Serious Sam 2 follows the same formula that the original game did, but manages to lose something in transition. That something would appear to be a sense of fun.

Sam starts this adventure off by being selected as “The One” (and how tired is that term anyways?) to save the world and defeat the bad guys as apparently only he can. To do so, you’ve got to collect pieces of a medallion that will prove to be quite handy when it comes to beating the hell out of the main bad guy, Mental. The problem is, Mental already has all the pieces! Since they can’t be destroyed, they’ve been locked away, and you’ll traverse each level/world in the game to find them. Along the way you’ll get some help in the form of the natives from each planet that were originally guarding these pieces before having them stolen.

Each planet carries a theme to it, such as the first planet resembling a type of jungle village, but the level designs are pretty bland and uninspired. You’re also forced to do the levels on “rails” with very little room to move about and explore. You’ll encounter both friend and foe as you go across the levels, but you’ll never have to worry about friendly fire, as apparently each villager is secretly from Krypton and cannot be harmed. However, you’ll have plenty of enemies to shoot at as you move thru the stages, and the scale of on screen bad guys can get a bit impressive. Unfortunately you’ll also encounter quite a bit of slowdown in these massive firefights. And while each world looks different in the visual department, when it comes to gameplay they’re all pretty much the same. The appeal of blasting away at a dozen of enemies can get pretty boring after a while, and there’s not much need for any skill other than running around and holding down the trigger button. It can be fun for ten minutes or so, but after that it just becomes massively tedious.

I attempted to try out the online multiplayer, but couldn’t find a soul to play with at any given time. I did do a bit of offline multiplayer, which managed to turn into a shotgun fest. No game should have the ability to shotgun snipe, but Serious Sam 2 does. The weapon selection is pretty standard (Rockets, Laser, etc) but the Shotgun will always be your massively overpowered weapon of choice, especially since you gain its use in the first couple stages.

The trademark humor of the original does its best to come up with something funny in part two, but fails horribly. I can safely say that I did not laugh at a single, asinine joke in this game. I’m not sure why someone thought it was funny when they wrote it, but man, it’s just bad. It doesn’t help that the characters animations are so limited and choppy that they’re not even properly able to emote the funny when the time for jokes pop up.

The music fits the lighthearted mood of the game, but its nothing spectacular. It also likes to abruptly cut off and switch when you enter/exit from battle, which is really distracting. Also, the voiceover work is pretty atrocious. You’ll really, really want to just shut off the volume anytime you encounter a bit of lengthy dialogue (like in the intro sequence).

The difficulty of the game is definitely on the light side as well. To compensate for the loss of mouse shooting accuracy from the PC, they’ve given you the ability to do an auto lock on when shooting, which is damn near like cheating. You only have to have your crosshairs relatively close to an enemy to hit it, and it makes nailing targets a breeze, even at a long distance. Also, the enemy AI is laughable at best. They pretty much fall into two groups, the ones that like to charge straight ahead, and the others that just stand still and shoot at you till you kill them.

Serious Sam 2 is a major disappointment as a FPS title on the Xbox, and as a fan of the first game. The jokes are bad, the combat is boring, and look of the game is incredibly bland. It’d have been nice to see things turned up a notch for what should have been a fun sequel, but you’ll be best served by avoiding this game completely. Maybe I’d be a bit more forgiving of this game if it also managed to maintain the original’s $20 price point, but I can’t see any reason to pay full price for this poorly rehashed shooter.