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.