Serious Sam II

Did You Know?

• Serious Sam II was one of the first releases of 2K Games, which had succeeded the original games' publisher, Gathering of Developers.
• The Xbox 360 version of the game was forgone.

Plot

After the events of Serious Sam: The Second Encounter, the exiled Sirian Great Council keeps tabs on Sam "Serious" Stone as he chases the alien overlord Mental. Convinced he is their only hope, they call him in and assign him to collect the five pieces of the Medallion of Power, an ancient artifact that can weaken Mental. These indestructible pieces were scattered across five planets, but Mental's forces now guard them. The council sends Sam to M'Digbo, home of the Simbas, where his AI NETRICSA translates the local language.

In M'Keke Village, the chief tells Sam that a giant monkey named Kwongo stole their piece. Sam breaks the village shaman out of Kukulele Prison in Ursul, and the shaman summons Kwongo for Sam to kill. With the first piece in hand, the council moves Sam to Magnor. He lands at one of Mental's swamp outposts, gets captured briefly, and is freed by a Zixie who leads him to their village.

Mental's troops find the village, and a giant bee called Zumzum snatches the piece. Sam chases Zumzum into the Land of Giants, kills it, and recovers the second piece. On Chi-Fang, he goes after Prince Chan, who terrorizes and eats the local ChiChe people and has swallowed the third piece. Sam locates Prince Chan at his temple and kills him to get it.

On Kleer, Sam gains the fourth piece by slaying the evil wizard Kleerofski. For the final piece, the council sends Sam to Ellenier, where the Elvians lost theirs to Cecil the Dragon. Sam travels to Kingsburg, navigates the sewers, and reaches the Castle of Rock to question the Elvian king. Cecil kidnaps Princess Olga from her wedding, and the king orders Sam to rescue her.

Sam finds Cecil willing to give her back because both find her ugly. Sam refuses to take her, fights and defeats Cecil, then agrees to return the princess in exchange for the fifth piece, which he does reluctantly.

Development and release

After finishing Serious Sam: The Second Encounter in early 2002, Croatian developer Croteam started early work on Serious Engine 2. Later that year, once an Xbox compilation of the first two games was finalized, a team of twenty-eight people focused fully on the engine and the new game. Money from licensing the previous engine to over ten companies for more than twenty products helped pay for development. Technical director Alen Ladavac oversaw a complete rewrite of Serious Engine 2 to keep up with modern requirements.

The new engine included a custom physics system called Serious Physics, support for models with more polygons, and a dynamic lighting system, though the team chose shadow maps instead of more complex dynamic shadows. Shader use was tuned so that having many enemies on screen wouldn't hurt performance, and several versions of High-Level Shader Language were used for older hardware. Other additions were bloom, refraction, and parallax mapping. The engine's feature set grew beyond what Croteam needed for the game itself, aiming to attract outside licensees.

In September 2002, Croteam announced Serious Sam II as a direct sequel to both earlier games, dropping the episodic format and targeting a 2003 release on Windows and Xbox. Lead designer Davor Hunski came up with the basic design before moving to programming. The game was built with seven episodes to make it longer than the first two games combined. Enemy AI was kept simple on purpose, with the team valuing quantity over quality. The story was seen as unimportant and used only to connect episodes so they didn't feel like separate games. The tone became more comedic and cartoonish, influenced by the externally developed Serious Sam: Next Encounter. A bigger budget let Croteam hire additional voice actors Elly Fairman and Brian Bowles.

Reception

Serious Sam II received mixed or average reviews, with Metacritic calculating weighted average ratings of 74/100 for Windows and 72/100 for Xbox. Critics praised improvements over predecessors, citing fun in unadulterated action and pure carnage. The UK Official Xbox Magazine called it a massively rewarding experience that never got monotonous. Edge believed no other game at the time matched its intensity. Some reviewers noted that shorter levels and smaller battles allowed more variety across levels, creating a good pace. However, others found the game so repetitive that it was physically draining or tiresome after longer sessions. Low replay value was cited by multiple critics. Some felt the level design too closely resembled other games of the time, while others called it incredible. The game was summarized as a good diversion that was ultimately unfulfilling.