Serious Sam: The Second Encounter

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.

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!

The Good
This game blew my freakin' mind. It was actually the first ever fps that I played and it's the one that got me started into fps games. The gameplay looks more solid than Sam's biceps, and that's pretty solid! I love the outlandish weapons, freaky monsters, and the colourful enviroments.

My only problem with this game are the graphics and the multiplayer, but I'll touch on that later. The music is also an accomplishment to me. And the blood and gore make me sht my pants everytime I play.

The Bad
Here are the not-so-great parts. Well, the story isn't all that interesting. I forced myself to play through the story mode (although the gore was fun). And there really was no point to it in the end. The multiplayer isn't exactly solid. And don't start about the graphics.... otherwise everything's great!!

The Bottom Line*
BUY IT