Serious Sam II

PC review by Matt Wadleigh, published on Sunday 30th October 2005

I was the lone voice of dissent when it came to the first Serious Sam game. I am the man who gave that game the lowest computed score on Game Rankings, and for good reason. It was an awful attempt at being a “throwback” to old school first-person shooters but it failed fundamentally because it had forgotten that those types of first-person shooters had been left in the past for a reason. Serious Sam was followed by too many console games and even spin-offs such as Will Rock (which somehow was worse than Serious Sam and was an affront to modern gaming).

I don’t really have a place in my heart for these types of games, I guess. Doom and Duke Nukem, games I’m sure influenced these developers, seem more advanced. Although I was skeptical, I was willing to give Croteam another chance when they announced Serious Sam II, their first “true” sequel to the original game. Why, I’m not sure, but it’s important to note that while Serious Sam II takes steps in improving this lackluster franchise, it’s still by no means a standout first-person shooter.

From the beginning it’s obvious that this is an entirely new adventure. Strange, irritating creatures are in some sort of intergalactic dimensional port thingy, talking about some strange emblem that’s been scattered about. Once assembled, the emblem will presumably bring chaos to the universe if it falls into the wrong hands and those wrong hands are exactly where it’s headed. But fear not, my fellow residents of the universe, because there is hope and his name is Sam Stone. Sam is called upon by these annoying creatures to pick up the pieces before the evil doer gets them in his hands and messes up everything.

It was already off to a bad start from the moment it started because I was irritated by the stupid conversation filled with bad jokes and idiocy. Amazingly, I was also annoyed by a sound glitch that only appears to have affected me (judging by the other reviews I’ve read that don’t mention it) which caused the sound to pause every five seconds or so for a short duration during the cutscenes, even after I had installed the patch. And incredibly, I was even annoyed by the obnoxiously poor voiceover for Sam, which, combined with the stupid writing and the random sound glitching that again I was the only one who apparently experienced, almost managed to make me turn off the game.

I didn’t turn it off because I am a professional reviewer and no matter how much it pains me I do have to play a substantial portion of the game before writing about it (and in this case I was pained before I had actually played anything). After what seemed like an eternity, I was put into the boots of Sam and sent hunting. The game opens in some tropical town that seems better suited for Mario Sunshine than this game, complete with annoying blue characters and theme music that seemed ripped right out of Donkey Kong Country or any other cutsey Nintendo platformer.

But then, at long last, it was time to shoot things. It was here that Serious Sam II improved on its predecessors. Finally, after being locked up in arenas for so long where we had to blast everything before we could leave, Sam finally does something other than shoot mindlessly. Sure, there’s a lot of mindless shooting, but now he mounts vehicles as well. Also, the environments, though incredibly linear, feel much less linear than before because they’re continuous. Instead of going from room to room or area to area where some artificial barrier blocks your way until you kill everything, you can run around. You’re free to move which makes the game feel better.

This isn’t to say that the game is now great. It really isn’t. I wasn’t particularly motivated to do anything in it and I was never whole-heartily convinced that just giving up and letting Sam’s universe be destroyed was a bad thing. I didn’t really like any of the enemies and they still have no real AI behind them so basically all you do is strafe around and shoot until you or (most likely) they die. I couldnt really find a favorite weapon like I do in most first-person shooters even though there are a lot of them, such as a parrot that drops a bomb on enemies (and annoys us with a stupid one-liner every single time he does it).

In the graphics department, Serious Sam II looks pretty good. There was an obvious engine upgrade for this and they even included some weak physics (Havok they are not) this time around, but generally the game looks pleasing even though I did suffer a few framerate issues during some of the gigantic battles. Instead of including a traditional deathmatch mode or capture the flag or something like that, the developers went ahead and included a 16 player co-op mode that for some reason or another I couldn’t connect to, but I hear it’s pretty good.

The thing about Serious Sam II is that I can’t completely hate it, but it’s incredibly unlovable. It doesn’t do anything really right and it does do quite a few things wrong, but somehow it manages to push itself just a little bit ahead for no obvious reason. I don’t really understand how that happens, but it has consistently happened for the entire duration of the series. It’s rather annoying. Serious Sam II is by no means an above average game, but it does make some improvements over its predecessor and I have to give it credit.