Serious Sam 2

It seems that in the past two years at least four first person shooters hit the scene which appear to take steps backwards from the evolving pattern of shooters which so many game sites seem to get all weak in the knees about nowadays.  A game such as Half-Life 2 successfully merged plot and action to create an attention-grabbing story that also allowed the player to shoot a lot of things.  However, in direct opposite, games like Doom 3, Quake IV, Painkiller, and now Serious Sam 2 eschew the contrivance of story and give the twitchy types such as myself what has become ingrained in my gaming psyche: tons of shit to blow up good in huge environments.

Of those four games, however, Serious Sam 2 easily surpasses the other three games in regards to ridiculous, hilarious, and  over the top action.  So far over the top, in fact, that you wonder if deep down the developers at Croteam, despite in interviews being really nice guys, secretly despise these other shooters because there just isn't enough stuff to shoot and yet id and Raven are the ones who get all the praise in the general public.  Sure Painkiller came close, but there's probably more bad guys in one LEVEL of Serious Sam 2 then there is throughout all of Doom 3. More importantly you can see exactly what the hell is going on in Serious Sam 2 and you definitely don't want to miss any of the visual shenanigans that the developers dared to envision and then put into the code. 

I hear you right now, "Oh just how over the top can it be Sphinx, I mean come on! Painkiller after all, let you have a stake gun and had you fight through hell.  I've seen it all!"  You've got a fair point except for one simple fact.  You're stupid and need to be shot to take your genes out of the breeding pool.  Did Doom 3 or Quake IV have suicide headless kamikaze bombers? No.  Did those other games have wind-up controlled rhinos? No.  Did they have zombie stockbrokers wielding shotguns?  Yeah, right.  Most importantly did those other games have unicycle riding, John Wayne Gacy looking, obese clowns wearing dynamite packs TRYING TO RAM AND KILL YOU at the circus?!?!  I didn't think so.  Serious Sam 2 wins the contest of best bad guys to shoot forever. It also takes the prize for best weapon with it's guided parrot bomb.  Send Polly to get that chopper.  

But here's the real trick with Serious Sam 2: don't play it in single player.  Truly I mean that, just ignore the single player option. Nothing pisses me off more then when I read these reviews of this fine game when they complain that this game is a bit dull in single player.  Well no kidding, so was the first one and it's expansion.   Serious Sam 2 should ONLY be played co-operative just like Battlefield 2 should only be played online.  Just tell yourself that the single player doesn't exist. Sorta like people saying Iraq possesses WMDs.  

How could ANYONE want to play this game single player is beyond me.  No LAN or Internet game party is really hopping until you start hearing people shout "Watch out, stockbrokers!!"  Plus, the co-operative play is geared in such a way that if you should die you'll pop back up by your buddies ready to fight with a full load of ammo meaning you will barely miss any action.  On the server side it's also possible to ramp up difficulty as more players join or even tweak the dynamics of the game.  For example, weapons will spawn for everyone at spawn points regardless if someone else picked them up and other options ensuring that everyone gets to use all the big guns this game provides.  

Unfortunately, unlike the first Serious Sam, the Internet co-operative appears to be creating some problems. For instance,  when my friends and I play sometimes, someone's weapons might just completely disappear for no reason or the creatures on the screen might just disappear entirely.  This is being reported by a lot of people on the Serious Zone forums but nothing has been done about it yet. Logging out and coming back doesn't appear to fix the problem either.

Also, on the dedicated server component (my server host at 204.57.80.55), the instructions provided by Croteam are incomplete and it was only through a lot of trial and error by the fans that the dedicated server finally works.  While finally getting a dedicated server component is a welcome addition, one that works properly would be a nice thing to possibly get sometime this decade. 

The biggest problem with Serious Sam 2 relates to the fact that it has been dumbed down for consoles.  I'm not suggesting that Serious Sam 2 is a complex game. In this instance it seems that, believe it or not, there's actually FEWER creatures on the screen  than in Serious Sam 1.  I attribute this to the fact that consoles just can't handle the raw processing power that PC can for a game like this so the developers rolled back the quantity of creatures to accommodate the admittedly faster growing console market.  Despite that if putting more money into Croteam's hands, even if it's through consoles, helps them create their next project for the PC then so be it.  

Serious Sam 2 can be summed up thusly: You run in, you shoot stuff with friends, and then you do it again. If that doesn't appeal to you then perhaps you should go back to Barbie dolls.