![]() ![]() ![]() In comparison to the PC versions, it simply doesn't present anywhere near the challenge it once did, and also barely attempts to live up to its former raison d'etre as a graphical demo. Given that even on normal difficulty you'll be blitzing through most levels inside 20 minutes, it's not a game that is likely to outstay its welcome. However much fun it is mowing down 150 enemies inside 10 minutes, its clear that there's not really much of a game here, and the repetition factor kicks in barely inside three levels. ![]() With a constant 60 frames per second and barely a pause for breath in proceedings, its retro-tinged immediacy is at once endearing and jarring. In small doses, Next Encounter makes a refreshing change, being the sort of thought-process-free shooter that used to be common currency in the early days of gaming. Some have compared the gameplay to the old school approach of Doom, but this is pure Smash TV, where wave upon wave of swarming creatures, a relentless pace and an increasingly destructive arsenal are the order of the day. A large proportion of Mental's enemies are pissed off headless suicide bombers intent on your destruction, but facing off a posse of them from all directions is one of the most amusingly deranged gaming spectacles of all time. Next Encounter starts as it means to go on, by simply piling wave after wave of enemy at you in a head-spinning array of madness, which can't fail to make you smile at its audaciously chaotic approach. Kicking off in ancient Rome and progressing through China and Atlantis, the almost ludicrously simple premise is to kill everything as quickly as possible and reach the exit of any given level, of which there are 32 to wade through. It's just about the most madcap take on the first-person shooter genre there has ever been, with an almost ludicrous amount of willing cannon fodder on screen at once all piling towards you at ridiculous velocity.įittingly, an evil being called Mental is behind all the beastly shenanigans, and keeps sending 'depraved monsters' back in time to steal the power of Sirian artefacts. Much like the two insane and inane Doom-on-speedballs PC Serious Sams, this debut outing on the PS2 is far from Serious. 'Serious' Sam Stone has done his bit for ludicrous firepower and insane quantities of screaming enemies with bombs strapped to their backs, but he's no match for the cigar-chomping babe magnet from Texas in the one liner strakes. Given Duke Nukem's continuing refusal to kick any ass at all for the past eight years, the world evidently needed another lantern-jawed, smart-mouthed gaming character to fill the breach. ![]()
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