Some variations on a theme. The Second Encounter should be regarded less as Serious Sam 2 and more an expansion pack; befitting The First Encounter's existence as a throwback FPS, you could view Second Encounter along the same lines as "Thy Flesh Consumed" for DOOM or Mysteries of the Sith for Jedi Knight. On the surface, part of this is the varied settings; instead of First Encounter's Ancient Egypt setting, Second Encounter has Sam running around in Mesoamerica, Mesopotamia, and Mesaíonas Poland. Level design is a bit more restrained, though this doesn't say much; mostly it just means that the game can have sequences, like that castle ascent in Poland, where the player(s) need not worry about the game spawning Werebulls from outta nowhere to fling them over the edge.

I probably put Second Encounter about on-par with First Encounter. Having the change of scenery is nice (though, Mesopotamia doesn't feel that different from the first game's ancient Egyptian desert cities), but there's a bit less flow due to the Second Encounter's segmented campaign. Otherwise, my opinions on the First Encounter stay pretty consistent with this follow-up. Serious Sam HD bundles First and Second Encounter together anyway, so pretty natural to treat this as a Sonic 3 & Knuckles situation.

I want to be entirely straightforward about the nature of this review; this is not a review of Serious Sam: The Second Encounter, this is a review of The Second Encounters HD remake and subsequent Xbox 360 port. I will not be going over the design of The Second Encounter, instead I want to discuss my gripes with the HD remake, and then the weird oddities of its console port. With that being said, this is by far the worst way to play what is probably my least favorite Serious Sam experience. I am already not the biggest fan of The Second Encounter, and the issues that stem both from its remake and port job only serve to make it a worse experience.

I will not regale you with the copious amounts of versions, re-releases, and ports that make up the Serious Sam franchise. The only important bits to know for the sake of this review is that the original Serious Sam games, The First and Second Encounters, were released in 2001 and 2002 respectively, and then were both remade come 2009 and 2010. These remakes, appropriately, remade the first two entries in the then new and fancy Serious Engine 3, and with that process came a complete new look. Weapons and enemies had brand new models, textures were upscaled to match the standards for the time, and add some nice new gibs and animations for some of the enemies. Of course, I am probably not touching everything these remakes set out to do, but that is the gist. The problem I have with these remasters is that, in the process of making everything, quite literally, shiny, Croteam severely messed up any sense of art style and cohesion that these games had. The First Encounter gets off slightly easier because the Egypt aesthetic is consistent throughout, so while it is still very shiny and plastic look to it, like every model and texture looks like they have a cheap RTX filter on them at all times, it at least isn't a complete aesthetic shift every couple of levels. The Second Encounter has both the aforementioned Botox injection, and the drastic aesthetic shift; the latter isn’t that big of a deal in the original versions of the game, but here, with the horrible upscaled textures and really shiny everything, it is much more jarring. On top of that, The Second Encounter features levels that take place in massive outdoor areas, but because every surface looks like it was freshly polished near minutes before Sam got there, all of the plants and grass that look normal in the original, look drastically unnatural. As well, a lot of the weapon models were taken directly from the original Xbox port and then upscaled, which does not look good. These models were made for lower resolution textures, and so they also look slightly out of place. But that is all aesthetic criticism, there are some technical critiques I have.

This port does carry over a lot of the bugs that are present in the original PC release, such as enemies getting stuck on walls and terrain, but the port does have some of its own dedicated bugs. Firstly, and the one that was most baffling, is that the AI pathfinding is absurdly broken. It's not that noticeable at first, but as soon as the player reaches the alleyway fight in City of the Gods, it makes itself apparent. In the larger, more open combat arenas, such as the before mentioned encounter, almost all of Ziggurat, and especially in The Grand Cathedral, enemies just start bolting off the complete opposite direction of the player, or worse, the strafe around them. I can not tell you how much ammo was wasted due to these bugs, it is almost impossible to hit enemies that fall victim to these bugs, and it completely destroys the combat structure the game is so dependent on. I am unaware if this bug is present in the PC version, but I never hear it brought up when this game is in discussion, so I can only assume it is a problem in this port. As well, being a PC to console port during the 7th generation of consoles, there are some slight performance issues, and some sluggish controls. There is some slight texture pop in with some of the bigger maps, and some frame drops when a big amount of enemies are on screen, and the load times are just painstakingly long. They make dying so much more of a pain because you are just sitting there on the loading screen scorned by whatever got a cheap shot at you from around a corner. The controls aren't that bad, I have definitely played worse, but they fail in comparison to the smoothness of the original Xbox port. They are very choppy and feel like it's trying to emulate mouse movement. Additionally, the two methods of swapping weapons are not the best; the player can either use the shoulder bumpers to linearly cycle throw weapons, or use the D-pad to open up a weapon wheel to specifically select one. These aren't bad options, but they really should be swapped, like how they are in the 2017 Fusion release of the game, because the Xbox 360 D-pad is probably the worst D-pad out there, and using the bumpers takes way too long during high octane combat encounters.

And that's really it. I would not recommend playing either the original 2010 release of The Second Encounter HD, or its Xbox 360 port. If you are interested in this series in any way, I would highly suggest you either check out the classic release of the game, the original Xbox port, or the modern 2017 Fusion build that is available on PC and all modern consoles, there is no reason to go back and play this version, if only to say that you have like me.

In several ways, this one is superior to the First Encounter. It has less troll-inspired design choices, and generally better combat encounter design. The one exception is the final boss. It's not as badly designed as the final boss of the First Encounter, but it's way too easy for some reason, and this makes it more forgettable.

The level and map design is noticeably worse. Every level is a series of a wide open area with a smaller area on either side. You have to clear those side areas, collect a key item from each, then return to the central area to progress. The game does this so many times that one of the log entries makes a self-aware reference to it with "You should know how this works by now!"

It's not life ruining but it's pretty frustrating when the core gameplay is still as satisfying as it is. I found myself continuing to fall into a flow state many times. Still, I can't really justify a higher rating than this.

Sorry repeating myself but just swap out the setting and you have exactly everything you had in the direct predecessor. If you want more of the same then the Second Encounter is for you. So here is the same review from First Encounter again. :D

Serious Sam, even today, radiates its charm, albeit likely through rose-tinted nostalgia glasses. In terms of gameplay, it mostly boils down to "keep your finger on the trigger," spend most of your time running backwards, and occasionally strafe. While the weapons are wonderfully diverse, there's little reason to switch between them other than "Weapon A deals more damage than Weapon B." The levels are beautifully designed, and the time-travel setting takes you to impressive locations that felt incredibly vast for their time.

Where the game truly shines is in its multiplayer co-op mode, especially when played with a group of silly friends. That's when beautiful chaos unfolds, and together you hack and slash your way through hordes of hundreds and hundreds of enemies. All of this is underscored by a banging soundtrack. Nowadays, Serious Sam may not appeal to everyone, but it certainly holds a special place in my heart.