About a year ago, a little developer from Croatia brought out the surprise hit of 2001.. Serious Sam was a first person shooter with gameplay that hailed back to the days of Doom and Doom2. Get a gun. Kill everything that moves. Story, yeah, throw something about aliens and galactic overlords in somewhere.

There's hundreds of things moving. KILL THEM! KILL THEM ALL! ARGH THERE ALL AROUND! Oh, and it retailed for about $30-35 Canadian. Considering that most new releases are $65+, this seems like too good a deal..... But it wasn't.. It was really, really fun.

That about summed the game up, other than the amazing graphics, sweet weapons and massive vistas. Well, Sam "Serious" Stone is bad, he's back and he's got some new enemies, some new guns, and thank god, no more Egypt. :) (I think by the time you beat the damn, most people were pretty damned sick of seeing more pyramids, and the same damned pillars.) After our smartass protagonist kicked the hell our of Mental's head bad ass at the end of SS1, he asscended into a massive space ship, and zipped off.. On his way to the final confontation we all assumed... As did he. Regretably, some guys flying desks crashed into the spaceship, and downed it in South America. There's no Aztecs running around, but that damned Mental is up to his usual no-goodnik tricks, and there's monsters and traps galore. Sure, the story is contrived... But who the hell cares? Get your ass in gear, grab that shoty and bust some caps in some Mental Minion asses!

Graphics

The first thing you'll notice when you get off the boat.. er... ship, is the graphics in this game. If you didn't play the first game, you're in for a major treat. The Serious Engine is just plain amazing. Glorious lighting, wonderfully expansive vistas, HUNDREDS of enemies on the screen at once with no real slow down, no blurring as you get close to textures (This is a first in my experiance.. the closer you get, the sharper it looks.) and the list goes on and on. Check out the screenshots, and you'll see what I mean.

The main difference in the new game is the trees and grass... One of my major complaints about video games in general is that the worlds just don't seem to be populated. For instance in Tribes 1 there were bases and rolling hills. That was about it, other than a few rocks here and there. That's been addressed in most new games, including SS2. The trees even move in the breeze, which is a very nice touch. They also explode when hit with explosives. It's quite interesting to be back peddling in the face of an assault by those massive Biobugs and have trees falling around you from near misses, also, if you have smaller enemies coming at you, it's often very difficult to see them in the grass and smaller bushes.

Sounds/Music

As in the first encounter, the music and sounds in the game are excellent. The music gets you all pumped, and increases in tempo smoothly when you're about to get attacked. Music just switched into heavy metal mode? Get your biggest gun out, and prepare to kill some stuff. (Lots of stuff usually!) Sound effects are very well done as well. If you have it turned on, our hero Sam does some amusing commentary thoughout his adventures, in a Duke sorta way. (Duke of course was funnier. Ironically, 3D Realms apparently accused Croteam of stealing the idea from Duke. Duke of course stole ALL his lines from Ash. (Army of Darkness.)) My personal favotite is either "You're all fired" or "Hey, didn't I kick your ass two rooms back?" :)

Gameplay

As mentioned in the intro to this review, get a gun. Kill things. Get a bigger gun, and some armor. Kill bigger things. And more of them. That's about it. You'll also spend alot of time trying to find the blue key. (Well, not literally, but you'll be hunting for switches, and/or objects to open doors and such.) That about sums it all up. Unlike Doom or Quake however, you're not usually facing a one monster... Not even a few..... You'll usually be getting swarmed by various nasty, hairy or firy beasts. In some cases, you're going to get swarmed by hundreds of them. The most interesting level I've found yet places you in a small room. When you hit the floor you bounce off like a tennis ball hiting concrete..... And so do the aformentioned hundreds of monsters. Very hard, very interesting, very different. Croteam has definately shown some creative skill in the level design department this time around.