Serious Sam 2

Lore & Background

The game follows Sam "Serious" Stone as he seeks to assemble the five-piece Medallion of Power, the only tool able to weaken his nemesis, the alien overlord Mental, who has each piece guarded by his forces. Following Serious Sam: The Second Encounter, the Sirian Great Council is observing the efforts of Sam to track down and defeat Mental. Believing Sam is the only one capable of achieving this, they summon him and task him with retrieving the five pieces of the Medallion of Power.

The pieces, indestructible and distributed among the peoples of five planets, have since come under the control of Mental's forces. The council sends Sam to the planet of M'Digbo, where his implanted artificial intelligence, NETRICSA, helps him to communicate with the locals. Sam retrieves the pieces from the planets M'Digbo, Magnor, Chi-Fang, Kleer, and Ellenier, ultimately heading to Kronos and then Sirius to confront Mental, but he only shoots a speaker and departs with a spaceship.

Reader's Guide

Serious Sam II is a first-person shooter with an optional third-person perspective. The player traverses forty-two enclosed levels distributed across seven thematic episodes. The player faces increasingly large waves of enemies with more variety as the game progresses. The player starts with a circular saw, a laser pistol, and two revolvers, later expanding their arsenal with shotguns, submachine guns, a sniper rifle, and a rocket launcher, among others.

The revolvers and Uzis support dual wield. Alongside any weapon, the player can toss grenades. Some areas require the player to clear all threats before proceeding; others require protecting NPCs, solving puzzles, or platforming. Occasionally the player is given a stationary minigun or turret.

Vehicles such as the weaponed dinosaur and hovercraft have unlimited ammunition. The game features five difficulty levels. In multiplayer, up to sixteen players can play the campaign cooperatively or engage in deathmatch on Windows; the Xbox version supports up to four players cooperatively via System Link or Xbox Live.

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 game's proprietary engine, Serious Engine 2, incorporated a bespoke physics engine and support for higher-quality graphics.
• The game was released for Windows and the Xbox in October 2005; an Xbox 360 version was forgone.
• Serious Sam II was met with mixed reviews, praised for its high-action gameplay but criticised for low replay value and reduced multiplayer options.
• The shift to a cartoonish art style was polarising among fans, and Serious Sam 3: BFE (2011) became a prequel to The First Encounter.