SERIOUS SAM II

GAME DETAILS :-

Developer : Croteam

Publisher : 2K Games

Engine : Serious Engine 2

Genre : Sci-Fi First-Person Shooter

Release Date : October 19 , 2005

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS :-

Operating System : Windows 2000 / Windows XP

CPU : AMD Athlon 2500+ / Intel Pentium 4 Processor

Memory (RAM) : 256 MB

Graphics Hardware : DirectX 9.0b Compatible Video Card with Memory 64 MB

[NVIDIA : GeForce FX 5800 Series
ATI : Radeon X700 Series]

Hard Disk Space : 3.65 GB

GAME FEATURES :-

The game's story picks up shortly after the end of Serious Sam: The Second Encounter, with the hero of the series, Sam "Serious" Stone, continuing on his goal to defeat the series' nemesis, Mental. The game begins with Serious Sam being summoned before the Sirian Great Council , where the council asks Sam to defeat Mental and provides him with guidance on how to accomplish this feat. The council reveals to Sam that he must collect five pieces of an ancient medallion, each held by various groups on five different worlds, and states that once Sam has the entire medallion, Mental will be vulnerable. The story is developed through the use of cut scenes , which are interspersed throughout the game, especially at the beginning and end of each world. "Serious" Sam Stone, casually dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, has been summoned to rid the universe of Mental and his nefarious forces. To do this, he'll need to travel to different worlds to collect medallion pieces from their oppressors. And to do that, he'll need to run from point A to point B through nearly two-dozen levels, stopping frequently to gun down literally hundreds of foes. Along the way, you'll find a variety of big guns, grab lots of health, armor, and ammo power-ups, and probably discover some amusing secret areas. But mostly you'll just shoot and shoot and shoot as enemies pour in from all around you, attacking from the ground and from the sky, either hanging back and firing at you or rushing right toward you--sometimes using a combination of the two.

The game's weapons look big and bulky onscreen, but the interaction between your firepower and your enemies' bodies feels rather hollow. Enemies just kind of break apart into bits, then quickly fade away. So despite the high volume of enemy casualties, you just don't get that sense of wreaking massive havoc and carnage with your ridiculously oversized guns. The weapons don't behave as you'd expect them to in other ways, as well. The very first weapon you find, a multibarreled shotgun that looks far too much like a toy, turns out to be perfectly accurate at extreme ranges, contrary to first-person-shooter canon, which stipulates shotguns should only be effective up close. So this boring gun actually becomes your mainstay throughout most of the game. Using a shotgun to snipe aerial targets from miles away just feels silly, but it's not the same "silly" that Serious Sam II is going for. The rest of the weapons are pretty straightforward. You never have to reload, but just keep an eye on your ammo count. While the worlds you'll visit have their own unique visual style and enemies, the underlying level design and enemy behavior doesn't change much from one level to the next, and the game's challenge doesn't really escalate all that much either. In fact, at the default difficulty, most of the game is fairly easy, though certain end-of-level sequences will probably take you a few tries, at least until you figure out where all the enemies are coming from. Many of the game's levels end with an anticlimax. You battle waves and waves of foes until they simply stop coming, and then the level ends. Some decent boss fights are thrown in, but it's all been downhill for Serious Sam's boss fights since the jaw-dropping battle at the end of the first game. All the game's levels are bookended by little comedic cutscenes, some of which are absurdly amusing. The auto-aim feature makes it laughably easy to hit your mark, though it's necessary in the many instances when you're shooting at targets from very far away, where the Xbox version's low resolution and sketchy frame rate conspire to make it difficult to line up your shots. Also, the PC version supports online cooperative gameplay for up to 16 players. A cooperative mode is the only multiplayer option available in Serious Sam II, and while games like this can certainly be more fun if you play them with friends, the co-op mode doesn't do anything to fix Serious Sam II's shortcomings. Fans of Serious Sam will enjoy some aspects of being in Sam's red sneakers again, and the game's goofy humor and corny references to other first-person shooters do give this game a distinct personality. Serious Sam II has a lot of levels and a few good laughs, but its simple shooting action is less likely to get your adrenaline pumping as it is to make you go numb.

GAME REVIEW :-

6.9/10

Serious Sam II Trailer :-