#Serious sam 2 review full#
#Serious sam 2 review series#

There’s little coherence to the plotwork and it doesn’t really matter all that does is the gloriously smooth action. So, in other words, the story is as stupid and irrelevant as it’s ever been and Croteam is really just using it as an excuse to put the players around some unusual architecture – which is why you end up travelling through Medieval Europe and scaling the Tower of Babel as you progress. As The Second Encounter opens he’s crash landed it in another area of time and space, forced to explore Ye Olde Mayan temples in search of magic artefacts. Serious Sam: The Second Encounter carries on straight from the first (half of the first) game, with Sam stealing a time-travelling flying saucer from ancient Egypt on his quest to destroy mega-villain Mental. You certainly won’t appreciate The Second Encounter which, despite a few early experiments with platforming and puzzles in the opening levels, quickly falls into a pattern of colossal arenas linked by tight corridors and filled with lots of baddies.

#Serious sam 2 review series#

That focus breeds a caveat that sits over the series as a whole, namely that if you aren’t interested in very old-school shooters where any time not spent shooting is definitely spent dying then you won’t like Serious Sam. It’s about blowing things up as fast as possible and pretending that your nine-foot-long minigun isn’t compensating for something else. It’s not about the dialog or the subtext.

#Serious sam 2 review full#

It’s not an in-depth story-driven shooter and it doesn’t contain a nice blend of action, adventure and stealth that lets you wield full control over how you progress. It’s important to keep that violence in context though and to understand what Serious Sam is really meant to be. Then again though, the ancestry and chronology of the series is by far the least absurd thing about Serious Sam – where pretty much everything is exaggerated to insane levels and the level of cartoon violence and chauvinism is enough to make Duke Nukem look like Mary Poppins.

I hope you're taking notes, there will be a test. The real Serious Sam 2 was therefore the third in terms of story and the sixth game in the series. What should have been Serious Sam One was broken into two pieces, The First and Second Encounter, and the history of the series has since been diluted by too many remakes and ports to mention.

It seems absurd that even though this is eighth title released in the Serious Sam series it’s still actually the first in the official chronology – or the second half of the first instalment, to be specific. Serious Sam: The Second Encounter HD Review Publisher: CroTeam