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Serious Sam 2 Mini Review
Chris Leyton
24/10/2005
Serious Sam returns; but something has gone wrong somewhere...
Arriving in 2001 when first-person-shooters such as Deus Ex and Halo were stealing most of the limelight, Croteamās Serious Sam came like a grenade explosion full of fresh air. Returning to the intense gameplay that established the genre with such classics as Doom and Duke Nukem 3D, Serious Sam eschewed complex gameplay and sophisticated visuals in place of hundreds of enemies to dispose of with an arsenal of extraordinary weapons and crazed humour to boot.
Regrettably in the four years itās taken for Serious Sam to return something has gone amiss; whether or not the game is worse then its predecessor or the fact that more is expected from the fps genre nowadays is hard to tell. On a check list Serious Sam 2 manages to tick off the credentials: intense action, check; big guns, check; silly humour, check ā“ so whereās it all gone wrong?
With his typical āWhy am I even hereā attitude, āSeriousā Sam Stone finds himself whisked away to challenge Mental once again and his legion of deranged loons; on this front with the likes of Beheaded Kamikazes, Zombie Stockbrokers and Marcel the Clowns, Serious Sam 2 gets it just about right and what youād expect from a game in the series.
The main problem facing Serious Sam 2 is that itās just not that much fun to play, particularly the Xbox version with its auto-aiming system that makes everything ridiculously easy. Level designs are uninspired and rarely tax the player with anything more then getting between A and B; more crucially the environments feel less expansive then those featured in Serious Sam: First Encounter and Second Encounter, whilst the enemy count rarely seems to meet the intense action of its predecessors.
Despite getting his hands on an impressive arsenal of weapons, from genre stalwarts such as Sniper Rifles, twin Colt pistols and minguns through to slightly more extravagant forms of death with the Serious Bomb and Circular Saw, everything Sam gets to hold with his hands feels surprisingly weak and weedy. Sure they look as though you could literally blow a hole through a planet with some of them, but the end result is a huge anti-climax to say the least.
In a moment of pure inspiration Serious Sam 2 features a nod towards Halo (and every other fps since) with the inclusion of vehicles. Now before youāre thinking Warthogs, Banshees and other such forms of first-person transportation weād like to remind you this is Serious Sam, and so you can look forward to jumping on the back of a Velociraptor or rolling around in the HAM-Z-rr314 Rollerball. Thereās no denying that they add a little respite in true SS tradition, however the novelty soon wears thin. Bizarrely even the boss-encounters appear to be a mere shadow of whatās come before, with only a handful putting up a challenge and even fewer enjoyable enough to stick in your memory ā“ although at least the final challenge raises the stakes somewhat.
Thereās very little of the witty parodies this time around and clever humour, instead youāll have a variety of teletubby rejects to handle and one-liners that desperately attempt to be funny but mostly fall flat - much like the rest of the game. That said there are a bucketload of secrets for the fans to discover, such as a less-then-subtle joke at the Dukeās expense with a rocket up his arse to match!
Even visually itās disappointing. Serious Sam 2 features a somewhat lamentable physics engine that youāve already seen in a hundred first-person-shooters, however itās the lack of imagination and inspiration to the styles governing the environments and some NPCās that lets the side down. The Xbox version also sports a rough and unfinished look, reminiscent of older titles excluding Halo of course.
To make matters even worse the game only features Co-Op multiplayer support. Normally we criticise the lack of Co-Op in many first-person-shooters and the generic application of deathmatch modes, but in a game like this you have to offer some competitive modes at least, itās a game of action and destruction not subtle brain-taxing of battlefield tactics and strategies ā“ unforgivable!
Coming after Serious Sam first made a name for himself, Serious Sam 2 comes as nothing but a serious disappointment. As we stated above, it just about manages to cover all the criteria but nothing feels as though Croteam have stretched the barrel ā“ in many cases they feel surprisingly weaker then its predecessor.
PC owners can add a mark to the overall score thanks to the lack of auto-targetting and significantly improved visuals; but on the whole that's still not enough reason to invest unless you're the biggest fan of Serious Sam
Anonymous
Date Added:Fri 31st Aug 2007 23:43
Anonymous
Date Added:Thu 25th Jan 2007 08:52
Great site!
Anonymous
Date Added:Thu 25th Jan 2007 06:49
Great site!
Anonymous
Date Added:Sat 28th Oct 2006 21:51