Serious Sam II

Serious Sam II (also marketed as Serious Sam 2) is a 2005 first-person shooter game developed by Croteam and published by 2K Games. It is the third mainline entry in the Serious Sam series, after Serious Sam: The First Encounter (2001) and Serious Sam: The Second Encounter (2002). The game follows Sam "Serious" Stone as he seeks to assemble the five-piece Medallion of Power, the only tool able to weaken his nemesis, the alien overlord Mental, who has each piece guarded by his forces. As Sam, the player traverses forty-two levels across seven thematic worlds and fights increasingly large waves of enemies with an expanding arsenal, vehicles, and turrets. In multiplayer, up to sixteen players can play the campaign cooperatively or engage in deathmatch.

Serious Sam II and its proprietary engine, Serious Engine 2, entered development after the completion of The Second Encounter in early 2002, occupying the entire twenty-eight-person studio by the end of the year. The engine incorporated a bespoke physics engine and support for higher-quality graphics over the prior games, while vehicles were the largest addition to the gameplay. Engine licences contributed to a larger game budget that allowed Croteam to hire voice actors, and the studio chose to use a cartoonish art style. Serious Sam II became one of the first releases of 2K Games, which had since succeeded the original games' publisher, Gathering of Developers. The game was released for Windows and the Xbox in October 2005, while an Xbox 360 version was forgone.

Serious Sam II was met with mixed reviews. It was praised for its improvements over its predecessors, including its high-action gameplay, while being criticised for a low replay value. The vehicles and turrets each raised differing opinions, as did its level design, humour, voice acting, and music. The graphics drew positive remarks, although the enemy designs attained mixed responses. The reduced multiplayer options, including initially no deathmatch mode, were seen as a negative. The shift to a cartoonish art style was polarising among fans of the series, and Serious Sam 3: BFE (2011) became a prequel to The First Encounter.