So I played the Serious Sam HD: The Next Encounter BETA [reupload to this disscussion]

[Alterot]

So I played the Serious Sam HD: The Next Encounter BETA, here's my preview:
So. I got my hands on the mod made by russian fans, I would say that it is one of the most expected and praised mods for this game, since it is, as the name is telling, a whole HD conversion of successful The Next Encounter SS gane from consoles.

I will be explaining itself by differencing it from it's original and from United Campaign plus mod.
As you might know, SS: The Next encounter brought itself on console in the year 2004 by Climax inc. and it obtained campaign between the events of SS TFE and SS TSE, hitting the more cartoonish style of SS 1 xbox and SS 2. Story is about Sam's evil clone, which is playing with time lock once Mental is gone, and goes after Sam. Sam travels through beautiful Rome, China and quite impressive Atlantis in order to defeat the clone. The game contains new weapons, new enemies and it really distances itself from older games. Instead of revolver you got two deagles, UZI, minigun with 3 different types ammunition, or atleast two, etc. It is really a lot of stuff, even driving a car is there!

In the United Campaign Plus, which is a different mod, that only puts all SS HD games together, is ROME part of SS TNE HD, because the autor of that mod had a good relationship with creators of TNE HD mod and they gave him unfinished Alpha version as a kind of preview for players. It is very incomplete, to fill places of the original enemies are used classic SS enemies, such as instead of Dum Dum is used that hopping kamikaze frog, and instead of flying Dum Dum is used flying Gnaar. The only new enemy is Kamikaze MK II, the rest of the new enemies there are enemies from enemy pack mod, most likely used by autor of UC itself. It is also very unbalanced, I played on normal and sometimes it was really, but really frustrating and hardcore, mainly the part in front of Colosseum and the Colosseum itself. Textures and maps are remade not as close to the original as later beta, they are reusing a lot of textures from older SS games, and it all looks like a rip-off, even enemy spawns and secrets are completly different than in TNE. There are none new weapons, all classic, but it atleast has all missions of ROME, in russian language. But I could understand all of that, the only big dissapointment is, that at the Colosseum level, where Diablotaur, my favourite boss of that game should have been, is some random android spider thing instead. Without any warning, it is just there. And it is hard to beat, which Diablotaur would probably be too, but this thing is even worse and harder. It has rocket salvo, creating tracking spikes that are rolling on you until they are destroyed, like in SS 2, it can create flying drones, attacking you with Biomechanoid minor lasers, etc. It ruined the feeling to me, but I could expect that creators of TNE HD are not ready with the original boss yet.

That's why I was hungrily looking foward for TNE HD Beta. It is finally a mod itself, and it is really more complete than before. It finally has converted maps 1:1 by their locations and textures, and mainly, NEW TNE WEAPONS AND ENEMIES! Also it is much more balanced finally. I could play with all weapons from TNE, I could try out the car and had access to most of the game practically. The BETA contains sounds, some enemies, some descriptions, maps and weapons from TNE, but it still lacks a lot of things too. The ROME campaign is almost complete, it just lacks any story cutscenes, and for some reason ends at the last level before Colosseum, so there's no boss or Colosseum level at all. The same for China, and in Atlantis there's only one mission, most likely only for testing purpose. Weapons are working as they should, and have sounds they should have, only deagles are reusing sounds from revolvers, also, all these weapons are still reskinned original weapons, as you can see in their descriptions. But they also work identically with their originals. That means that even tho, that UZIs are registered as Thompson, they are losing ammunition as slow as they should, instead of Thompson speed. The creators decided to make look TNE more realistically, so don't expect any cartoonish icons, Sam, or whatever, it does not act like cartoonish episode. There is no Combo mode as was in the original, and no homing bullets for a minigun and a car. The car was playable too, but it is really..unpredictable, and uncomfort to drive around with, shooting rockets only in one direction, so it was really unuseful. It only served to get over huge map to where did you want. Maps are pretty average, but I noticed that most of the arenas, or locations for fights, are really massive against the original SS maps. Those maps were still huge, but were split between smaller locations, well, this one has almost every arena location atleast as big as The Grand Pyramid arena part. Enemies are balanced tho, and I died much less than in UC plus, there was less enemies, secrets..and what can I say about the enemies? There are reskinned werebulls, Diňos on those pigs with big hand and sword in ROME leves, Harpys, and few others. They are truly RESKINNED, so when you see description most of them, they are still classic enemies, only Dum Dum is here and truly described as Dum Dum, being no reskin in this case, with Kamikaze MK II being that too.

I had nothing to complain about, it is still BETA after all, but there is a bug in Opening the Aurelian gates (sorry for being incorrect in the name of map), which does the thing that no enemies are activated, and until they are activated and killed, you cannot progress foward through the game. That means that you have to just stop the game, and play the map after this one instead, I didn't find any solution to overcome it. It might not be the case for others, I dunno, but it happened to me and it couldn't be fixed. The car and it's driving core should be tweaked, and I really missed the Colosseum level. I Want to fight Diablotaur already!! :D If you ever get your hands on this BETA version, I advise you to not play China and Antlantis parts yet, I went through those maps, and they are incomplete yet, like, empty and flat terrains, enemies, etc. So I am satisfied with the path the game choose to walk on, I just hope that creators will push it to the end, because they made too much progress on giving up now. I am aware of it being cancelled for a while, but now in september or when it was, I read a post on their FB page, that game is back in works, so I wonder how that will work out.

For now I would give it 7,5/10, as points for being a great promising remake of TNE game, which I can even imagine being bought by Croteam to be distributed as a real game, not just a mod. It might be impossible, but who knows, Croteam are really kind to their fans, and they tend to chat with them, even about SS 4 etc. So they might notice this mod and give it a go. These russian fans deserve it!

[Solais]

There are some information here that's actually wrong, and since i actually worked on the project for a while, let me clarify a few things.

1.) First of all, while the project started out as Russian, it is actually a cross-community international project now.

2.) I'm guessing that the version you played is the leaked "beta", which is nowhere near complete as any of the internal versions and got a lot of missing levels.

3.) Despite what you think, the Rome campaign in the United Campaign mod is the same as the one in the leaked version, so it's weird that you see different textures, when they are the same. Also it wasn't exactly shared with the creator of that mod because of "good terms", it's based on the same leaked beta you likely played.

4.) For some reason people have the idea that the China episode in the leaked version (and internally too) is less complete than the Rome episode. This is actually not true. The China episode was as "not detailed" in the original as here. Which is no wonder, as China itself is full of large open spaces, deserts and mountains with nothing much else. The China campaign in TNE HD was meant to convey this same "beauty of large scale mostly nothing" feeling. I think the mountain levels got it right.

5.) There are unfortunately many things you mentioned that can't be fixed with SSHD's engine, so currently, the project is waiting for SS4 and a way to port everything to it.

[Mary Virgin]

Can't Next Encounter's maps be remade in SS Engine? From scratch if needed? Why isn't that being considered?

[Alterot]

Originally posted by Solais:

There are some information here that's actually wrong, and since i actually worked on the project for a while, let me clarify a few things.

1.) First of all, while the project started out as Russian, it is actually a cross-community international project now.

2.) I'm guessing that the version you played is the leaked "beta", which is nowhere near complete as any of the internal versions and got a lot of missing levels.

3.) Despite what you think, the Rome campaign in the United Campaign mod is the same as the one in the leaked version, so it's weird that you see different textures, when they are the same. Also it wasn't exactly shared with the creator of that mod because of "good terms", it's based on the same leaked beta you likely played.

4.) For some reason people have the idea that the China episode in the leaked version (and internally too) is less complete than the Rome episode. This is actually not true. The China episode was as "not detailed" in the original as here. Which is no wonder, as China itself is full of large open spaces, deserts and mountains with nothing much else. The China campaign in TNE HD was meant to convey this same "beauty of large scale mostly nothing" feeling. I think the mountain levels got it right.

5.) There are unfortunately many things you mentioned that can't be fixed with SSHD's engine, so currently, the project is waiting for SS4 and a way to port everything to it.

1, Wasn't aware of that, thanks for info

2, That is most likely truth too, got external link to it and was told it is "BETA", nothing else.

3, It has different settings, I will capture screenshots for comparision. And if I remember correctly, the creator of UC said that he thanks to you guys for sharing it with him, not sure now.

4, Alright, didn't think about that this way! :D It is great, but to me it just feels too..unrealistic, too..plastic, I am sorry for that opinion, but that was not a mistake of you, but the original game had it itself after all.

5, So after all it's gonna be remade for Serious Engine 4 and published as a SS4 mod? Kinda sad to hear that, it fits perfectly into SSHD line, and it feels wrong to me to make it a mod for newer installment, but I fully understand why it was put in that way. And to your first line that you see some misleading info, I noticed too, and I have some things to fix :D

Anyway, thank you much, for spreading light on the situation around this project, it is mod hidden deeply in my heart, TNE looked really promising to me, but I do not have any old console to play it, and I do not want to mess with emulators, I really do hope that you will catch Croteam's attention on it and gain their support!

[Silent Hunter]

yes!

[Mary Virgin]

Next Encounter will be ported for PC? I reckon Since Croteam now doubles time to bring out the next game [TSE 1 year, SS2 almost 4 years, BFE 6 years, SS4 8 years?] my guess is any SS5 will take 10 years by the established table. Might as well HD-Remake SS2, Last Hope and Next Encounter for PC to keep business running? Space them out 2 years each? LOL!

[Silent Hunter]

im think yes