Product Reviews

Serious Sam II takes the lush visuals of Far Cry's beautiful island location and throws in some cute blue Teletubby-style creatures, some guns and lots of enemies. The paper-thin plot has you hunting for a mystical medallion, but it's just a device to explain why you have to face off against hundreds of grim-looking enemies.

And when we say hundreds, that's exactly what we mean. Each stage will see you wiping wave after wave of bizarre creature from the face of the planet. There's a huge range of creatures to fight, from clockwork bulls and demonic

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creatures on wheels to our personal favourite, screaming scarecrows with bombs for heads. You're armed with the usual range of weaponry, including pistols, shotguns, rocket launchers and, obviously, bomb-carrying parrots.

While the colourful graphics and amusing array of weapons and monsters makes Serious Sam II fun to look at, it's repetitive. While Half-Life 2 has chases through cities and coordinated enemy attacks, Serious Sam just throws in lots of stupid monsters. It can get dull and frustrating. But it does pull the odd sequence out of the bag to renew your interest, such as the giant spiders you meet outside the city walls. Flying between their legs in our jet car reminded us of Lord of the Rings and The Empire Strikes Back - great stuff.

The graphics are gorgeous and the textures look amazing, particularly on the animals. The game has been well designed, too, and should run well on most PCs.

If you require a little more plot and variation in your games, Serious Sam II is not for you, but if you want lush graphics, strange and amazing weapons and hordes of bad guys to shoot, it's an entertaining diversion.