Serious Sam: The Second Encounter

aka: Serious Sam 2, Serious Sam Classic: The Second Encounter, Serious Sam: 2nd Encounter, Serious Sam: Drugie starcie, Serious Sam: O Segundo Confronto, Serious Sam: Second contact, Yingxiong Samu: Er Ci Chu Ji
Moby ID: 5623
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Serious Sam: The Second Encounter continues where The First Encounter left off. While on his way to Mental in the Sirian spacecraft he discovered in ancient Egypt the ship collides with something and crashes in Mesoamerica. With the ship damaged beyond repair Sam is once again trapped in hostile territory. But it seems the Sirians left a second backup spacecraft somewhere on earth.

To reach the spacecraft you have to fight your way through Mentals hordes that attack in great number and several waves across the ancient temples of Mesoamerica and Babylon to finally reach Medieval Europe where the final boss Mordekai the Summoner awaits. The game offers several new weapons like a chainsaw, flamethrower, sniper rifle, and a device called the Serious Bomb that will kill all enemies in a certain radius. New enemies include Cucurbito the Pumpkin a creature wielding a chainsaw, Zorg mercenary and commanders armed with rifles, large creatures called Zumb'uls wielding a twin rocked launcher and Fiendian Reptiloid Demons that attacks with fire balls from a great distance.

In 2010 the game received a HD remake.

Spellings

  • Serious Sam: המפגש השני - Hebrew spelling
  • Крутой Сэм: Второе Пришествие - Russian spelling
  • シリアスサム セカンドエンカウンター - Japanese spelling
  • 英雄萨姆:第二次遭遇 - Simplified Chinese spelling

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Credits (Windows version)

93 People (68 developers, 25 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 83% (based on 36 ratings)

Players

Average score: 4.1 out of 5 (based on 73 ratings with 7 reviews)

More of the same, thank God

The Good
Well, what's not to like? SS:SE doesn't change all that much from the first game (good thing), while improving on an already impressive engine (even better) and diversifying the playfield (excellent).

The Serious Engine may not have undergone a complete makeover, but it was certainly improved: level-of-detail management has either been completely rewritten or improved to the point that SS:SE can and does utilize super-detailed environments throughout the game. The engine is apparently quite capable of handling much more than a mostly-indoor Egyptian theme as in the First Encounter: SE features quite a few settings, including jungles, medieval castles, lava caves, an ice palace, and more. I also wish Croteam would capitalize more on the engine's impressive portal engine; both the original SS and SE feature very few portals, which is unfortunate because they are absolutely spectacular! In a word, the game is visually STUNNING.

The weapon selection has improved from the first game, featuring my ever-favourite chainsaw (almost as useful as it was in Doom 2!), fun as always flamethrower, and the Serious Bomb. More enemies are always fun too. Audio-wise the game hasn't changed much; the music is again quite good (albeit not as good as in the first game) and so is the audio.

The game is just as crazy as the first, if not more; the secrets are ever weirder (secret "mutated plant", a gun-wielding Frosty, pink secret?!), Sam is as cynical as ever, and hordes of enemies still come your way. Also, Croteam's added a bunch of bosses this time, and they're actually quite cool!

The Bad
Some of the levels, unfortunately, have crossed the border between "challenging and fun" to "downright annoyingly insane". This applies particularly to the crazy gravity-defying combat scenes, and the final battle right before the boss is way too long, to the point of becoming arduous.

The Bottom Line
A visually stunning, absolutely crazy and ultimately fun first person shooter.

Windows · by Tomer Gabel (4539) · 2002

Like Doom on steroids-a rare FPS experience these days!

The Good
I vividly remember my time with Doom (and Doom II). The game was nearly plotless - you were pitted against adversaries from Hell, and then left on your own. No cinemas, no talking heads - just A LOT of fragging.
Serious Sam is the first FPS I've played in years that completely captures that feeling of senseless, breathless slaughter. Not once are you bogged down in bullshit (and lets face it, even the better plotted FPSs these days seem like they were written by some pimply-faced dork in Mrs. James' sophomore English class). You just have to kill what seems like millions of bad guys through the game's three worlds and 11 stages. I like the weapon selection - you get your standards, plus interesting weapons like the cannon and the flamethrower (now rapidly becoming an FPS mainstay). The enemy AI is so simple it's laughable - bad guys either run straight at you as fast as they can (the Kleer skeletons), or run toward you slowly while firing as fast as they can. But you don't play Serious Sam for the AI - you play it for the non-stop, glorious carnage. Plus, Croteam (the designers) have a whacked-out sense of humor that pervades every aspect of the game. From the strange one-liners that Sam spits out once and a while to the odd text messages left for you by your computer-based ally, there's a lot of strange, vaguely European-translated into English-jokes to make you laugh (or at least, wonder what they were thinking when they programmed that).

The Bad
I already noted the lack of sophisticated AI. Apart from that, there's nothing really all that bad about Sam, besides the occasionally too tough encounter (some of the situations you'll find yourself in are so damn hard you'll want to resort to cheats - real men don't, however). Furthermore, it can all get a bit tedious - I found myself unable to take any more than an hour of Sam before it all got to be too much.

The Bottom Line
A Doom-style FPS that completely flies in the mold of every other FPS out there today. Don't miss it if you're tired of all the stupid dialog, pointless puzzles and endless key hunting that bog normal FPSs down.

Windows · by Lucas Schippers (57) · 2002

Sam is back, and he couldn't be more serious!

The Good
To make a long story short, this game has everything the other one had, plus new and freakier enemies, new weapons (including the awesome Serious Bomb!), more varied environments, better designed levels, better secret places, and more quotes! I especially like the flamethrower-enemies sizzle, bleed, and blacken as they burn. This game's got it all!

The Bad
This game starts out at a much faster pace than the original, so it's quite hard at the beginning.

The Bottom Line
A rare occurence where a sequel is better than its predecessor!

Windows · by Archagon (108) · 2002

[ View all 7 player reviews ]

Trivia

The additional developer, "A Few Screws Loose", helped develop the multiplayer code.

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Related Games

Serious Sam: The First Encounter
Released 2001 on Windows
Serious Sam HD: The Second Encounter
Released 2010 on Windows, Xbox 360
Serious Sam: Gold
Released 2003 on Windows
Serious Sam
Released 2004 on Game Boy Advance
Serious Sam Classics: Revolution
Released 2014 on Windows
Serious Sam HD
Released 2010 on Windows, 2011 on Xbox 360
Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter
Released 2009 on Windows, 2010 on Xbox 360
Serious Sam: Double D
Released 2011 on Windows, 2013 on Xbox 360

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by NeoMoose.

Additional contributors: Trixter, Unicorn Lynx, phlux, tarmo888, tbuteler, Foxhack, Blod, lights out party, Crawly, Stratege, vicrabb.

Game added January 26, 2002. Last modified January 19, 2024.