Serious Sam: The Second Encounter

 

 since I really enjoyed The First Encounter, and everyone says The Second Encounter is greater, surely I will just be praising this game as having everything you could want from a Sam sequel, right?

Refer to my previous First Encounter review for the basic overview of the general gameplay mechanics because this is essentially the same game just new maps.

The networking and co-op options have been changed/had additions.
One massive techincal complaint and annoyance is that, they said they "improved the networking" here, but when playing coop with my buddy, everytime we quickload, it takes him 30 seconds to load the connection again. In the first game, it only took like 5 seconds. They butchered that aspect. But its just a technical complaint, no huge influence in the review.

But something that does influence the confusion and my real enjoyment is, by default there is a co-op option called "extra enemies"  and I figured since its on by default I'll just keep it. What this does is it tosses in a bunch of random, high tier enemies on seemingly every map. Like imagine if in Doom 1 , on level 1, it started spawning Baron's of Hell. It just ruins the balance of the game, pacing, and difficulty. On level 2 the game was so fucking hard we just kept dying over and over and over and couldnt figure out why. Turns out it was this option. Turning it to 'extra enemies off' made it seem more as its supposed to. Its just weird that its on by default, and can really ruin a good first impression

Well the first level is pretty good, it shows a difference in enviornments now you have lush green forests. It introduces a new weapon, The Chainsaw, which I didnt use much actually. It also introduces another weapon, the Sniper Rifle which is a good addition to the arsenal you can zoom and and its pinpoint accurate. Lastly, I think in the first level it also introduces the Flame thrower which can be useful mostly in the fact that its another reserve of ammo so you can use it on things like waves of Kleers when you dont wanna waste ammo for chaingun.

As I progressed  to level 2, 3, 4 etc I started to see a few disappointing  patterns:

First of all the difficulty is way higher than the first game, while granted that this is to be expected, the problem is that the difficulty settings suck. Normal is too hard, but the next difficulty down 'Easy' is WAY too easy, you can easily get 200+ health/armor, you get double ammo, barely any enemies spawn etc. We kept jumping back and forth between Normal and Easy to try to enjoy the game, but after hours of frustration and annoyance we just stayed on Easy to get through the game faster.

There is a very obvious philosophy change from the first game and second.
In The First Encounter, its more like doom gameplay where its no frills just get through the level, maybe sometimes pickup a key here and there but thats it. You had those few arenas where its 'survival' waves but they werent most of the game, you had typical doom level design

But in The Second Encounter the general design philosophy seems like isn't first and foremost to make really good level design, but instead to show off as many engine gimmicks and novelty features as possible. They were trying to license out the engine back in this time, so it's like they were trying to make a greatest hits compilation of every possible engine quirk to potential buyers. Unfortunately, its fucking awful. It has way too many traps and platforming. It's like they tried to break the game up to add more than just shooting, which I don't nessesarily have a problem with, but the way they went about it is just so bad. I dont think the other serious sam games has as much gimmicky engine showoff rooms like tse does . it feels like a tech demo instead of actual fun level design.


90% of our deaths were just some bullshit one shot death trap, like you turn the corner and the floor suddenly becomes slippery ice rink and youre sliding through a hallway full of one shot death traps. Or you have to do some Mario 64 bullshit jumping platforming section where you constantly fall to your death. Stupid level gimmicks like ice skating floors and rotating rooms and swirly walls just random engine tricks. You have all sorts of dumb novelty rooms like

-Bouncing room , where every wall makes you and all the enemies bounce like crazy and it goes on for 20 minutes

- Entire room swirls like crazy and rotates and you have to throw the mouse all over the place fighting enemies, very nausea inducing made me wanna vomit

- Areas where mouse and controls go all crazy and you run into death traps if you dont figure out to stare at a certain place on the map

- Jumping platform rooms where all the enemies fly all over the place like crazy
etc etc

It all just feels like a bad tech demo "lol loook what our engine can do look at all the quirky wacky shit you can do like bounce off the walls!"    instead of having actual good level design. why am i playing indiana jones avoid the traps and mario 64 platforming. TSE is just a bunch of traps and platforming and 'best of' compilation of random engine tricks and gimmicks though like bouncy walls rooms. 'stare at the right part or mouse goes crazy' rooms,   swirly nausea rooms etc
whereas the first one is just more like doom without any gimmicks.


To make matters worse, when youre not doing these dumb gimmicky rooms, the actual levels suck too. All the levels are just some flat location with a 'hub area' then its  a locked door and you have to run around copy pasted buildings looking for 3 keys. Almost every single level. First game actually had good straightforward interesting locations and levels, this one is like the same general idea over and over: Enter level, youre in some hub area with a locked door, you have to take the side rooms, you have to run around giant copy pasted area looking for keys, you find the keys, you unlock the door, then it throws a bunch of dumb engine gimmick rooms at you, platforming sections, and surprise instant death traps at you.  Repeat. . First game has no 'side quests' where you gotta walk around backtracking like a jackass looking for keys, it has a few sections where you need to find keys but its not the main design philosophy.

Oh yeah and the level pacing is ruined in TSE, too.
In the first game, it has bite sized good pacing level lengths of 10-30 mins long, a few longer ones towards the end.
In the second game all the levels are 40 mins-1 hour+ long
Its not segmented out in a way that makes sense each individual level is way too long
they fuckin ruined it.
The shorter length levels made the pacing feel good and doable.

It's unfortunate but thats all I can really say about TSE, its got way too long levels that feel grueling to get through, theyre full of stupid keyhunts in really generic copy past building gigantic landscapes that feel like a chore to navigate through cause you keep walking in circles wasting your time,  then the other half of the game is just a bunch of one hit death traps or stupid novelty rooms, or repeat ideas from the first game like giant long linear level for 'bowling' aka using the cannon to kill enemies that run at you.

There's a few enjoyable levels like that one short spooky graveyad one, the winter level is alright too because it doesnt its more typical and has good graphics, the first level is pretty good, but thats about it. Almost every else is annoying. Yeah it does have some impressive parts, some great graphical archetecture on some locations, that one medevial level with the giant long staircase with enemies coming at you was a cool idea, but the bulk of the levels are just bad. The last level is also pretty terrible and long, its just a long linear strip where enemies run at you, redoing the bowling gimmick idea, then you go into a room with a bunch of jumping platforms where the enemies bounce all over the fuckin place, then you go into a gigantic flat arena with a church where you survive for like 20 minutes, then you get a really easy boss fight and the games over.

It's just so strange to me becasue everywhere you look online and everyone you ask, they all say this game is better than TFE, none of them apparently have any of the complaints I do, I'm like the only person on the planet that thinks TFE is better than TSE. Very strange indeed

5/10