In the past few years, we've seen several high-profile shooters which unquestionably evoke the FPS design philosophies of old. Certainly we've had ambitiously modern and progressive titles such as Half-Life 2 and a rather tiresome glut of World War II epics, but there have also been more stripped-down titles such as Painkiller and Serious Sam. Those games tend to be the more directly-marketable type; rather than bullet points such as "Unprecedented expression and realism!" and "Confront the true horror of war!" they tend towards sentiments such as "OH MAN THERE ARE LIKE A BILLION GUYS ON THE SCREEN!!!!" and "HOLY SHIT THINGS EXPLODE!!!!"

Such games aren't really for everyone. They're not for me, anyway, at least most of the time. For my part, I didn't have any fun with Painkiller. An internet search might reveal my less-than-exulting review of the game. I did, however, have a lot of fun with Serious Sam. Both games were self-consciously over-the-top, exorbitant and gratuitous. However, Painkiller was just too overwrought for me. Despite how ludicrous it was, I couldn't help but feel like I was actually supposed to think this stuff was really awesome, instead of the hilarious byproduct of a self-absorbed 15 year old goth who covers his homework with doodles of demons. (Of course, I could leverage similar complaints against certain other PC shooters...) With Serious Sam, however, I knew I wasn't supposed to take any of it seriously. I found it hilarious but I also felt like I wasn't pissing on anyone's dreams by laughing at it. From the first moment I heard the layered screams upon screams of headless exploding guys with bomb hands runing at me from all directions, I was hooked. That put me in the right frame of mind for a game that's basically, well, mindless. Plus, there's cooperative mode, which is heartbreakingly uncommon in PC gaming these days. God bless you, Croteam.

So, the bottom line here is that I was curious about Serious Sam 2, which I got a chance to play at QuakeCon. Quite frankly, the game is about what you would expect from a sequel to Serious Sam. There isn't all that much to be surprised about: the game has cutting edge graphics, cooperative mode, like a billion guys on the screen, and holy shit things explode. Suffice to say, if you liked the first game(s), you'll feel at home here.

I played the game with all weapons enabled, and it's worth mentioning that there really are a lot of weapons in this game, and they cover a very diverse spectrum of destruction. Just about all the standard projectile- and laser-based FPS weapons are there, of course, but there are also some real gems. My favorite has to be Sam's parrot, which is straight out of something like Worms. The poor bird has a bomb hanging from its neck, and upon release the parrot flies forward in a zig-zaggy pattern until it collides with an enemy, at which point it explodes and a lot of splash damage is distributed liberally. There's also a bomb festooned with the Serious Sam "serious face" logo which basically clears the screen of all enemies. It has the same effect as one of the last-resort bombs you'd find in a top-down 2D space shooter. And let's not forget the large portable cannon--and by "cannon" I mean it actually shoots enormous cannonballs, which is of course a lot of fun. They have a nice realistic trajectory, so you have to shoot them at the proper angle depending on your distance. Another welcome feature is the use of vehicles, outfitted of course with various weapons. The few vehicles I had a chance to commandeer were small maneuverable hovercrafts.

Visually the game pushes a ton of pixels, if that's your thing. I'm not the right guy to explain whatever sort of High-Density Pixel Bump Radiosity Mapping Extreme technology was being used, but things were very shiny, very colorful, and there were many, many polygons. It was running at a nice high resolution with the aforementioned billion guys onscreen without any noticeable dips in framerate. To be fair, the game was running on a monster of an SLI machine. There were a few hangs, but I was playing a pre-beta build, and the game is now apparently past beta. With the exception of the unfortunate Standard FPS Levels (you know, lava, bones, and demons all over the place) the levels were nicely varied and extremely colorful. Environments ranged from rolling mountains and green plains to a sorceror-ninja-infested courtyard with little boys and girls wandering around dangerously. My favorite was a futuristic city with all sorts of nice-looking transparencies and clean colors aplenty. That level allows you, at certain points, to board an armed flying vehicle with which to travel between the upper floors of various building, leading to some nice frenetic dogfights.

The game does seem to suffer from disparities in the visual design of the levels more than its predecessor did, and that's one of the things with which I take issue about games like Painkiller, but I did play several non-consecutive levels out of order. As far as the general visual design goes, the general use of an atypically colorful world is something that has been carried over and amplified from Serious Sam, and it's nice to see in a world of FPS games dominated by nothing but browns and greens. If nothing else, it stood out visually among the likes of Doom 3 and Quake IV.

Serious Sam 2 will be released this fall for a budget price of $29.99 on PC and $39.99 on Xbox, and it looks on track to be another enjoyable, destructive, and not-too-serious run-and-gun experience. If you can dig that, consider checking it out. Oh, and one more thing, possibly the most important thing of all: we are being promised 16-player cooperative mode. Yes, Croteam, yes. This is what I love.