We also had a chance to skip around to a few different levels, which not only featured some of the game's many vehicles (like the flying hovertank, which essentially handles like a slow-moving jet fighter), but also offered much of the game's bizarre sense of humor. Now that Sam is up against more enemies that are smarter this time around, backpedaling while keeping your trigger pulled won't always cut it. The game will have more than 40 different enemies, each with its own different behavioral patterns, including alien sergeants who provide a morale bonus to their troops cackling witches who ride broomsticks (which explode into puffs of delicate purple smoke when destroyed) and three different types of the galloping kleer skeletons that include standard, metal-plated, and flying versions.to name just a few. And on the highest 'serious' level of difficulty, the action was also nonstop, as enemies constantly attempted to blast us or trample us. Like in the previous games in the series, the action seemed fast-paced. This is Serious Sam we're talking about here). The level we played was an underground military base, which, in proper Serious Sam fashion, was manned by Day-Glo-colored aliens with robot arms and cackling witches with bubbling cauldrons. You know, for those rare occasions when he needs to blow up a bunch of enemies. Fortunately, Sam will also be able to toss hand grenades without having to swap weapons. But that's the kind of hardware you'll carry in the game, along with bomb-dropping parakeets (which fly cheerfully into enemies before exploding) and the 'serious bomb of death,' a smart-bomb-type weapon that immediately destroys all enemies onscreen. For those who haven't played any of the previous Serious Sam games, that cannon is an actual cannon.as in the kind you'd expect to find on a 17th-century pirate ship rather than in the hands of a muscle-bound tough guy. We had a chance to try out just about every weapon in the game, including the miniature circular saw that hero 'Serious' Sam Stone uses as a melee weapon, along with his dual pistols, combat shotgun, grenade launcher, rocket launcher, sniper rifle, and improved version of the cannon.

Just like with the previous games, Serious Sam II will have an extremely bright, colorful look to it, perhaps as a counterpoint to some of the other popular shooters out there that emphasize realism, grit, and dark environments.

We had a chance to both play through part of a level and take a look at several new levels we hadn't seen. The game is actually nearing completion, as almost all the content in the game's 40-plus levels is done, and the developer, one Croteam of Croatia, is busy shearing up the rest. We recently had a chance to get our hands on an early version of Serious Sam II for the PC.

Serious sam bomb guy