Serious Sam II

Uncle Sam wants you

Nearly everyone played Serious Sam: The First Encounter developed by Croatia, and loved the graphics, the sounds and the gameplay. It proved to be a top selling game, giving gamers what everyone secretly itches for, a game with little thinking, lot of weapons and a world to blow up.

When The Second Encounter was released, they pumped up the adrenaline by adding bigger guns, beautiful environments and wave after wave of enemies making a splash with a sweet humorous aftertaste. But after the release of the Second encounter which ended with a big sign saying “TO BE CONTINUED” nothing was heard from the Croatia team.

But now after a long silence they are back with Serious Sam II, shown recently at E3. This time they have got a much better Engine which they claim is as impressive as the Half Life 2 engine, Source. It uses Shader Model 2.0++ with fallback to Shader Models 1.4 and 1.1 on older cards. Of course, there is the full complement of HDR lighting, parallax mapping etc. The graphics are indeed impressive with open skies, large spaces, dew’d foliage and rich details judging by the screens and trailers put out by the developers.

Serious Sam II continues from where Serious Sam: The second encounter left up with Sam still going after Mental into the unknown frontiers of Space. This time you don’t have to stick to one planet, you get to go through seven different planet spread over 40 levels which include some really cool levels, like the giant world where everything is giant and Sam is smaller than an ant, and a level where Sam is a giant and the others are as tall as his knees, then there is a planet of Elvis Worshippers, a king Kong level, and of course a Lava level with lava monsters. The story this time is that you have to go from planet to planet collecting pieces of an artifact which will help you defeat Mental once it’s completed.

New and Improved

Other Advancements in the game include, A better arsenal at Sam’s disposal featuring some new guns like dual machine guns, a metal blade shooter, an acid thrower kind of gun and a parrot which has bombs attached to its feet which once set free can go to any enemy it chooses to hit. Along with the old favorites which make a return are the shotgun, the sniper rifle and of course the all time favorite rocket launcher. New enemies have been added as well, the headless screaming kamikazes are back, this time with bombs on their head. There is a huge beast that resembles a rhino and also some spider like creatures, huge robots as well as little lizards. Also there will be some flying enemies with chopper like wings fitted on them. The Final Boss is touted to be hell lot bigger than the ones in the previous Serious Sam, The Croatia team are trying to head out a record for the largest gameboss and the maximum enemies in one frame.

Get on Track

Sam will get to drive around this time, in a Hovership mounted with a gun which has clockwise moving blades around it to cut up enemies. Hopefully there will be other vehicles to drive around too in the game with different worlds having their own means of transportation, for example, riding ants in the giant world. Then there is a spiral plastic ball with spikes inside which Sam can snug into and roll away from his enemies in times of need or just crush them with it, of course the other side also knows how to use them for their own good as well.

Multiplayer will include the usual game modes including the favorite Cooperative mode. Serious Sam 2 is being developed for both the PC and XBOX and is scheduled to release later this year. However a demo will be released before the game. Serious Sam 2 looks to be one of the top selling games once its out and hopefully it would win the Game of the year award just like its predecessor Serious Sam: The First Encounter did.

Karan ’IceFusion’ Bajaj