Serious Sam 2 - The First 15 - PC - Preview

Serious Sam 2 - The First 15 minutes

Serious Sam 2 – The First 15 minutes

Right then, Serious Sam 2, the sequel to the other sequel to the original. Confused? So you should be. For those of you not familiar with the Serious Sam games, think along the lines of Duke Nukem, but with massive outdoor areas, massive boss creatures, massive numbers of bad guys and massive amounts of shooting to do… Yep, an ‘old skool’ blaster in the FPS mould, Serious Sam was serious fun.

So is Serious Sam 2 any good this time around? First impressions are yes, it is. Right from the off, Serious Sam 2’s humour is in full evidence with corny one liners and a few laugh out loud moments which only underline the game’s instant accessibility. Anyone, and I really do mean anyone, who has played any sort of FPS will instantly be able to drop into Serous Sam 2’s gameplay.

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There is a plot-line of sorts to follow, but to be honest, this isn’t the sort of game that draws you into giving a stuff about the story or the characters in it, all you’re after is some blasting action and Serious Sam 2 delivers that in spades. All manner of weaponry is available, from the double barrelled sawn off shotgun to rocket launchers, twin Serious Uzis, (called Suzzis), even through to bomb carrying parrots!

Graphically, the Serious Sam 2 is bright, colourful and complex with some nicely drawn textures and the signature massive open areas. The Serious Engine 2 is a well accomplished bit of software rendering everything very smoothly and even running at 1280 x 1024 with everything maxed the HEXUS.gaming Test Rig had no trouble keeping framerates high even when things were very busy on the screen.

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Enemy AI is pretty much non-existent, after all they’re job is to kill you or be killed, and the main threat here is to be overwhelmed by the numbers. But Serious Sam 2 differs from most FPS games in that you have a set number of lives, loose all of those and it’s game over, none of that keep dying and restarting till you finish stuff here. The problem with dying though is that you loose any armour and health you had collected earlier, making it all the more difficult to get through a troublesome section…