Devil in the details, I suppose. This looks like Serious Sam and sounds like Serious Sam, but it is not Serious Sam.

I first became aware of this game in 2004 when I came across some game store ad in a magazine. It showcased a bunch of game covers and their prices. At the time nobody I knew had any idea that Serious Sam 2 was in development, so we all naturally assumed that TSE was the true sequel to the original. Having seen this, a title called "Next Encounter" (no "The"?), I was convinced this was the third mainline game and craved to play it, but couldn't find it or any information on it anywhere. The last thing I would think is that it was a console exclusive. Why would it be, when the first two were PC exclusives (with a later Xbox port I wasn't aware of)?

Some years later I got it on PS2 and remember being just kinda bored with it. Though I had no idea why. It's been about 17-19 years since.

How would a Serious Sam game be played on the console anyway? Forget inferior aiming, there's not even enough buttons to replicate the core mechanics of the series.

I have to say, it's not as bad as I thought it would be. For a console shooter, it's not terrible. But as a Serious Sam game, it pretty much ditches the traditional gameplay in favor of something much more generic and mediocre.

It's the little things that make up the tight balance that makes the gameplay of the series so engaging. For example, you wanna use an automatic weapon (assault rifle) against smaller enemies (e.g. the Beheaded), but then switch to a shotgun for someone like Kleers or Werebulls. But here the difference in the amount of damage between the automatic (UZIs here) and the shotgun is so insignificant that there's rarely a reason to use the shotgun. Most of the gameplay here is kinda what the haters of the series think Serious Sam is like: just running around and holding down the fire button.

Tbf, I don't think you could do much else on a console. For one, switching weapons is now accomplished with a weapon-wheel, which pauses the game, completely eliminating the thrill of vulnerability while the animation of weapon-switching is playing out. You can disable the pause, but then how are you supposed to dodge attacks with a giant menu covering most of your screen? Alternatively, you can just tap the button and Sam will switch to the next weapon, but that will require you to go through all weapons to find the one you need.

I think the devs kinda confirm this with how they introduce weapons to you. You find the chainsaw before a fight with a bunch of dum-dums (local equivalent of Gnaars), who are somewhat more mobile and cowardly than gnaars, so coming at them with a chainsaw is not the wisest decision. Especially since the collision model (or perhaps it's the aiming problem) here is quite different, and your attacks can miss the enemy that stands up-close. When you discover a rocket launcher, the game throws at you a group of charioteers (idk what they're called) who are a rather small enemy that does not require a rocket launcher to deal with. Later I found a shotgun two more times for some reason, which is weird because it's not like the first one was a secret location. The third time it's placed before a fight with a group of the Beheaded, meaning again it would be best to just use the UZIs. This speaks to me as an acknowledgement of how little it matters which weapons you use.

Secondly, you can't switch to the third-person view, which was essential to some platforming sections in the original game and gave you a huge advantage when dodging Kleers, Werebulls or homing projectiles, like those of the Reptiloids.

You can't crouch either, which came in handy during exploration and search for secrets. Not that there's much room left for exploration anyway, as the consoles seem incapable of handling big and complex level structure, so most of this game consists of corridors and simple arenas.

Instead the game focuses on its scoring system, which some people (e.g. FrameRater) sing praises to. The scoring system is nice and can spice up the combat, but I don't think it does much for such a simplistic gameplay. Most of the older enemies were significantly dumbed-down, and the newer ones are ... just dumb. To illustrate my point, the beheaded kamikazes in the original game could be briefly stunned with a single shot from a weak weapon (e.g. a pistol), which would give you a fraction of a second to get a little further away before blowing them up. Here this doesn't exist. Another example, the Reptiloids' projectiles here fly at much slower speeds and in much straight lines. These are little things, but they add up, and in the end you're left with a rather basic shooter, which can get boring really quick.