Serious Sam II – Review

The story in Serious Sam 2 is something most older gamers will have come across before. A medallion that can save the world has been split asunder (by a blind blacksmith no less), the pieces flung across various planets, it’s your job as ‘Serious Sam’ to teleport to each of these with the help of the holy wizards Rolanda, Jebidiah and Rajiv, all of whom seem to be Dutch, Indian, Swedish and Jewish, all rolled into one, at least the accent suggests such a cultural mix. Find the pieces of the medallion by clearing the different stages, numerous stages per piece and Bob’s your uncle… pretty much.

Gameplay is an interesting one with this title, what you have here is an FPS mega blast. Majority of the time you’ll be using insane weaponry to blast even more insane foes, but there’s something more, you can use vehicles, be they in the form of animal or mechanical. Although this doesn’t add mind blowingly to the game overall it’s a nice touch and helps to break up the monotony of the running / strafing routine. I did come across a major glitch a few levels in, I’d cleared the level of bad guys and the door wouldn’t open, I tried EVERYthing, I retraced the entire empty level, I got members of my family to play it to no avail and given I needed to get through the door to save it was most annoying. I eventually had to restart the level only for it to open automatically for some odd reason when I’d killed everything the second time. Perhaps it was just my bad luck, but it’s worth mentioning, though don’t let that be what you leave this review with alone because Serious Sam 2 is a heck of a lot of fun… other than the motion sickness, yes, it can make those of us who suffer from the dreaded FPS Sway Sickness lose our cookies, so playing in short bursts works best.

Graphically I really like this style, it’s true FPS but with all those pretty colors you would generally see in a platform title. This makes it different as well as more appealing to the eye. Graphics are crisp and clear and their wasn’t any noticeable draw distance problems. It’s all very humorous, with strange creatures and weaponry, which again sets this title aside from the many others in this genre, for this reason it stands out from the crowd, it’s like Halo on nitrous oxide, it’s all comedic and strange, but it’s still stylishly done, though one level in particular was a slgiht drain on the optic nerves.

Sound is again a strange thing, the main music seems to take the form of a sort of odd irish jig on steroids. Given the comedic theme of the game overall this all seems to fit in rather well. Calmer sections of the map have a more soothing theme. The music isn’t gobsmacking, you wont be buying the soundtrack like you might have with Halo of Final Fantasy, but it does the job it’s there to do and that’s really what matters. Sound effects are once again comical in style and add to the overall feel of the game, voices are well done, with the most normal of the bunch being Netrisca, who we’ll mention in more depth seconds from now in the female gamer bit. For the deaf and hard of hearing gamer all instruction, speech and story appear in text on screen.

The Female Gamer Angle…. You have an inbuilt Head Up Display of sorts, her name is Netricsa and she sounds like a posh brit, actually the more she spoke the more she sounded like Helen Baxendale, nice voice. She’s basically an in mind HUD and help system. She is essentially Cortana to your Masterchief (to make an obvious Halo reference). You can press a button at any time and it will take you to a screen showing you your objectives, great for if you’ve forgotten where you were heading or what you were supposed to be doing. It is serious Sam and not Serious Samantha and in one word he’s a bohunk, so needless to say his humour does include the odd jibe at women, this only occurs a couple of times and doesn’t detract, though it would be nice to have this sort of gender specific generalizations left out of gaming.

Overall there’s very little new here, but there’s also very little wrong. It’s a well polished title with a flare usually left to colorful and characterful platform titles and it works. My only true gripe would be that the developers have included something that should never be allowed and made a law in FPS gaming, there are levels where you have to jump to progress, developers… no. Don’t do this, it makes no sense to make a gamer jump when they have no legs or feet, leave the jumping to the 3rd person posse, find another way for the FPS posse to progress.

That aside this is a fun game that launches itself at the FPS genre in a different way. Fans of the original are going to love this title and newcomers to the Serious Sam franchise will not be disappointed either. It’s odd, it’s strange and there’s loads of creatures to explode that you’re not going to see elsewhere, it doesn’t take itself too seriously and neither should the gamer. Sure it does get repetitive, but think about every FPS you’ve ever played, they are, when stripped to the bone the same thing and looking at it in this manner means this is no different, doesn’t mean it’s bad. You’re going to see things in Serious Sam II that you are definitely not going to see in other FPS titles, take those American Football bad dudes, who the heck thought of those? They beat a floating head n Doom any day. Hooyar!

Review by Angela

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