| A
few years ago I heard about a new game from a developer
that was unknown to me at that point.. Croteam... I
thought to myself "What the hell is a Croteam? From
Croatia? What the hell do they make there?" I ended
up exchanging a few emails with Roman Ribaric, CEO
of Croteam and got all excited about this upcoming
game. Roman offered to do a little interview with us
but then got busy when the game came out so it unfortunately
never happened. Serious Sam was at last released, I picked
it up and... gaming
history
was
made.
Games like Half Life are nice and I'm all about the
story but sometimes it's just really, really good
to get right back to basics. Big big guns and waves
of enemies to use them on. The original Serious Sam,
and Serious Sam: The Second Encounter have put in regular
appearances at almost every LAN party I've been at
since they were released mostly because of the co-operative
play. Blowing things up is fun but blowing up hundreds
of things with a few of your buddies is wonderful.
When I looked on Fileplanet one morning a month or
so ago and saw the Serious
Sam 2 demo announcement I got all worked
up and promptly downloaded it. Frankly I didn't like
it much, but it was only a demo so I decided to withhold
judgment until I had the final product in my hot little
hands. My friends at the local EB Games hooked me up
with a copy and away we went! I've got to say that
the demo doesn't do justice to the game and the only
reason I can think of for them releasing the level
they did was that it's a very different setting from
the other Serious Sam games. A futuristic city rather
than the usual Mayan ruins. *sigh* Fortunately most
of the game is outside in jungles or other primitive settings, and feels
like the old games. The future levels are good too but the part the
demo was taken from isn't a really good sample of what the game has to
offer.
Premise
Our wisecracking hero Sam "Serious" Stone has
been recruited yet again to try and take out the greatest
criminal mastermind in the universe: Mental. Mental has a
bit of an attitude in that he'd like to take over the entire
galaxy
and enslave everyone. Some anger issues to work out perhaps?
You've got Mental's therapy, and it's mostly a good dose
of high velocity lead. Grab your guns and blow the crap
out of everyone
and
anything that
stands in your way. There's actually a little more to the
story than this but fortunately just shooting everything
and finding a few items is the general idea, which is just
what I've come to expect from Serious Sam. The few puzzles
there are in the game are simple to figure out
and
the
action
won't generally stop for more than a minute or so while you
work your little brain figuring them out. There's tons of
little secrets along the way so if you're the sort who likes
to find secret stuff make sure you look around as you journey.
Many of the secrets are behind hidden doors or just off
the
edges of cliffs. Some of them contain power ups and ammo,
some of them are just there for..... Well, just 'cause they're
neat I guess. I've found some traps that when defeated give
you lives and toys, a giant piano you can play, a chicken
spawning/squishing machine and our good friend Pappy found
a "secret
gay wedding" a
few weekends ago when we ran through the game.
Gameplay
Simple enough you shouldn't even have to read the manual.
Please note that if you had to read said manual we're revoking
your Gamer Card right now. If you read it because it contains
some humorous parts that's okay. It's a first person shooter
with tons of big guns, big levels, and very, very large guns.
Serious
Sam
2 is basically
a rail
shooter. Just run and gun. Netricia, an AI personality, will
help you out along the way with lots of advice and tips.
Follow her directions and keep moving forward and you'll
do just fine. Generally you'll find yourself blasting away
at masses of enemies, then finding ammo, weapons and armor,
then blasting away again. It's relatively mindless and it's
very very satisfying. Sam also always has a smart comment
for the occasion, something that's been lacking in first
person shooters since... Well, since the last Sam game
actually. As usual he takes time to poke fun at Quake
and Duke Nukem and himself. I find SS games amusing in
that I spend my time snarling as I blast enemies and then
laughing at some humorous scene then I'm right back in
the heat of battle again. It's great. You'll occasionally
be joined by native fighters who sort of help you out..
umm.. a little, I guess. Enemy AI is generally of the "run
at the hero shooting and get mowed down" sort. Since
I'm the one with the minigun, I like this very, very much.
Co-op
Play
SS2
truly shines when it comes to multiplayer. The only game
play option is Co-operative, which is good. Serious Deathmatch
from the other Sam games was serious in only one way..
it seriously sucked. I tried it a few times and while it
was somewhat amusing to use the big guns on other players
it just wasn't much fun and it seemed to die out pretty
quickly....
But
the co-operative mode lives on! As mentioned above I've
seen people playing Serious Sam games co-op at almost every
LAN I've attended since it came out. The only thing better
than blowing the hell out of thousands of monsters is doing
it with up to fifteen other people. Unlike most other
multiplayer games there's really not much communication
or co-ordination
required so it's even fun just to put up a server on the
internet and let random people join while you run through
it. The
design and thought that went into the co-op is excellent
it's obvious that the guys at Croteam looked at what worked
and didn't from the previous games and applied those lessons
to make one hell of a fun experience. In an interesting
twist all players on the server share a pool of lives and
have the same score. The server can also set unlimited
lives, turn friendly fire on (a VERY bad idea) and can
also set the game so that it leaves weapons, ammo and health
on the ground when one player gets it. It's nice not to
have
to
compete with everyone else for toys. Sorry item whores,
everyone else gets the same toys. The team's lives reset
at the end of each map as well, so even
if
you're
getting
your ass kicked it's not a big deal. You'll also frequently
receive extra lives. All that being said, I'd like the
option to just turn the lives off and not have to worry
about it, at least while playing multiplayer. When a player
reaches the end of the level it advances the entire team to
the next round. As well, if one of the players enters an area
that permanently blocks the way back a teleport will spawn
that allows your slow friends to instantly catch up. You won't
get the majority of the cut scenes in multiplayer which isn't
always a bad thing.
You
can also start a multiplayer game on any level you've
gotten to in single player mode, so if you're having problems
beating a map... No problems! Get a buddy on to give
you
a hand. That's how I beat the final boss. :) It's good
to have friends, or even just random people on the internet
who will be your friend long enough to beat that pesky
level that's been bothering you. And if you need a break
in the fragging Croteam added a "pause" feature
that pauses the game for all clients. The server can
choose
to allow clients to control pauses or disable it for
everyone but
the host.
One thing that takes a great deal of getting used to
is that in the single player game you can't hurt yourself
with explosives and in the multiplayer you can. There's
nothing more embarrassing then dying when you accidentally
bounce a grenade off the back of one of your fellow players
and catch it. Owies.
Graphics/Environments
The
Serious Sam games have always had huge
environments and great graphics and SS2 certainly
doesn't disappoint. You'll always be moving towards an objective
but
some of
the
maps in this game are literally miles and miles across. It's
great fun to be working your way through an immense city
or across a broad plain and using your sniper rifle to
pick off enemies hundreds of yards distant as they stream
at you like a swarm of locusts. You're going to be visiting
levels that range from a giant backyard (Honey, I shrunk
the hero!) and medieval worlds to high tech futuristic
cities
and a destroyed fiery wasteland that's most tasty. The worlds
look great and effects are well done as well. Lots of explosions
and eye candy. The enemy models are pretty simple by modern
standards, as are the death animations... But you have
to remember that at times there are literally hundreds
of these things coming at you, so simple sometimes is a
good thing. There's lots of stuff to blow up as well
as many of the objects in the world such a trees can be
destroyed. I enjoyed fighting
in some of the primitive villages as by the time you're
done you understand the old Vietnam expression "In
order to save this village we had to destroy it." Quite
often by the time the fight is over you've clear cut and
blown
up pretty much everything that was standing around you
and there's not much left but rubble and smoke. Use a rocket
on a little straw hut in this one and there's nothing but
a foundation remaining. Awesome.
Sound and Music
Typically
well done sound effects, lots of things exploding and making
loud noises. Of most note is the music. It's just awesome.
When
I'm playing multiplayer games I usually disable the music,
the only exceptions being Unreal Tournament and Serious
Sam 2, because the music is just so damned pumping. In
the brief periods you're not actively killing the enemy
the music calms down a little and looses tempo and then
picks up when you're about to get into a fight.
And
of course it just wouldn't be a Serious Sam 2 game without
the voice of the big S commenting as you make your way
to kick Mental's ass.
Now THAT's what I call a gun
We're
going to need guns.. lots and lots of guns. And fortunately
Mental's minions have been a little sloppy with their housekeeping
lately and have lefts tons of firepower around for the
entrepreneurial action hero to pick up and use to blow
things into tiny, tiny bits. All your favorites from the
old games are back along with a few new toys of destruction.
And with dozens of enemies coming at you, it's time to
lock and load.
Here's
a few examples of what you can expect to be wielding:
Dual revolvers: Typical six shot double action revolvers
to be used until you can find something better. Unlimited
ammo.
Plasma pistol thingie: See above, but it does charge up and
has homing abilities.
Shotgun:
Comes in two varieties, a semi auto that's a great general
purpose gun to have out when you're not sure what
else to be using, and of course the double barrel. Recommended
by 4 out of 5 zombie slayers, it always gets the job done.
Chainsaw:
Also recommended by zombie slayers there's nothing like
a chainsaw for those up close and personal discussions
about who's going to walk away from a fight.
Suzi,
the Serious Uzi: Dual submachine guns of death. Much giggling
ensues.
Parrot:
Hah. Kamikaze homing parrots. Could the world be a better
place?
Minigun: Where would we be without old faithful? Aside from
the most excellent noise these bad boys make when there's
more than one of them firing they're great for mowing down
the opposition.
Rocket Launcher: Is there a shooter made that doesn't have
one of these in it somewhere? Spam these for an explosively
good time.
Canon: Another of my old favorites, it's a big ass canon
that fires... Well, canon balls. Yarrr mateys!
There's
a ton of other weapons as well, all of them highly entertaining
to use on the hapless forces arranged against
you. It's great to have the standard shooter weapons and
nice variety of unique and wacky ones too.
Vehicles/Turrets
Scattered throughout the game you'll find a new addition
to the Serious Sam franchise. Vehicles! There's a few different
vehicles you can control, but they all share the same general
control scheme and you'll get the hang of even the flying
ones in
a few seconds. They're simple but tons of fun. One of my
favorite scenes was fighting a giant robot from an attack
helicopters
while
watching
Pappy
and
Rune do the same. Along with the helicopters you'll also
be riding a raptor, running around in a giant spiky hamster
ball (Bwhahah.) and zipping around at the controls of a flying
saucer with blades around the edges of it. There's also player
controllable turrets scattered around which come in quite
handy at times for eradicating those waves of enemies coming
at you.
Bugs/Bad Stuff
I
didn't find any bugs in my play test but on Rune's machine
he's got some wicked flickering, mostly on transparent
textures. I haven't seen that on any other systems so
I'm not sure what's going on there.
The flying witches are annoying, especially in the garden
level where there's so, so very many of them. Flying things
are irritating. Except the flying demons on the Kleer homeworld...
It could be because there's usually only a few of them,
and they just look really cool. Witches definitely suck
though.
Conclusion
I've
read a few reviews that really gave SS2 a hard time, mostly
for "not offering anything new." Uh, news flash guys, if
it ain't broke don't fix it. For fourty dollars Canadian
you can't go wrong. With great graphics
and pounding
music,
waves of weird enemies and unique, exciting guns to
use on them what's to loose? Serious Sam 2 is a great,
mindless little time waster that'll keep you occupied for
many hours,
and if you get into playing it co-op, who knows? In a few
years I might be writing about SS3 and mentioning that
I saw you at a LAN playing it. Go get it, it's worth it.
A very special thanks to Pappy-R and Rune for playing the
entire game through with me multiplayer and allowing me
to get lots of good screenshots of them in action.
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