If you're in need of an action game in the puriest sense of the word then look no further than Serious Sam II. Forget the puzzle solving or plot twists found in many first person action games released today, Sam II doesn't waste time with any of this. Instead it delivers a non stop action experience with colorful environments and nice animation that will have your fingers numb before you know it.
Storyline
Serious Sam II features our hero from the first two games, Sam Stone. Once again he is called upon to save the universe from destruction. Dressed in the familiar T-shirt and jeans Sam travels to different planets in the universe in order to collect the five pieces of a magical medallion. On his journey he encounters many natives in need of Sam's combat skills and return the favor by lending a hand in locating the medallion pieces. This medallion is the key to ridding the universe of Mental and his evil minions. As for the storyline, that's about as complicated as it gets. There are no plot twists, or non-linear missions, it's basically running Sam through the 40 levels of non stop action.Game Features & Game Play
To go along with the story, the game play for Serious Sam II is rather simple but works admirably. You begin the game with three lives and three larger than life weapons. Beginning with three lives seems a little unconventional for a typical first person shooter but Serious Sam II was meant to be anything but typical. Even if you've run out of lives you will have the ability to continue play from where you left off. Weapons, armor, and health are plentiful as play progresses and you will need all of them as enemies, large and small, attack in droves, wave after wave.
There is an occasional secret area to be explored but other than that there are no tricks in any of the levels. Missions will have you running from one end of the environment to the other shooting basically everything that moves. This can sometimes amount to hundreds of alien creatures all at once. Other missions will have you defend areas such as villages or space ship landing pads from an onslaught of enemies. The game play also allows for some limited drivable vehicles as well as turret weapons that were helpful in situations where you needed a more rapid firing weapon than what you were carrying.
Serious Sam II has a huge arsenal of weapons to choose from, but at times I found that I could not tell the difference between many of them. Sure they all looked different and some were so huge you would have thought "this thing can take out anything!" but that wasn't the case. Many times it would take three or four shots from any number of weapons to kill the same enemy. There wasn't that sense of power that comes in waiting to unleash an ultra powerful weapon upon an enemy, they all seemed to work the same.
Audio, Graphics, & Visuals
The game's developer, CroTeam, has introduced a brand new game engine in Serious Sam II called the Serious 2 Engine and it works very nice. The environments, although not as big as those in the original, are very colorful and detailed. I did not experience any hick ups in performance even when there were dozens of enemies and allies fighting all at the same time. The engine also allows character interaction with environment objects; lifting up boxes, blowing up oil drums and more.
There are a nice variety of enemies to be encountered throughout the game, with each level ending in a battle with a Boss creature that is larger than life and usually fills up the entire screen(and takes a life or two to get past!) Again there are no graphic or animation issues of frozen frames while battling with the any of these enemies. The audio of Serious Sam II, however, is a little something to be desired. The voice overs are fair, at best, causing the humor to sometimes fall flat and the weapon sound effects don't seem to match the look of the weapons at all.
