The weapons are completely satisfying but not at all realistic. The shotgun is powerful but slow loading and overly effective at any range; the plasma rifle, chain gun, and rocket launcher are also especially useful in combat. The enemy-seeking parrot bomb is lethal though peculiar looking and awkward to use in some cases. I really enjoyed my first experience shooting cannon balls at helicopters. If you are lucky, you will pick up the Serious Bomb, which destroys everything in sight. My favorite weapon is a giant rolling ball with spikes on the outside that can destroy anything it faces. I also really enjoy commandeering the turrets and mowing down the opposition. Generally you have plenty of ammunition available in the form of widely dispersed pickups, so you can keep shooting nonstop without fear of running low. When you begin a new world, you only have the most basic weapons regardless of what you have previously collected.

Although the physics in this release cannot compare to the best represented by shooters powered by the Havok engine, what you witness is not shabby. The impact of shooting creatures is portrayed in a reasonable minimalist fashion, though it is odd that a number of large creatures fall forward rather than backward when they die. You can shoot trees and structures, but the resulting destruction seems rather formulaic. You can pickup, carry around, and throw objects at will, and they ricochet and bounce around nicely. You can stack crates to get to valuable pickups otherwise inaccessible. What is missing is a sense of weight and of having a real impact on the surrounding environment (they cannot be used as weapons, for example). As a result, the ability to manipulate environmental objects seems more like window dressing than an integral element of the gameplay.

Puzzles have never played a major role in the Serious Sam franchise, and this latest release is certainly no exception. Most of these involve finding ways of getting through passages, such as through locating and detonating explosives to blast open passages and finding keys or picking up levers to open doors. Other puzzles include jumping challenges (where you have to avoid spikes or climb up the inside of a tower) and figuring out how to lower a bridge that is stuck. At one point after taking a hidden teleporter you need to take a ball from one carnival booth to use in another to make a creature fall and get dunked in the water. Some of the secret rooms contain puzzles, such as one containing letters on the floor where you have to spell out the word “SERIOUS.” Although none of the puzzles is particularly challenging, they provide a welcome respite from the straight shooting.

Following the latest fad in first-person shooters, Serious Sam II allows you at numerous points in the game to get into vehicles, ride in them, and shoot from them at the enemy hordes around you. The vehicle control is fine, but to tell the truth I find this no more exciting that the overly long vehicle sequences in Half-Life 2. The vehicles here do add more of a sense of speed to the gameplay, and allow you to keep your distance from your foes when you wish to do so. While there are a few instances where it is absolutely critical to employ the vehicles to survive, I did not find myself eagerly anticipating these play segments.