Information

Platform
Coop Players	16
Developer	Croteam
Publisher	Gotham Games
Engine	Serious Engine
Release	Feb 1, 2002
Genres	Action, First-Person Shooter

Ratings

Features

	Cooperative Campaign
	Drop-In/Drop-Out Multiplayer
	Online Multiplayer

On Steam

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Serious Sam: The Second Encounter

It should be noted that there are differences between the original and HD versions of the game which negatively affected our experience with the HD version greatly. Some of the most memorable moments from the original Serious Sam: The Second Encounter were the rooms with crazy physics. There were some rooms that were curved, but the gravity was always set to pull you toward the part of the curve on which you were standing. In other words, you can effectively run up along the walls and ceiling. Evidently, Serious Engine 3 (the Serious Sam HD engine) can't handle those physics, so those rooms are either changed (for the worse) or no longer exist.

For example, in the Teotihuacan - The Pit level, there is a cylindrical room. In the original, you could run up the walls and onto the ceiling, and gravity would always pull you to the outside of the cylinder, rotating your screen to accommodate this. Enemies would spawn on the floor and ceiling and would also follow the same gravity rules as they attacked you. However, in the HD version, the gravity effect no longer exists. Instead, there is a rotating wall that runs along the sides of the cylinder which simply pushes you up the walls. You fall back to the floor when you get pushed up too high. While cool, that is nothing compared to the awe of the original. The room immediately following was destroyed as well. In the original, you would run along a corridor that curved downward and had the same gravity effect, as kleer jumped at you from the "horizon". In the HD version, they took what was possibly the most memorable room in the game and replaced it with some room with an annoying jump-fan as kleer jumped at you.

In short, the original Serious Sam: The Second Encounter is a better game. All the HD version does is sacrifice creative and unique mechanics in favor of better graphics. If you think the HD version is better, then you are everything that is wrong with modern gamers.