Serious Sam 2

The original Serious Sam was a big departure from the status quo of first-person shooters, forsaking a slow-paced tactical approach for frenetic, non-stop blasting action. Serious Sam 2 continues this trend and puts players in the shoes of ‘Serious’ Sam Stone, who is again tasked with destroying his arch nemesis Notorious Mental.

The game’s most celebrated feature is its newly developed engine. Whereas the original game had fairly basic graphics, this sequel is visually very impressive. Sam is rather poorly animated, but enemy characters have plenty of visual detail and the sprawling landscapes are brought to life with some good spot-effects and scenery.

Our only complaint is the garish colour schemes and occasionally questionable character design. The whole game looks almost psychedelic, so if you’re recovering from a particularly heavy night out or are sensitive to garish yellow and purple hues, you should probably look elsewhere.

Impressively for a game of such graphical complexity, no concessions have been made in the number of characters that appear on screen at any one time. You’ll have to fight off hordes of enemy monsters, each with their own behaviour and methods of attack.

Disappointingly, though, the artificial intelligence (AI) of most enemies is very poor. Many simply charge at you with little regard for personal safety, relying instead on the relative security of being in a large group. This isn’t always a major issue given the sheer number of opponents, but we were disappointed to see that some characters were so stupid they were unable to find their way around even basic scenery.

As well as the standard approach of killing everything that moves en route to the end of a level, Serious Sam 2 has levels with more varied objectives. Players will occasionally have to defend an area against enemy attack or keep key characters safe during an ambush. There are some mild puzzle elements, but these rarely go beyond finding switches and opening doors.

One of the most positive additions is the ability to drive vehicles and ride animals such as a fire-breathing dinosaur. These help you traverse the massive landscapes in less time and can give you a tactical advantage against a large force of enemies. More importantly perhaps, this feature adds variety to the action – as does the co-operative mode in which up to 16 players can enjoy the single-player campaign simultaneously.

Unfortunately, there’s not much else to break up the relentless and often monotonous gameplay. The original Serious Sam could be forgiven as it was obviously a game developed on a tight budget – costing little more than £20 per copy.

This sequel has a larger development budget and understandably costs the same as most full-priced PC games. However, it doesn’t offer as much variety as its more esteemed peers such as Half-Life 2, nor is it as involving.

If you loved the original Serious Sam and its various add-on packs, this outing may prove enjoyable. It has all the questionable ‘humour’ you’d expect from Sam, a glut of visual enhancements and even more of the same relentless blasting that made the original so popular. Unfortunately, there are many gamers, ourselves included, who may prefer a more sophisticated 3D shooter.

System Requirements:

• 2.4GHz processor
• 256MB of Ram
• Windows 98SE/2000/ME/XP
• 32MB video card with Transform & Lighting

See also:

Second Sight

An action-packed tale of amnesia and, er, something else  12 Apr 2005

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