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This Game Should Never Have Been Released !!!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 17
Date: April 01, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I hate to write a bad review for anything, but this game takes the cake. I'm basing my review upon my experience with the Half-Life series, so perhaps I'm setting standards too high, but here goes:

Pros: Nice action, beautiful scenery, nice cut-aways

Cons:
(1) Poor Interaction with Vodoo Brand Graphic Accelerators: First thing to do, even before trying to run this game, is download the patch that allows the game to work with a Vodoo Accelerator. If you don't, it won't run. What kind of software gaming company builds a FPS without bothering to adequately test it on a Vodoo Accelerator?

(2) Slow on Even Moderately-Fast CPUs: Okay, I have a 550 MHz Dell PC, but everytime there's more than a few bad guys on the screen, the frame update rate goes down to less than about 1 fps. Very annoying.

(3) Sound Not Working: two problems: first, you have to play with the options just to get the sound to turn on (turn off auto-adjust). Then, the sound of your guns is noticeably delayed, verses the graphics. Very Annoying

(4) Frequent Crashes: Something about the gernade launcher causes the program to crash, if firing more than one gernade at a time. Very Annoying. Don't bother to try to use the gernade launcher, if you don't want to have to reboot often

All in all, the makers of this game, in my humble opinion, should have spent a few more months doing some fine-tuning. I would not buy any more products from Croteam, based on this ... game. (Maybe its my computer, but I doubt it.)

(2)

Great game with good graphics but brainless!!!!

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 9
Date: February 19, 2002
Author: Amazon User

This game is only mediocore. The game has good graphics, but bad sound effects. It takes no advantages over the GeForce 3 and Radeon 8500 GPU's and it doesn't even use EAX sound mode! The game has brainless gameplay, which makes the game very repetetive after a few weeks. The only thing i found that the game has as a strong point is that I have never had as many enemies run at me at the same time.

Long loading times

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 5
Date: February 03, 2003
Author: Amazon User

First of all I watched all the demos in this game and I have to say I just couldn't wait to get a new game started. Then when the game started to load it took for at least half an hour to load and when it was finished the game went blank screen. I don't know if its just the disk or my computer but I doubht it was my computer. Just look at the disk when you get to the car and don't be like me and miss all of the action.

Seriously Difficult

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 5 / 8
Date: April 30, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I have owned Serious Sam: Second Encounter for more than a year now, but I never play it. But just today I thought I'd give it another go. After my experience, I decided to write a review.

To begin with, Serious Sam: Second Encounter is a gorgeous game. The graphics are amazing, and the music is awesome and really gets your heart pumping. On those qualities alone, I would give it 5 stars. This was actually my first first-person shooter since my days of playing Doom. Naturally, I was amazed at the difference in graphics and gameplay. Serious Sam was way more advanced than Doom. However, I have played many first-person shooters since my purchase of this game a year ago (most notably, Return to Castle Wolfenstein and No One Lives Forever 1 and 2) and I have to say, as nice as this game was when I first bought it, there are a lot better games out there.

I had purchased both the first Serious Sam and Second Encounter at the same time. About half-way through the first one, I gave up and found cheats for it on the internet. Why? Because this game is virtually unbeatable. There are no difficulty levels to choose from, which is insane, since the whole game seems to play out in what would be one of the highest difficulty levels, if it had any. At any time in the game, you have about what seems like 20 different species of enemies coming at you in groups of a dozen each. This hardly seems fair. I know, I know. Games aren't supposed to be easy, but this one is just downright frustrating. You have things coming at you from the front, the back, the sides, up in the air and sometimes up from the ground. There is no way you can keep track of and eliminate all of these threats, especially since they all seem to keep multiplying. So in other words, unless you are in God mode, you just keep dying...and dying...and dying...

So in other words, Serious Sam: Second Encounter is for serious players. Anyone looking for a challenge will sure find it here. But for anyone who wants any sort of a chance to win a game (without first suffering from a stroke), I suggest staying away from this one. Like I said, the game looks great. But you know the old saying. Looks aren't everything.

Fun and difficult, but repetitive

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 6
Date: May 20, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I've been playing "Serious Sam: The Second Encounter" for about a week and a half now; one of my sister's friends thought it would be fun and so loaned it to me to give it a shot--no pun intended.

I have mixed feelings about this game, which I will do my best to convey via a list of pros and cons. Here you go:

PROS:
1. Excellent graphics--muscles actually move in the werebull, for example.
2. A variety of interesting weapons. You get everything from the (useless) revolver to a portable cannon, and ammunition can sometimes be sparse; this forces you to be adaptable. You can even knock down trees or set things on fire.
3. There is a sentient computer that you carry around with you. Every time you kill something you haven't killed before, every time you get a weapon you haven't had before, and every time you come across something important in the gam,e this computer analyzes it for you to an exhaustive extent. It gives you hints into how to use your new weapons and how to kill new enemies. That's just really cool.

CONS:
1. The style of the gameplay gets really repetitive. You see, the reason this game is as difficult as it is is because the game has a habit of putting every single enemy against you, in large numbers, all at once. You don't just fight a few kleer skeletons; you fight about fifty kleer skeletons, two lava golems, about ten harpies, four major bio-mechanoids, ten minor bio-mechanoids, three juvenile arachnoids, two adult arachnoids, twenty beheaded kamikazes, ten beheaded bombers, and five werebulls.

All of that all at once. Every time you go around a corner, you don't fight one or two enemies, you fight about ten of everything the game's put against you so far. This is what makes the game a challenge, and it has helped me in those areas of other games where you fight a whole bunch of monsters, but it gets OLD. Seriously. It gets REALLY old, and it kind of bothers me that the game has to rely on that to make it difficult. Compare this to the comparatively difficult "Half-Life" by Sierra, which is far superior, with superior graphics, and it manages to be equally hard while still providing a variety in its gameplay and a mix of puzzles.

2. Come on. "Serious Sam"? How can you possibly take that seriously as the A-game that it is instead of some lame B-game spinoff of "Quake" or whatever? They could have done a much better job naming this thing.
3. Multiplayer is difficult to set up and it simply does not lend itself well to anything but deathmatch, even though it is possible to play the whole game multiplayer as in Blizzard's "Diablo II".

So. Three stars. Excellent graphics with beautiful scenery and a variety of weapons and enemies, but repetitive gameplay and sloppy multiplayer.

Serious Sam : The Second Encounter

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: November 22, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Serious Sam : The Second Encounter is a first person shooter, It is an expansion pack but you do not need the orginal game to install or play. The single player gameplay is excellent, The gameplay is just shoot every thing that moves and proceed to the next level but it is still fun playing. The level design is superb with very long levels and lots of enemies but unlike the first game there are many jumping puzzles and they not fun playing which is why i gave it only three stars. The multiplayer gameplay is not that great but the co-operative gameplay is outstanding, It is one of the best co-operative games i have ever played. Serious Sam is built on the serious engine. I played it on the OpenGL video mode and it runs great. Direct3D is also available but not as polished as OpenGL. The game runs great even when there are hundreds of enemies on screen at the same time. Serious Sam SE is an excellent game if you like doom type fps.

Seriously, enough!

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: January 25, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Serious Sam's main strong point is some great set design. A little cartoony, but the various cities you run though are huge, wonderfully detailed and beautiful in appearance.

Otherwise the game takes a good idea and does it to death. Sam is kind of like a PG rated Duke Nuke'em, and the game is deliberately not to be taken seriously. The standard FPS shooter theme is played out with the twist you mow down ludicrous hordes of enemies. Trouble is you've met all the types of enemies by the end of the first few levels, and the game play is set at being stopped at in each level by a door over and over and having to either mow down enough bad guys or find pieces of a puzzle (usually two) to unlock the door and move on.

The first football field sized alley of endless enemies is a hoot, but after the third or fourth one it becomes a drag. Despite some variety such as rooms that rotate or have low gravity the game doesn't have much of a plot and becomes pretty darn monotonous after a while.

INSANE!

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: February 02, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This game is just, well, my title describes it. I would like to know exactly what these Croatians were on and where I can get some. Imagine your most bizarre dream (or drug trip) and combine it with Quake.

Yeah, Quake. This game really could have been made in 1996. Technically, it doesn't impress and could very well have been released as shareware.

But hey, it's cheap. I'd buy it just to see the guy with the pumpkin on his head and the chainsaw.

If you like "Serious Sam", also check out "Will Rock".

Correction to Leo C Robinson's Review

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 7
Date: January 23, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Reviewer does not have his information correct.

Serious Sam 1 and 2, by Croteam, does NOT use the Quake 3 Engine. Serious Sam (1) was originally merely a tech demo for a graphical engine, now known as the "Serious Engine". The game was later built around this engine, when the engine proved to be so popular and impressive. Serious Sam 2 uses a modified/extended version of this engine.

Compared to more expensive games..

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: March 13, 2002
Author: Amazon User

..Serious Sam is far superior. It plays well on any decent machine, it is correctly priced and the graphics are outstanding. It is amazing how the game engine allows you to walk into the background scenery, like near the end where you have to walk towards a cathedral in the distance. It is barely visible when you start the level but you do walk right up to it! The detailed textures in the levels' buildings are amazing.

And of course there are gobs of monsters to shoot down... I love using the new sniper rifle and flamethrower weapons.

I have played some more expensive games that were nowhere near as good as Serious Sam. I can't wait for the conclusion, and that is my only gripe, the single player game was too short.

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