Serious Sam II

The original Serious Sam is considered a classic here at GameSpy HQ. Granted, the idea of flooding the screen with waves and waves of enemies wasn't particularly brilliant in itself, but it was done with so much style you had to take notice of the surprise game from Croteam, a developer that virtually no one knew of to that point. Levels were bright and colorful. Bosses were HUGE. The game -- gasp! -- had humor. And it was a mere $20, which was worth it just for the co-op play -- we had one memorable night where we eight of us finished the game in a few hours, and we're still talking about it today.

After the release of The Second Encounter in 2002, however, things have been pretty quiet on the Serious front. Aside from some console versions and a brief showing at GDC, there's been virtually no news on the Serious Sam front until this year's E3, where we got our first in-depth preview of Serious Sam II. This week, the fine folks at 2K Games invaded GameSpy HQ to give us an even closer look at the game, scheduled for release this fall.


Serious Sam II picks up at the end of The Second Encounter, as Sam chases down the villainous Mental into space. There's some wacky story where the denizens of a planet called Sirius recruit you to gather parts to a medallion to help defeat Mental, but it's really just an excuse to send you planet-hopping and from one frantic firefight to the next.

Along the way, Sam will visit seven different worlds over the course of over forty levels, reportedly longer than both Serious Sam and The Second Encounter combined (more on that shortly). As you might expect, the worlds are bright, colorful locations, starting with a Hong Kong level... or at least what Hong Kong would look like if you put it on another planet and populated it with swarms of bad guys with churning sawblades for hands.

Another level is set in a world of giants, and, bizarrely enough, looks like something ripped straight out of Pikmin. Instead of trees, huge blades of grass form the landscape, occasionally broken up by a empty soup can or some other ginormous object. According to 2K Games, other levels include a planet of Elvis worshippers (!), a King Kong-inspired level, and an obligatory lava level.


Sam's arsenal is similarly inspired. You can expect the usual array of chainguns, a rocket launcher, grenade launcher and sniper rifle, but it's the more unique weapons that we're guessing will inspire the most excitement. A saw blade weapon shoots out spinning metal wheels of death, and can be rotated vertically to turn it into a potent melee weapon. There's the "Klodovik" bird, which is a parrot-looking thing that carries a bomb and drops it on the nearest enemy ... or you, if you're not careful.The cannonball launcher returns, but this time it's got a pressure gauge and a red siren that hoots and flashes with the cannon is charged and ready to blow. There's also a bomb weapon, which wasn't actually working in the build we were shown, and yet looks so cool that we can't wait to see it in action (kinda like that kung fu Yakuza midget from the Simpsons .... when it goes off, you just know it's going to be cool).