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Serious Sam II is Croteam’s biggest project, released after four-years of
little activity. Following Serious Sam: The First
Encounter and its semi-sequel Serious Sam: The Second
Encounter, which were first released in 2001, and 2002
respectively to a large amount of anticipation, generated by the
hope of a slight change within the standard First Person genre, and
damn did they get it! Later Xbox,
GameCube and PlayStation2 conversions individualised the player’s
experience of Serious Sam further; with each being treated to
their own vision of the series. Thoughts on the first game differed.
A little crazy, is the phrase many people liked to use, manic is
another; some just went for absolutely brilliant madness, but in
every case the overall description of the first Serious Sam
is the same as ours
which edged more towards the, “total nonsense
all-out-mash-‘em-up” side, which is a slightly more relative
view on the game as there isn’t another way that sums up how nutty
this game can really be.
Serious Sam II is just as mad. The content of the standard First Person
Shooter is all included; lots of guns, enemies to shoot with them
and areas to run around shooting all the enemies with all of the
guns. But apart from the sheer basic structure, Serious Sam
II seems to be oblivious to the progression made within the
genre within the last five years – or maybe even longer,
resulting in a game that survives on sheer wit alone and with Sam
“Serious” Stone, as the main character likes to be known, truly
excels in that area. He is the a-typical square-jawed American
beef-head stereotype, following in the footsteps of the likes of Duke
Nukem. He knows nothing more than run, and shoot stuff,
preferably if it moves! Luckily if he  ever gets stuck – on
something like a locked door for instance – he has his handy
Narcessa to hand, or rather to mind, as it’s a small device
implanted into Sam’s brain, to inform him that a key may well be
required to get through that door, she – yes it has been
programmed with a female personality – also doubles as a HUD unit,
providing visual data on your health, armour, ammunition and other
useful stuff like that, Narcessa can also do helpful things like
providing you with a targeting aid, which kind of compensates for
the lack of a Mouse, and provides, as said before, useful hints and
tips, and rather sarcastic comments, as you go through the game.
Be nice to her though, she’s the only friend you have out
of the 30 or so other character models on screen that are constantly
trying to split you two apart! Yes, there are many, many enemies to
fight at any one time in this game. They generally come in waves,
air dropped around you or crawling out of every crevice and cranny,
or if you’re lucky both. The humongous variety of enemies
available really helps the game pull this off well. There’s little
fast ones, medium powerful ones, medium fast ones, big powerful
ones, big powerful and fast ones, huge ones, monstrous ones and many
varying shapes and sizes in between. Various air units, tower units
and artillery placements litter the arenas if you get bored of the
basic run-n’-gun technique. Starting to sound a little daunting?
Well Croteam thought of this too and gave you a huge array of
weaponry with which to play with.
The weapons in Serious Sam II follow the same format
as the rest of the game: they take the basics of what makes the
First Person Shooter and exaggerates it to the extreme. Take for
example the humble shotgun, the requisite weapon of any First Person
game, which has – at times – been made a bit too powerful for
the rest of the game. Well, in Serious Sam II it kills
everything smaller than a tank in one shot, blasting larger enemies
back over the top of the next wave of enemies coming for you.
You’d think that having a gun that powerful would make the game a
bit too simple, but alas in their infinite wisdom Croteam have
thought of this too; you have to reload the shotgun and even when
you take out four of ‘em at the same time, there’s still another
twenty odd running towards you, at pace! This is where the mini-gun
comes into play, the mini-gun doesn’t need reloading and just
streams through its bullets,  strewing down the enemy as they come
towards you, it’s not very good with the big guy’s though, but
at this point you can just change to one of the other fifteen
weapons available - including some so enjoyable they have to be
played to be believed.
The story though-out the game is totally engrossing yet
totally ridiculous; some of the funniest things I have seen within a
game have happened in this one. You follow Sam’s story of universe
saving through many different types of worlds, woodland, dessert,
lava and other similar stuff, trying to, well, save the universe.
Along the way you meet many small friendly people, that you can make
friends with, then, if you like, use them as a small diversion for
the enemies’ attacks while you get some ammo. The ultimate aim
being to find guy named Mental – some big evil guy, intent on
destroying the human race, and few others – and kill him, thus
saving the universe et al. Rather simple story, but then it’s the
shooting bits in between that really make the game anyway.
The Multi-Player on this game is done through System Link or
XboxLIVE! Mode on the game. These take you and up to four
other people through a set of arena’s taken from the Single-Player
game and lets you all team up to shoot the enemies that pour from all
sides. Operating in the Co-operative Mode is great lots of fun,
but I am a little disappointed that there weren’t any other
Multi-Player options available.
Everything in this game based on a parody of the First Person
Shooter genre, and  it’s done really well. The graphics are slick
and polished far above what is expected nowadays and a stunning
improvement on the first Serious Sam attempt. The explosions
look brilliant and the sound just adds a proper kick to all the
action. The only disappointment in it all is the Multi-Player that
takes some re-play value out of the game, but I feel the
Single-Player is worth looking at all by it’s self, with all the
levels being re-playable individually and five difficulty settings
to choose from. I’m sure that once you play it through once you
will find reason enough to play through it again, and maybe again,
and maybe in five years time when you’ve forgotten its existence
you’ll find it in an old pile, smile, dust off the old Xbox and
sit and play just one more time.
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