Serious Sam: The Second Encounter

Background

Sam's ship, the SSS Centerprice, is knocked out of the sky and crashes near the Maya city of Palenque, so his implant NETRICSA directs him to a Sirian backup ship that needs the Holy Grail. He uses the Sirians' Time-Locks to travel from Teotihuacan, where he defeats the wind god Kukulkan, to Babylonia, where he kills the Exotech Larva in the Tower of Babel, and then to the medieval Polish town of Krwawitze in 1138. There he follows the Arc-Al-Magi wizards' trail to the Church of Sacred Blood, beats Mordekai the Summoner, takes the Grail and flies on towards Sirius.

The game has twelve mostly linear levels in three settings, each setting ending with a boss. Its arsenal adds a chainsaw, a flamethrower and a scoped sniper rifle to the first game's weapons, plus the rare Serious Bomb, which kills every enemy in its blast, and four timed power-ups: Serious Speed, Serious Damage, Invulnerability and Invisibility. Co-op covers every single-player map for up to sixteen players, and the game ships with the Seriously Warped Deathmatch mod by A Few Screws Loose.

Did You Know?

• It began as a mission pack before Croteam and Gathering of Developers agreed to sell it as a standalone game.
• GameSpot named it its Game of the Month for February 2002 and the year's Best Budget Game on PC.
• A programmer accidentally duplicated one line of code that made everything render twice; removing it doubled the frame rate.