[Review] Serious Sam 2
Quick disclaimer, Serious Sam 2 is NOT Serious Sam: The Second Encounter, the whole thing is confusing but the first Serious Sam game was published divided into two games First and Second Encounters, for the sake of convenience I will refer to both games in this review as ''Encounters''.
/// Premise
Serious Sam 2 is a direct sequel to previous Encounters, once again you take the role of Sam Stone, the one-liner spouting one-man army, continuing his quest to stop Mental and his hordes. This time Sam takes a trip to several different planets to acquire pieces of a special medallion that could help him in weakening Mental.
/// The reputation and behind the scenes
It's no secret that Serious 2 is the black sheep of the mainline franchise, splitting the fanbase. Some claim it's secretly the best game in the series, others that it's the worst game ever made. Of course, as is usual with extreme opinions, both are misleading.
Serious Sam 2 sports major changes to the franchise previously established by the Encounters, however, most discussions about the game end in the changes made to visual style and tone, when they go way beyond that, reaching the mechanics.
The best comparison I can make to put you in the right mindset is Doom 3. It is not a bad game on its own, it's not even a bad Doom game, it just deviates from the fast-paced action and leans more heavily on the horror aspects and dark atmosphere.
Encounters, Serious Sam 3 and Serious Sam 4 use the traditional Serious formula, something Croteam called Weapon Dance, where enemy stats line up with specific weapons creating the best weapon to deal with that specific enemy, and so the challenge arises from managing a large number of different enemies on screen that requires different guns, so the player is tasked with ranking threats, avoiding projectiles, switching weapons and prioritizing targets on the fly while disposing of them as fast and as efficient as possible, something that ID software would many years later call ''combat chess'' in Doom Eternal.
And just like Doom 3 deviated from fast-paced combat, Serious Sam 2 deviates from that Weapon Dance design philosophy and goes with a more casual mindless shooting, where there is no deeper strategy to the combat, as long as you got ammo any weapon is efficient against 90% of the enemies you will face. There is no dance, just kill as many as you can, even Croteam themselves called Serious 2 an ''Arcade-Style'' shooter.
Don't get me wrong however, the game can be pretty fun on its own, but it would have greatly benefited if it was a new original IP, due to how fundamentally different it is. Of course, 2K wouldn't have ever allowed that.
I believe that this change to the formula specifically is the reason why so many fans of the series still hold a grudge against it, plus the tonal shift on top of it. And it's also why it is often the favorite game for people that don't quite like Serious Sam, causing this split and extreme ''Love or Hate'' reaction.
Serious Sam 2 was designed with the Xbox console in mind, with the cartoony style being forced by 2K, according to a Devolver’s representative (Croteam's current publisher) in an interview with Dealspwn (defunct gaming website), affirmed that 2K Games was heavily involved in the development of Serious Sam 2 and put Croteam under heavy pressure to opt for a more cartoonish style and to ''tone it down''. The reason for this is unknown either to try and get a lower ESRB rating (which failed) or to cram in a better performance for the Xbox.
Shortly after the release of Serious 2, Croteam even went to court against 2K Games for trying to wrestle control, again, during the early development stages of Serious sam 3, which resulted in a forceful separation from 2K with Croteam retaining the publishing rights to the franchise.
And the grudge Croteam held against 2K was so large that they would go as far as to brand Serious Sam 2 a non-canon spinoff entry, and even express the interest to completely remake the game from scratch one day.
Personally, I'm not a fan of the new wacky enemies, humor, and the friendly high-pitched voiced alien gnomes, it doesn't fit visually or tonally in a Sam game, and the focus on consoles explains the shift towards less intensive and more casual gunplay. But that is just, like, my opinion man.
/// Structure and Pacing
I want to focus on maps and how the game is divided. There is a total of seven episodes with separate themes, for a total of 42 levels, these levels however are much shorter when compared to an average Encounters levels and by extent, episodes finished more quickly.
I clocked the game at around 8 hours total, but most people report finishing it around 10h to 12h. While its maps are cleared fast, there are many more of them, making it one of the longest games in the series.
All fine and good but there is one problem with episodes being completed faster, once an episode ends, all your weapons are taken away at the start of the next one. And because of the way guns are distributed in these episodes (except for one level) you will never have access to your full arsenal, and that kills the pacing in my opinion. This reset even happens mid-episode sometimes.
This completely disrupts any sense of progression and it continues to happen all the way to the final levels. I don't know if the choice to have fewer weapons at any given time was to make it more manageable when playing with a controller or if Croteam wanted each episode to have more of a tailored experience and be more memorable ''The one you get the cannon'' or something, but it only generates frustration in the end.
/// Arsenal, Power-Ups, and Enemies
There is a total of 14 weapons (15 with patch 2.90). Your usual suspects for the franchise are all here albeit with a few variations, auto shotgun replacing the pump-action, a quake 3 style plasma gun instead of the laser gun, dual uzis instead of the tommy gun, and some new additions like klawdovic, the homing kamizake bird, a new (useless) laser pistol, a dedicated grenade button and some level dependant stationary turrets.
I already talked about how combat goes earlier, so I'm not going to get into it again.
As for maps and arenas, there's a large variety and fun arena formats, most of them small (with a few exceptions), enemies will either teleport in or come from an unseen corner, standard Serious stuff. For the aforementioned exceptions, the large maps are where vehicles come into play. They drive ok, way better than waking miles on foot, they are mounted with powerful guns with infinite ammo. There are a few vehicle sections, throughout the game, none of them are very egregious, I can only think of one right now that could have been cut.
Power-ups make a return but this time there are effectively only two of them, Serious Damage and Serious Score that doubles how many points you get, there's also Extra Life (a non-power up) and Serious Jump that is only available during a boss fight.
For enemies I'm not gonna go into details as this review is already longer than it should, there's what you would expect of a Serious Sam game, werebulls, kamikazes, etc. However they do present an arguably downgraded design if you ask me, there's a large difference between a beheaded freak screaming at the top of his lungs to a clown with dynamite in a unicycle. Outside of that, there are some new chapter unique enemies, flying ones, and unique bosses for each episode which may vary in quality from inoffensive to pretty awful.
/// Points, Lives, and checkpoints
Another new addition to the game was the life system, (not really new, it was in the Xbox port of Encounters but you know what I mean) every enemy you kill net you some points, every ten thousand points you gain an Extra Life. It's all very simple, you die you lose a life and go back to the previous checkpoint, lose all lives and you start the level over.
While it sounds menacing, it really isn't, racking up points and stacking lives is so easy that they even reset the number of extra lives you have back down at the start of a new level, otherwise you would end the game with a hundred or more of them easily.
The whole system is more focused on stopping save-scumming, while it's something some people online make a fuss about it, I really don't care if you quicksave every 30 seconds, but yeah Serious Sam 2 will break that habit for you.
/// Patch 2.90
On March 23rd, 2021, Croteam unexpectedly pushed patch 2.90, adding some new content, features, and several improvements to Serious Sam 2. I can only assume it was a pet project from one or two devs at Croteam that still cares about the game. It's only available on the Steam release of the game.
The patch added sprinting, dual-wielding for any weapon, added a cut weapon back in the Laser Beam Gun, enabled rocket jumping, enemy count multipliers, a new enemy, custom crosshairs, and several modding and visual improvements.
Dual wielding guns makes the game overall easier but when paired with the added enemy multiplier it balances itself out. These are all optional features that can be toggled on/off at your choice when starting a new game.
/// Conclusion
Despite sounding very negative about it, Serious Sam 2 is not a bad game, it's a victim of publisher meddling and a bad reputation for going in a different direction than its predecessors. Croteam produced and released the PC and Xbox ports simultaneously, alongside the development of Serious Engine 2 which is no small feat to a small dev team, and that alone is deserving of my respect.
Whether you like the direction it went or not, it's undoubtedly a good game, not perfect, but it stands on its own and aged well.
If you are reading this for whatever reason and bounced off the franchise before, maybe you should give Serious Sam 2 a try. Chances are it's different enough that you might like it.
And don't let my 6/10 scare you, six to me is a perfectly enjoyable game.
''Give a man bullets and he will ask for a gun, give a man a gun and he will be giving away the bullets''
-Sam Stone
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