So what makes this game so great? It's honestly a case of not taking itself too seriously. While the dissenters love to make fun of its bad art, Sam "Serious" Stone's stereotypical American character design, and slipshod plot, Croteam makes it clear that this is supposed to be a fun ride. From the whacked-out and sometimes incoherent enemy designs to the myriad irreverent secrets found throughout the game and your data computer NETRISCA's reluctance to take anything very seriously, the whole inherent badness of it can be forgiven. It's like the videogame version of a really bad (read: good) B-movie.

And this sort of nonchalant game design snakes its way into all aspects of Serious Sam 2. Either it puts you off entirely or you can enjoy it for what it is. Nonetheless, the game has some very cool moments. For the sequel, Croteam has spiced up the 13 levels with an increased number of obstacle or puzzle-themed rooms that break up the "arena" rooms (the areas where you're simply bombarded by ludicrous numbers of monsters) nicely. In some cases, they even combine the two to add some interesting elements to the combat. For instance, a room in one of the levels locks you in a large, stone tube where you can defy gravity by walking all the way around the walls. Unfortunately, the enemies can do this, too, and that means you're going to have them coming at you from ALL directions. The disorientation of being forced to walk on the ceiling also plays with your mind and forces you to concentrate even more on your aiming. You can't simply corner yourself in a part of this room and blast away. I find that to be one of the good points of the SS series, you simply can't turtle. Sitting in a corner is more likely to get you killed than it is to help you.

Also nice to know is that this time around, you're fighting through three different civilizations instead of the single, Egyptian one in Serious Sam: The First Encounter. This makes the game feel more refreshing and a lot less repetitive and the environments seem to get better as you go along. In one of the final levels, which takes place in the medieval Eastern Europe section of the game, there's a gigantic castle keep looming just ahead across a long and hazardous bridge. As you start to make your way up, a storm rolls in as well as a light fog. Lightning hits a nearby support and blasts it to bits and as you continue on, a line of enemies starts coming your way.

So, while the level design isn't always exactly coherent, it IS functional and filled with interesting rooms that at least help deviate from the simply door-corridor design a lot of old-school FPS games used to suffer from.

While the Quake 3 and new Unreal engines out there are still very impressive, Serious Sam is no slouch in this area. First designed as a tech demo, the early experiments using the Serious Engine shine through in both games, and even more so in the second. It's capable of some really nice textures and handles large numbers of enemies/effects/outdoor areas extremely well and with a decent rig, no slowdown. While Croteam is a great group of technical programmers, any expert game art design specialists could likely do wonders with the engine they've created. Serious Sam 2 looks pretty, but in the end it lacks the polish and sophistication that games using the Quake3/UT engines have been able to achieve.

In addition to the improved engine and changes in level design, Serious Sam: The Second Encounter introduces several new enemies (just as oddly designed as the rest, like the pumpkin-headed lumberjack, Curcubito) and three new weapons which should be familiar to avid FPS players: a chainsaw, a flamethrower, and a sniper rifle. All of these are used to great effect and even the traditionally slow sniper rifle is good for picking off enemies throwing projectiles at you from afar. Even though these are fairly generic weapons found in the genre, they're all worthwhile to use. Some battles will suck up so much of your ammo that you're forced to use all of your weapons by default. Especially the three main boss fights, one found at the end of each civilization. The bosses are huge and usually have some kind of special weapon or effects that make them a lot more engaging then the normal fights. Of all things, they somewhat remind me of the bosses in SEGA's Phantasy Star Online, in scope.

The sound is nothing to write home about. There's nothing particularly wrong with it, though. The music is generic, but fits the action and Sam's various quips may be hokey, but once again, it's all part of the game not taking itself too seriously.

No description of a game would be complete without talking about the multiplayer aspects. Of course there's the standard deathmatch levels, but Serious Sam 2 comes with its own mod, Seriously Warped Deathmatch 3.0. The Warped Deathmatch features a number of extra modes, such as capture and defend, CTF, and so on spread out amongst a number of levels that are just as strange as some of the areas in the single-player game, like anti-gray rooms and a computerized "matrix" map which does a good job of throwing off your senses. It also features a couple of extra weapons, like an explosive laser gun and a mine launcher, as well as adding secondary fire modes for the standard arms. Perhaps the crown jewel of SS2's multiplayer options is it's co-op mode, which allows a number of players to fight in tandem through the single-player levels. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem that many people play SS2 (or SS1 for that matter) online, but there are enough dedicated servers out there that finding a game certainly isn't impossible.

If the list of extra features wasn't already impressive, the package also features a robust map editor and a modeling program for use in creating your own mods.

As I said at the beginning of the review, you either like the series or you don't. Gamespot called the first title their PC game of the year, while some of the disgruntled PC elite chide them for picking "Serious Same" to occupy that heralded spot. Indeed, the game could use some improvement and it makes me wonder what we'll be seeing from Croteam in the future. The ending to The Second Encounter implies that there WILL be a third game and even if it's only as much an improvement as the second title was over the first, that'll be enough for me. When all is said and done, there are much better PC games out there, but Serious Sam: The Second Encounter is an above-average piece of software that improves upon its predecessor in every way. You're getting a lot for $19.99.