Serious Sam 2
Aaaaaaaaa (fire) ddddddddd (fire) aaaaaaaaa. This is the keyboard battlecry of a circular strafe in action, a timeless maneuver honed on the first person playing fields and embedded in the muscle memory of anyone familiar with the sight of a gun barrel pointing out from the bottom of the screen. It is also a fairly accurate summary of the Serious Sam series, of which this is the latest incarnation. If Croteam's previous creations have passed you by, then Sam represents the purest distillation of the FPS genre.
It's about the shooting.
With games such as Half-Life pushing the boundaries of cinematic gunplay, Unreal Tournament exploring variations of the deathmatch ideal, and even the seminal series Doom exchanging bodycount for atmosphere, Sam removes all of the fluff and fills the remaining space with an extra swarm of creatures for good measure. There are no mid-level cutscenes, no interactive NPC dialogue, no box stacking puzzles, and nary a dank corridor in sight. Instead you run the gauntlet through a series of arenas, obliterating everything that gets in your way.
In Sam's world, if it moves, shoot it. If it doesn't move, it's just an easier target.
In fact, if at any time you're not shooting something, then it's because you're dead, and that's because you stopped shooting things. Ammo conservation is for hippies and games where the homing blasters and dual magnums don't carry infinite rounds. This is where the problems begin to rise. On completing the game, a conservative estimate puts the total kill count at five figures. While the enemies are varied, ranging from orcish American football players to 30ft halftrack demons via explosive unicycling clowns, the ten thousandth frag simply cannot be as fulfilling as the first.
Then there are the guns. The typical selection occupies its familiar place on the keyboard - two shotguns on 3, rocket launcher on 5, etc. - with only the fast rate of fire and Sam's trademark cannon distancing the arsenal from the FPS horde. More unsettling is the way that, despite packing an eight-barrel auto-reloading shotgun that can take the chest from a kleer at twenty paces, there is a distinct lack of oomph. It's hard to describe, but perhaps due to the repetition, blasting an opponent into its component atoms feels no more powerful than the mouseclick it requires. In a game where there's rarely less than eight things around you to fire upon, every kill is just another one off the production line.
Level design too leaves a little to be desired. Consisting as it does of arenas with wide open spaces and bursts of cover, few areas are particularly memorable. On top of that, unforgivable Invisible Wall Syndrome prevents the explorer type from venturing into the levels' nooks and crannies.
Sam's journeys take him through at least six different worlds, each with its own vibrant style and monster selection, and each terminating in classic Sam style with a humongoboss arena fight. Points here must be deducted as the final encounter, which really must be seen to be believed, is not present on the Xbox version.
But hey, it's not all bad news. It's extremely pretty, for one thing. On the occasions that nothing is exploding, the cartoonishly exaggerated scenery is a breath of fresh MMORPG-esque air. Sam's comic asides lighten the mood with one-liners, references to other games (Doom, Duke, Halo, Max Payne, the list goes on...) and animated FMV cutscenes between each stage. The pace is fast, with usable vehicles and turrets added to the Serious mix to bring on the carnage. As with the previous titles, things really come into their own on a network where enemy count and strength automatically adjust as people join in the slaughter.
With the router on and the brain off, Serious Sam 2 is a sugar rush that leaves you temporarily disorientated, slightly queasy, and with a growing hunger for more nourishing titles. Though we know it's bad for us, sometimes the body just needs that sort of thing.
In Conclusion
Technically the best Sam yet, with more enemies, more arenas, and more varied scenery to stain with innards. However, it makes no claims above its Robotron station and is, at its core, still Sam. You've pointed similar guns at similar hordes and will inevitably do so again in the next sequel.
But that PC-only boss is really really cool.
| Sanguineous |
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| Scandalous |
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| Final Score |
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| 557/819 kills 3/4 secrets |
| aaaaaaaaaa aaaaaa dddddddddddd dddddddd aaaaaaaaa sssssssss sssss ddddddddddd |
