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Review: Serious Sam II
from the too-serious-for-its-own-good dept.
- Title: Serious Sam II
- Developer: Croteam
- Publisher: 2K Games
- System: PC (Xbox)
- Reviewer: Zonk
- Score: 5/10
The problem comes with everything between coming to a new area and moving on. I'll get to that in a moment, though. I'd like to paint an overall picture first. Gameplay is very much like that of the original title. The title sports pure FPS-standard controls. You use the controls to aim a bevy of weapons at oncoming hordes of enemies. Where Half-Life 2 places enemies intelligently and Doom 3 had them leaping at you from the shadows, SamII throws wave after wave of unintelligent monsters in your direction, daring you to take your eyes off the prize for even a moment. The fun factor of the original Sam, at least with this facet of gameplay, is still sound. Having to deal with over a dozen critters moving in your direction at once is both intimidating and amusing. Death doesn't hold much fear, as you have multiple lives and can respawn if you do end up meeting the grim reaper. Tossing death back at your foes is accomplished with a dizzying array of weaponry, from the standard rocket launcher to a paired set of submachine guns all the way to a parrot-bomb. Each weapon, besides having an amusement factor, is capable of taking out different types of enemies. Enemy types are varied, and in addition to keeping you on your feet make you think a bit as well.
Besides running and gunning, there are some vehicles sequences as well. You'll have the option of piloting a hoverbike, a jet fighter, and a dinosaur over the course of the game. The Boss fights themselves are also a nice change of pace from the normal scenarios. As fast as you have to think with multiple incoming, you almost have to think faster while holding down your fire button to continuously fire at one creature. Aside from huge Boss fights to break up the game itself, there are mini-boss fights throughout the game. Though there isn't necessarily one each chapter there are enough of them to give a small sense of satisfaction as you make progress towards the end of the game.
These frustrations could have been overcome, though, if the sense of pace to the title was anything like that in the original game. Just as quickly as you tore through a mapful of enemies, you were off to another locale with more bloodthirsty hordes to slaughter. In SamII you do the incredibly fun activity of walking to your destination a great deal more than I would like. At some points there is even an MMORPG level of travel involved. While I guess I can understand wanting to show off your new graphics engine, it absolutely kills the game's pacing. To add insult to injury, several levels have cutscenes to fill us in on what exactly it is we're doing as we move through the game. In almost any other title, I'd be glad to listen to plot and learn more about my surroundings. This, though, was Serious Sam! While the scenes are skippable, whenever I made the mistake of sitting through one I regretted the decision. As laughable a plot as the amulet thing is, when I actually took the time to listen to a cutscene it was like watching a joke that no one had let the writers in on. The blue midgets talking to the gravel-voiced psychopath just went on and on, when all I wanted to be doing was squishing some evil with whatever came to hand.
Despite my frustrations with how it was put to use, the Serious engine is relatively pretty. It's not Source, Unreal, or Doom, but it stands well on it's feet as a modern FPS engine. The shiny saturated look of the original game has been mostly preserved, with the monsters not only looking creepy and weird but managing to do it with style as well. The audio environment is pretty much a wash. There isn't any music or orchestration worth mentioning, and the sound effects only managed to be good enough not to annoy. Some of the weight of the sound effects from the original game seems to have been lost, as well, leaving weapons fire somewhat hollow.
Unfortunate release timing (Score:5, Informative)
I picked up both Serious Sam 2 and Fear (I can't be arsed typing all the capitals and
Bouncing through a Fear map in a happy, bouncy Serious Sam 2 mood is to set yourself up for a serious scare - in my case, making a high volume "urk" noise and nearly falling off my chair - the first time you run merrily around a corner. Playing Serious Sam 2 in a state of nervous exhaustion, crouching in corners and freaking out at the sight of each enemy, on the other hand tends to... well... take quite a while.
On a side note, I more or less agree with the review above, although it does seem a bit too harsh in places. The plot made me smile, with its complete and blatantly deliberate disregard for plausibility and sanity and the weapons seemed satisfying enough to me. Besides, the cutscenes are skippable and slamming a game for having cutscenes just seems a bit too "I'm l33ter than you because I think cutscenes in games suck and are not for REAL GAMERS". The vehicles do suck, though. Least entertaining fps vehicles ever.
Re:Unfortunate release timing (Score:5, Interesting)
Agreed. I installed a Windwos partition on my machine for the first time in 3 years or so specifically so I could play SS2. I was a bit disappointed, in that it seems a bit watered down. The violence is a bit more cartoon like than before, and there's less of a feeling of utter terror as you're overwhelmed by hordes of enemies. But that said, I still enjoy the game, and felt the review was overly harsh. I'd have given it an 8/10 (as opposed to the original which gets an 11).
Parent
Re:Unfortunate release timing (Score:5, Funny)
len("F.E.A.R.") = 8
61 > 8
Whatever you say.
Parent
Re:Unfortunate release timing (Score:2)
Re:Unfortunate release timing (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Unfortunate release timing (Score:2)
That's beside the point. Quake 4 has brand recognition, as well as an association with Doom 3 to carry it. Serious Sam, OTOH, was an underdog the first time, and will be an underdog this time as well.
Re:Unfortunate release timing (Score:2)
I suspect Q3 will be more popular until hardware catches up.
Re:Unfortunate release timing (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all, it manages to do a lot of stuff on the Doom 3 engine that I'd not seen there before. Now, I understand that Raven had to virtually re-write a lot of the engine, but the results are still damned impressive. Outdoors looks a bit sparse compared to Farcry, but it actually manages to *do* outdoor sequences without grinding to a halt, which is more than could be said for Doom 3. In fact, the game in general looks every bit as good as Doom 3 and yet, for some reason, runs significantly better on my far-from-stellar system (P4 3.4ghz, 1 gig RAM, Radeon x800).
The gameplay isn't half bad either. Sure, it's essentially the same run-and-gun gameplay as Quake 2, but this isn't necessarily a bad thing - the play-style was fun then and it's still fun now. There's a good range of weapons and they're all satisfying to use. Plenty of enemy types and the game manages to keep throwing new ones at you until right near the end. Even a few creepy sections, although the game never really replicates the constant tension of Doom 3. It's not a genre-defining game, but it's still about as good a game as the PC can hope for these days.
The multiplayer seems very Quake 3, which disappointed me a bit. I always loathed Quake 3 and thought it was a major blip in id's record. However, I'm sure the multiplayer scene will be graced with the usual assortment of mods that should extend the game significantly over time.
HOWEVER, I do have one very major gripe with the game that lowers the score I would have given it from the 8 or so it should have deserved to about a 4 or so. Namely, the retarded copy-protection system prevented my DVD+RW drive (the only drive in my gaming desktop) from reading the disks at all. The "helpful" customer service guy explained that this was a "known" issue with my brand of drive... no fix in sight. Eventually, I worked out I could install the game over the network by sharing my laptop's DVD drive, and then downloading and installing a crack. Hardly ideal.
I hate games piracy. Really, I do. I know a few people who work in the industry (although I wouldn't work there myself if you put a gun to my head) and outside of a few of the biggest studios, profit margins on PC games are pretty minimal in most cases. Games piracy digs into this already slim margin and, for once, the hype about it costing jobs seems pretty justifiable (unlike in the music industry, for example). Until the advent of these retarded copy protection systems, I'd never used a warez site or a peer to peer network to find a game or a crack for one. Sadly, even though I still purchase all my games legally, I'm now intimately acquainted with both. And I'd be lying if I said that the temptation to go further wasn't there now.
Parent
Re:Unfortunate release timing (Score:2)
Half Life 2 runs like a dream on my Athlon 1200, 768MB RAM and GeForce 4 ti4800 card. The Doom 3 engine is a pig in a wig.
Re:Unfortunate release timing (Score:2)
Probably because the artwork behind Half-Life 2 is of such a high quality that it doesn't lean on the engine too much - I was really surprised how nice things looked when testing it with different DirectX capability settings [valvesoftware.com].
Source is, in some ways, a very old-fashioned engines. That's probably what makes it so great, in that it takes stuff which worked well in the past and extends it to
Re:Unfortunate release timing (Score:2)
But then someone figured it was too prophetic...
Sorry, I quit FPSs when they wanted me to jump (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Sorry, I quit FPSs when they wanted me to jump (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sorry, I quit FPSs when they wanted me to jump (Score:5, Funny)
They should stand there and take it, like real men.
Parent
Re:Sorry, I quit FPSs when they wanted me to jump (Score:2)
Re:Sorry, I quit FPSs when they wanted me to jump (Score:2)
Re:Sorry, I quit FPSs when they wanted me to jump (Score:2)
Re:Sorry, I quit FPSs when they wanted me to jump (Score:3, Interesting)
To me the main thing that makes UT and the like *fun* is that they're unrealistically fast, and that skill-wise they're not all just about aim. Learning and getting good at the movement (including jumping!) gives you an extra way to get better and better. Cunning movement tr
Re:Sorry, I quit FPSs when they wanted me to jump (Score:2)
Who could ask for more? (Score:5, Funny)
Shouldn't that be ... (Score:5, Funny)
Shouln't they have called it "Son of Sam"?
Re:Shouldn't that be ... (Score:3, Funny)
Nah. They should have called it, "Serious Sam: The Serious Little Monkey".
( Sorry, for some reason that stuck in my head after I read the headline.
Yet another game review from Zonk (Score:2)
Anyone noticed what's happening? Remember when TechTV became more gamer-oriented and became G4? Same thing happening to Slashdot.
The story loop is:
Google
Google
Microsoft
iPod
Game Review
Google
Microsoft
Google
iPod
Game Review
Rinse, repeat.
Re:Shouldn't that be ... (Score:2)
They wanted to, but the dog said, "no".
Cutscenes (Score:5, Funny)
Refreshing (Score:5, Insightful)
It has Duke cheese written all over it - which is a good thing in my book - and is one of the most arcade-like first person shooters around.
Personally I'm tired of the oh-so-realistic games and just want something that's crazy, exaggerated and comic-like. Oh, and fast. Serious Sam delivers. It's the Sonic of FPSes pretty much.
There are lots of people this sort of game won't appeal to, but it's a fresh breath of air to me.
Re:Refreshing (Score:2)
I tried the demo (Score:2)
I agree on some points.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I agree on some points.. (Score:2)
Weird Stuff (Score:5, Insightful)
1) The game's diverse set of locales is an improvement over the original. It is the next logical step up after The Second Encounter gave us vast plains, Mayan architecture, and snowy fields.
The vast majority of levels in Serious Sam II have significant differences from one another. The first jungle episode being the weakest example.
2) Croteam is about as funny as a dead family pet being found under the power-lines. Hire a writer. This wierd stuff may fly in Croatia, but the rest of the civilized (I'm guessing Europeans, Australians, Asian countries won't get it any more then this American did) world does not want to watch what could be gently referred to as retarded 70s British comedy.
3) They took out localized gravity and portals. This was pretty much eye-candy in the first game, true, but damn-it-all, the gravity was FUN. The only reason they took it out of this game, I would think, is that they couldn't make it work in the new engine.
4) *spoiler* No Mental, and he did the joke we all just knew he'd do (maybe it was done in SS:SE? Reeeal familiar, anyway).
5) Underpowered weaponry, good way to describe it. I want a double-barreled shotgun that can take out a crowd, not just two at the most. That said, some of the weapons are fun to look at
6) Boss battles are fun, but sometimes uneven. For instance: Second-to-last boss battle involves you running like hell from a marauding robot which has Mental inside. You run up and suddenly find yourself in a helicopter. Now, the controls are logical, but this is the first instance where you have piloted something that can actually move freely in three dimensions. That little moment of startling uncertainty is fun, and unique in the game. It is probably not such a bonus to people lulled into a shoot-reload malaise.
7) The best FPS computer game featuring co-op play out this year. Also the only one.
maybe I'm wrong... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:maybe I'm wrong... (Score:2)
Re:maybe I'm wrong... (Score:2)
I love it (Score:3, Interesting)
But what of the engines potential? (Score:2)
Think about it:
Lots of monsters, absolutely huge areas at times, accurate physics (at least in the original, where it was quite possible to suicide from running to fast and hitting a wall for instance) etc.
The original was quite easy to modify script wise (I suck at modeling and level design) and if this one is as easy, then it shouldn't be too difficult to mold it into an RPG of sorts.
Games are kinda blah right now (Score:3)
HalfLife 2 has totally stupid Steam.
Doom3 was awesome for about two minutes, then boring.
Every other FPS is a clone of UT or whichever of the indistinguishable WWII shooters came first.
But Serious Sam is different. It's the proper Doom mentality of "No way I'm beating all six dozen of those guys all at once" and then doing it anyway, or even better, "No way I'm beating all 12 of those bosses all at once". I like the utterly massive scale (bad guys that're 20 or 30 times taller than you are, etc). I like the ridiculous weapons, although I wish the escalation continued past the point it does (Rise of the Triad was great in that regard! You could use "The Hand of God" as a weapon. Sam needs the hand of God). I like the attitude of corny jokes (shades of good ol' MDK).
The cutscenes are skippable, if you aren't into 'em.
Personally, I like the game. I haven't finished it yet, but it's entertaining in a way that realistic shooters like, say, Farcry, just aren't. The weapons are kind of weak, but it's still fun to use them all. I'm a little disappointed that their sound engine isn't terribly immersive, but that's hardly a big deal in the context of this particular game. Oh, and I miss the gravity changes. Those were cool.
Serious Sam==Robotron 3D (Score:2)
One of my favourite gaming moments is the level in SS1 where you are rushed by about 150 skeletal horse-things, all on-screen at the same time, firing every grenade, then rocket, then other weapons into the oncoming mass with explosions in the ranks throwing bones everywhere while you back-peddle as fast as you can. O
Fond memories (Score:2)
I haven't played the new one yet, but I plan to. I have to have something to do in that half-hour from the time I finally get the kids to bed and I pass out myself!
Games like this keep reminding me of Descent 3 (Score:3, Interesting)
Dust off the old copy and install it on todays hardware. I'll bet it'll impress all over again. It did for me. The sounds are great, the graphics sweet, and playability is good too. I liked the cunningness of the AI and being a hotshot at the controls, strafing everywhere in 3D. The indoor/outdoor dual fusion engine behaved smoothly in transitions and gave you more options when dealing with the baddie robots.
Ahh the memories.. too bad the average gamer was so conditioned to the Doom style of play back in the day, and couldn't appreciate the extra degree of freedom and excitment.
The Descent genre needs a resurrection. Especially now with Mars exploration
Re:you guys still buy new games after WoW? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Old FPSes (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.angelfire.com/games5/dosgames/cat1shot
Re:Old FPSes (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Old FPSes (Score:2)
Re:Old FPSes (Score:3, Interesting)
It's bastard difficult, though - I've only ever managed to survive thirty seconds or so. Apparently you can get inside and remove your helmet and wander round, so it's a proper indoors/outdoors FPS engine!
I think I'm off to have another play...
Re:Old FPSes (Score:3, Informative)
The reality is that the term "First Person Shooter" was created for Doom. It was then retroactively applied to Wolf3D as they are in the same linage. Everyone then forgot about the existance of Ultima Underworld, Catacombs 3D, and Hovertank. (Even though the latter two were Id products.)
Re:Old FPSes (Score:2)
53R10U5, LIEK JEFFK! (Score:3, Funny)
ALL HALE JEFFK!!!!!!eleven!!!! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Opinions (Score:3, Interesting)
The main difference from the weapons in Doom 3, Quake 4, Half-Life 2 etc is the near-complete lack of reloading. Weapons have a set rate of fire. Some, like the double-barreled shotguns, have what looks like a reload animation, but other than the pistol, none of them actually interrupt their normal rate of fire for a reload. The game doesn