortunately the game's gameplay style is reminiscent of older First-Person Shooters; rather than completing objectives, you'll be collecting items and keys, traversing jumping puzzles and clearing rooms of monsters before being able to progress. This gives the game a repetitive and bland feel as, combined with the game's often poor graphics and sound, you'll feel as though you're playing something on the Psone or Nintendo 64.

As you begin each level you'll be briefed by Sam's 'Neurotronically Implanted Combat Situation Analyser', or as he refers to it, NETRICSA. In addition to giving you an overview of the level, NETRICSA will - quite pointlessly, in fact - offer notes about new enemies and weapons as they are located in the game.

There's a large selection of enemies in Serious Sam: Next Encounter. You'll encounter an assortment of monsters and zombies, some of which are quite stupid to say the least. For example, in the levels based in Ancient Rome you'll come across rocket-firing Romans riding miniature chariots, and in the levels based in Ancient China you'll come across magic-casting, floating monks. The game is action-packed, and you'll definitely get a sore trigger finger fighting of the tons of enemies thrown at you throughout each of the game's levels. It's impressive that so many enemies can be on-screen at once with little to no drop in the frame-rate, but this is one of the things that make the game so repetitive.

There are twelve different weapons available for use throughout the game, some of which can make use of different types of ammo, essentially creating even more (continued next page)