Which brings us neatly on to some of the problems with Serious Sam on the 360. All of the classic titles Croteam revere are PC games, and so is Serious Sam. When people in the late nineties exclaimed that you could never make a good FPS on consoles, they were sort of right. Using the standards of contemporary shooter design wasn’t going to work, there had to be a new paradigm for the new hardware. Goldeneye was so successful when it launched in 1997 because it deployed its own crazy control scheme to fit the N64 controller.

 

 

Serious Sam plays just like a old-school PC shooter, a genre that doesn’t port directly to consoles with any kind of success. The game revels in throwing wave after wave of nimble monsters in your direction and, as the hordes begin to gather, the action becomes all about strafing and spinning. Trying to keep pace with everything is an impossible task. You’re left pummelling the right trigger as fast as you can, hoping to make contact with your assailants.

 

Without the speed of a mouse and keyboard at your disposal, Serious Sam can become a depressing grind. If a game dedicates two whole buttons to saving and loading, it’s obviously going to be tough, but even in Second Encounter’s early levels it feels like you’re fighting the control system rather than the enemies.

 

 

Also included are a Survival setting and a few different multiplayer modes. Actually finding an online match is very difficult, which is a shame, because this is one area of the game which might have been fun. Not least the intriguing Beast Hunt mode, which requires you to dispatch more enemies than your opponents inside the time limit.

 

 

Every time you reach a certain score threshold you’re awarded a ‘license to kill’ another player. Finding this nugget of innovation beneath so many layers of frustration is scant reward for the 1200 points Second Encounter will set you back.

 

 

Serious Sam was released during an FPS lull, while there was a genuine nostalgia for the shooters of the 90s and very little in the way of quality console alternatives. In this post Modern Warfare world, a remake of a game that emulates an outmoded design feels horribly dated.

 

We can only hope that Serious Sam 3 continues to follow the example set by Duke Nukem Forever - marrying an updated design philosophy with the charm and sass of the original title. Until then, "Serious Sam HD: The Second Encounter" is no substitute.

 

 

 

+ Up to 4 player co-op