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Serious Sam 2 is a first-person shooter video game released for Microsoft Windows and Xbox. It was developed by Croteam and was released on October 11, 2005. The game was initially published by 2K Games,[1] and was later distributed via Steam on January 31, 2012. While the game was originally released only for Windows and Xbox, an unofficial Linux version of the game was created and is being handled by Linux installers for Linux Gamers.[2]

The game uses Serious Engine 2, the successor to the previous game engine, Serious Engine, and the engine is capable of many features of other advanced game engines of the time including high dynamic range rendering and light bloom. The engine supports integration with both Xfire and GameSpy Arcade for multiplayer match finding. Serious Sam 2 is the only game to use the proprietary engine, though the Serious Engine 2 is available for licensing.

Plot[]

The game's story picks up shortly after the end of Serious Sam: The Second Encounter, with Serious Sam continuing his goal to defeat his arch nemesis, Mental. The game begins with Sam being summoned before the Sirian Great Council, where the Council provides him with guidance on how to accomplish his goal to defeat Mental.

The Council reveals to Sam that he must collect all five pieces of an ancient Medallion, each held by various groups on five different planets, and states that once Sam has the entire medallion, Mental will be vulnerable. All the planets (except the planet Kleer) are populated by friendly, bobble-headed humanoids, but the problem is that all the planets are under Mental's control. The Council instructs Sam to visit all five planets in order to recreate the medallion, only then will Sam become "The One". Confused at the moment and with nothing better to do, Sam accepts the mission. When the medallion is finally complete, Sam will then be ready to begin the final assault against the greatest enemy of humanity: Mental, who is located on Sirius, once the planet of the great Sirians that visited Earth many times, now the domain of Mental himself. But in order to gain access to Sirius, Sam is asked to storm Kronor, a moon orbiting Sirius that has a massive cannon which could be used to remove the protective shield on Sirius, which was a last line of defense for the Sirians against Mental. And so, Sam's mission continues. He ends up in a thriving megacity called Siriusopolis, the city in which Mental is hiding. From there, Sam battles more of Mental's hordes until he reaches the Mental Institution, Mental's home, after disabling it and into Mental's throne room.

Sam finally encounters Mental in person while the lights are off. Mental tries to reveal to Sam that he is his father, but Sam interrupts by shooting him, thus silencing Mental forever. After that, the Sirian Great Council, even the inhabitants from the planets, celebrate their long-awaited victory against Mental. When the lights come back on however, it is revealed that Mental wasn't there at all and it was instead just a speaker attached to Mental's throne, implying that he actually tricked Sam in order to escape in his starship into deep space (in the Xbox version, the game doesn't show this scene). The credits roll after that, where a dialog of three unknown people is played discussing how this ending might just be another one of Croteam's bad jokes and how big Mental's boss fight could be.

After the credits, a silent-motion scene shows Sam returning to the Sirian Great Council with the medallion in hand. As they take the medallion however, Sam soon discovers that the Council had cardboard boxes full of the medallions. Sam then becomes enraged and chases the Council around their room for making him risk his life for something they already have.

Characters[]

Allies[]

Other[]

Enemies[]

Vehicles[]

Weapons[]

  • Auto Shotgun: An eight-barreled, semi automatic, mechanically indexing shotgun.
  • Beam Gun: An energy weapon that fires a beam of energy when the fire key is pressed.
  • Cannon Turret: A medieval cannon placed on a platform, armed with uranium-filled cannonballs.
  • Circular Saw: The predecessor to the P-LAH Chainsaw from Serious Sam: The Second Encounter. It is circular in shape with a chrome blade and a yellow body, the latter of which having several attachments such as a small screen and exhaust pipes on the side.
  • Colt Anaconda: A revolver that fires perfectly accurate bullets. It has infinite ammo, but the player automatically reloads the gun after six shots. The player always holds two of them at once.
  • Crossbow Turret: A crossbow mounted to a swivel. Fires special holy arrows that can harm creatures that have a lot of protection, although it has a slow rate of fire and projectile speed.
  • Double Shotgun: Similar to the Double Barrel Coach Gun from the previous Serious Sam games, but has a much tighter spread and improved range.
  • Clawdovic: A bird used as a weapon by the Simbas, making it a homing projectile. When launched, it will go for the enemy the player is looking at. However, the Clawdovic's homing ability is not perfect; sudden changes at medium or long range can mess up its homing ability and cause it to fly straight into the sky.
  • Machine Gun Turret: A mounted machine gun consisting of two 110 mm machine guns paired together. This gives the turret a high rate of fire.
  • MK IV Grenade Launcher: Predecessor to the MK III Grenade Launcher, but functions almost exactly the same as the MK III. The launcher fires one grenade each time the fire key is pressed. Grenades will either explode upon contact with an enemy or three seconds after it has been fired. Grenades will bounce against a wall if it hits one
  • Plasma Cannon: A stationary artillery weapon that fires balls of plasma at the target.
  • Plasma Turret: A stationary turret that will fire a medium-sized purple sphere when the fire key is pressed. This sphere has perfect accuracy. When it hits something, it will explode.
  • RAPTOR Sniper Rifle: A very accurate and powerful sniper rifle that is useful for eliminating far away targets.
  • Rocket Turret: A large, orange and immobile turret with three rockets on each of its sides and a large eye in its center. When it sees a target, it will fire a rocket at them.
  • SBC Cannon: A portable handheld cannon that fires a high-powered projectile with extreme piercing capabilities.
  • Serious Bomb: An explosive bomb that will kill every enemy within a 750 meter (in-game) radius of the player. There is a slight delay before detonating, and the bomb has no effect on bosses.
  • Uzi: An automatic weapon that is highly accurate and deals low-moderate damage to targets. Can be dual-wielded to increase firepower.
  • XL-808 Plasma Rifle: Fires blue projectiles at a somewhat-fast rate. These projectiles fire at average speed, but are much more powerful than bullet-firing weapons.
  • XM214-A Minigun: Fully automatic Gatling gun and one of Sam's signature weapons. It has an extremely high rate of fire, but eats up ammo rapidly.
  • XPML30 Rocket Launcher: The predecessor to the classic XPML21 Rocket Launcher. Like the XPML21, it fires Inferno missiles, but the mechanism has been improved so that the user no longer needs to reload.
  • Zap Gun: An energy weapon that fires a single projectile. The power of the projectile depends on how long it is charged for. It is also used by various NPCs.

Gameplay[]

In the single-player campaign, the player assumes the role of Serious Sam in his adventures against the forces of Mental, who seeks to destroy humanity and all other intelligent life. The game pretty much functions the same as its predecessor, but has a different art style, remodeled weapons, and vehicles.

Without using cell shading, the textures and models used in Serious Sam 2 result in a much more cartoon-like version of the universe as portrayed in other games of the series. Serious Sam 2 is the first game in the series where the story travels to worlds other than Earth, resulting in much more varied environments, and the result is a stark contrast in overall visual style to the other games in the series, most notably Serious Sam 1.

Weaponry has changed somewhat as well. The shotguns from the previous games have been replaced with new ones, the XL2 Lasergun has been replaced with the XL 808 Plasma Rifle and the Thompson submachine gun has been replaced with dual Uzis. The rest of the classic weapons remain, but they have been given new models based on the new art style. There is a new weapon, the Klawdovic, which is an explosive projectile that homes in onto enemies when thrown.

Enemies are much different as well. Only a handful of enemies from the previous games appear; the Beheaded Kamikaze, Kleer Skeleton and the Harpy being the ones that survived during the events of Serious Sam 1. The rest of the enemies are all new. A notable change between Serious Sam 1 and Serious Sam 2 is that Serious Sam 2 has enemies that fit the theme of a level, such as how Centaurs appear only in the fairy tale-themed world, or the Martial Arts Zombie appears in the Chinese-themed world. Most of these enemies behave like enemies that appeared in Serious Sam 1 (i.e. the Martial Arts Zombie behaves like the Kleer Skeleton, and Marcel the Clown behaves much like the Kamikaze), so the differences aren't as startling as they first appear.

The tone of the game is much more humorous that before. Each level has a cut-scene that has at least one joke or humor instance in it, and even events that should be taken seriously are played for laughs.

The power ups and items from Serious Sam 1 appear in the game, but also included are new score items, which give the player a certain amount of points when picked up. These items include a coin, a sack of money and a treasure box, each giving away more points than the previous item. Most of these items are hidden in secrets and destroyable items, such as statues and crates.

The lives system from the Xbox version appear in this game, but is used by both the PC and Xbox versions of the game. Those playing the PC version can use quick-saves, bypassing the lives system entirely.

The biggest addition to the game are vehicles. While they first appeared in Serious Sam: Next Encounter, they made their first debut in an official game in Serious Sam 2. Various levels allow the player to pilot various vehicles, such as a flying saucer, a helicopter or a hovercraft. There are also with various guns attached to them the player can man in order to get some extra firepower during sections of the game.

Modes[]

Single-player in Serious Sam 2 is the exactly same as in Serious Sam 1; the player must go through a level and eliminate all enemy forces until they reach the end of the level. When the player completes a planet, they are stripped of all their weaponry and must get replacements in the first level or two. Some attempts at spicing up the gameplay can be seen, such as the player going through an obstacle course and defending an important NPC from enemies, but these never deviate too much from the core gameplay.

Serious Sam 2 featured only co-op when the game first was initially released. A huge change between Serious Sam 1 and Serious Sam 2 is that players must use lives like in single-player. The lives themselves are shared between players; if someone dies and re-spawns, then a life is taken from everybody. If all of the lives are gone and everybody has died, the level must be restarted. Most servers these days exploit this by editing the game so that it offers the players a huge amount of lives, making it almost impossible to run out of them.

A patch added deathmatch mode. Serious Sam 2 has a rather poor net-code, which made deathmatch difficult to play, which, along with the community's preference for co-op over deathmatch, made it dead in the water when it was released.

The only way to play offline multiplayer modes is via LAN, as split-screen has been removed from Serious Sam 2 in both the PC and Xbox versions of the game.

Development[]

Development of Serious Sam 2 began in mid-2003 with the decision to create the game on a new engine. Croteam planned to release the game in the second quarter of 2004, but this was later pushed to the second half of 2004 and finally to fall 2005.[3] For a period of time, Croteam posted weekly updates, but these became bi-monthly, then monthly, and then stopped completely after August 2004,[4] as Gathering of Developers shut down and folded into 2K Games, Croteam's publisher wanted to handle the release of information from that point forward. In April 2005, the game was officially announced by 2K Games, at which point the release date was set as Fall 2005.[5]

Shortly following the game's official announcement, Serious Sam 2 was featured as the cover story for the June 2005 issue of Computer Games Magazine, and was later showcased at E3 in May 2005. Shown at the E3 Expo was the official trailer for the game,[6] and an early build of the game was playable on the show floor. A result of the E3 presentation was a 30-minute video preview of the game featuring gameplay footage while a question and answer session took place between fansite Seriously! owner and director Jason Rodzik and Fernando Melo, the game's producer. In the time following the game's official announcement, 2K Games released a steady trickle of screenshots showcasing the vibrant colors and wide-open spaces that characterized the previous games and helping to build up hype as the game neared release. A demo of the PC version was released on 21 September 2005,[7] and a second demo was released on October 17, 2005.[8]

On October 11, 2005, Serious Sam 2 was released for PC and Xbox, and a patch for the game was released the day before, bringing it up to version 2.064b.[9] Croteam stated that a substantial list of features were cut due to time constraints.[10][11]

Serious Engine 2, the game engine for Serious Sam 2, was developed alongside the development of the game itself, and was a brand new revision of Croteam's prior Serious Engine that was used for their previous games, such as Serious Sam: The First Encounter.[12] The more advanced features of the engine include detailed refraction effects, high-resolution textures, high-dynamic range lighting, and light bloom effects.[13]

Release patches[]

On December 16, 2005, two months after the game's release, Croteam released a patch to bring the game up to version 2.066. The most significant change to the game with the patch was the addition of a dedicated server for the game, although the patch included various bug fixes.[14] On March 6, 2006, Croteam released their second patch, adding deathmatch support to the game. Another patch, version 2.070, was released on 24 April 2006. The patch fixed minor bugs and included Serious Editor 2, the content editor for Serious Engine 2, the game engine used in Serious Sam 2.[15]

The latest patch for the game was released on March 21, 2021, which introduced mechanics featured in newer Serious Sam titles, such as sprinting and allowing dual-wielding for all weapons.[16]

Xbox Version[]

The Xbox version of the game was released on the same day as the PC version. Unlike Serious Sam: Xbox, it's not backwards compatible on the Xbox 360.

The Xbox version has many differences compared to the PC version:

  • As expected, the game had to receive many downgrades due to the Xbox's limitations. The graphics are on par with the PC version's lowest settings, most enemies only sprout meat gibs when they get gibbed and enemies with multiple sound variations for things like spotting the player and dying have only one on Xbox.
  • The only multiplayer models are Sam, Mental Mate, Groovy Gregory and Dancing Denzell.
  • Items have a very bright glow when far-away. The glow depends on the type of item: for example, health items have a red glow while treasure items have a yellow glow.
  • The player can't save the game themselves, only autosaves are available.
  • Some secrets, like the piano in Giant Junkyard, are missing.
  • Orcs have a unique death sound. Their death sound in the PC version is a lower-pitched version of the Serious Sam 1 Beheaded death sound.
  • Giant Primitives use the same textures as normal ones.
  • The game fades away when the ending of a level leads to a cutscene, instead of instantly skipping to the cutscene.
  • The Hoverbike in Road to Ursul is the slow-firing variant instead of the fast-firing one. This can make the large Spider Mechanoids at the end of the level harder to fight compared to the PC version.
  • The sound for picking up Serious Damage is different.
  • Doomed Canyon uses a different peace theme.
  • Red Scorpion Soldiers have green blood instead of red.
  • The gibbing properties for some of the enemies are different. For example, Orcs can be gibbed with the Auto Shotgun while Primitives without shields can be gibbed with the Double Shotgun.
  • T-Mechs get tossed away when getting killed with the shotguns. Their disappearing effect is also larger compared to the PC version.
  • The Velociraptor Vulgaris has 100 hp instead of 25.
  • Rollerballs and Spawners explode into blue smoke instead of purple.
  • Some details in the levels, such as props, are missing.
  • The Mental Institution boss fight is missing.
  • The part of the ending cutscene where Sam finds out Mental recorded his voice on a radio and escaped is missing.

Reception[]

Unlike the game's predecessors, The First Encounter and The Second Encounter, the first of which was awarded GameSpot's PC Game of the Year in 2001, Serious Sam 2 was less praised by game critics. The game's average review is 75%, according to GameRankings.[17] Its highest mark by mainstream media was a 4.5/5.0 from Computer Gaming World, though most reviews were in the 70% or 80% range. Other notable reviews include GamePro rating it 4/5 and GameSpy giving it a 3.5/5.[18] IGN also awarded Serious Sam 2 an 8.2/10.[19]

Serious Sam 2 was criticized by some people for being less "serious" and a lot more "cartoony" than Serious Sam 1.[20] An over-emphasis on reflective surfaces and oddly out of place pixel shading were perceived as being more about showing off the capabilities of the game engine than about defining the atmosphere of the game. Lighter colors and a more upbeat soundtrack made the game feel less grounded in reality, contrary to the realistic Egyptian tombs and Mayan pyramids of the earlier games, and players complained that while the weapons of the previous games seemed to be massive and powerful, those in Serious Sam 2 were less so.[21][22][23][24]

Behind the scenes[]

  • Two weapons, the Beam Gun and the Voodoo Gnaar, were scrapped before the game was released. The beam gun was re-added in the 2.90 patch.
  • Three vehicles, the ATV, Hover Bike and Motorcycle, were cut before the game's final release. Though the motorcycle was scrapped, its headlight textures still exist in the game files. The only evidence of the ATV and hover bike are outdated screenshots.
  • Two powerups, Serious Disco and Serious Strength, were removed during development. Serious strength is still mentioned in the game's manual.
  • The title pictures for two levels shown at E3 2005 are still in the game's files, but the levels themselves are gone.
  • Level pictures for many unused multiplayer levels, including a remake of Desert Temple, can be found in the game's files.
  • There was supposed to be a CTF gamemode, but it was scrapped. The level screenshots for its levels can be found in the game's files and are the only leftovers from it.
  • The player was supposed to be able to dual-wield any combination of weapons at one time. This was added in the 2.90 patch.

Trivia[]

  • This is the only main game in the series that doesn't have difficulty-specific enemy spawns.

Gallery[]

References[]

  1. http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/serious-sam-2/
  2. https://github.com/liflg
  3. https://web.archive.org/web/20071016073355/http://seriouszone.com/cms/news.php?action=view&newsid=1300
  4. https://web.archive.org/web/20070822111900/http://www.seriouszone.com/cms/news.php?action=dosearch&catid=11
  5. https://web.archive.org/web/20071016073405/http://seriouszone.com/cms/news.php?action=view&newsid=1431
  6. https://web.archive.org/web/20061207184219/http://files.seriouszone.com/download.php?fileid=957
  7. https://web.archive.org/web/20170919191431/http://files.seriouszone.com/download.php?fileid=1060
  8. https://web.archive.org/web/20180818221611/http://files.seriouszone.com/download.php?fileid=1068
  9. https://web.archive.org/web/20071016073410/http://seriouszone.com/cms/news.php?action=view&newsid=1525,
  10. https://web.archive.org/web/20060109054300/http://www.gamesplanet.be/index.php?main=gp_article&info=gp_article&articleId=562&pageNr=2&chk=gyc9WZYkq4
  11. https://archive.ph/20060109053339/http://www.gamesplanet.be/index.php?main=gp_article&info=gp_article&articleId=562&pageNr=3&chk=gzUgNuQ94D
  12. https://web.archive.org/web/20070706082335/http://www.seriouszone.com/cms/articles/21_1.php
  13. https://web.archive.org/web/20060630165309/http://www.1up.com/do/reviewPage?cId=3144631&did=4
  14. https://web.archive.org/web/20170920130700/http://files.seriouszone.com/download.php?fileid=1079
  15. https://web.archive.org/web/20170719162538/http://files.seriouszone.com/download.php?fileid=1093M
  16. https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/204340/view/3043843659824215488
  17. https://www.gamerankings.com/pc/920135-serious-sam-ii/index.html
  18. https://web.archive.org/web/20051210145425/http://www.gamepro.com/microsoft/xbox/games/reviews/49058.shtml
  19. https://uk.ign.com/articles/2005/10/12/serious-sam-ii
  20. http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/serious-sam-2/658128p1.html
  21. https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832205907&SortField=0&SummaryType=0&PageSize=10&SelectedRating=-1&VideoOnlyMark=False&IsFeedbackTab=true#scrollFullInfo
  22. https://web.archive.org/web/20070822033004/http://www.xboxsolution.com/2005/11/10/serious-sam-ii/
  23. https://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=167005&cid=13925001
  24. https://web.archive.org/web/20110716233418/http://www.stageselect.com/Games/Game.aspx?tab=review&gameid=40772

External links[]

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