First-person shooting on the Xbox has been of the grim and somber variety of late. Just when you finished saving the planet from a hellish alien in DOOM 3, you were forced to once again take down the Covenant as the Master Chief in Halo 2. Happily, for gamers, you'll soon be able to do your sniping and strafing in a much lighter vein when 2K Games releases Croteam's Serious Sam II in October. If you played the original game, you know that the only thing serious about this series is the serious amount of over-the-top goofiness you can expect.

So where is all this merriment coming from? Croatia, of course. While, to most folks, this small Eastern European country kicks up thoughts of political unrest and NBA players with really hard to pronounce names, gamers know Croatia as the birthplace of the Serious Sam games. The PC-only first Sam game took everyone by surprise when it came out in 2001. And the console crowd was just as impressed by the series' debut on the Xbox in 2002. (Releases this spring, developed by Climax Games for the PS2 and GameCube weren't as well received.) After wrapping my thumbs around Sam II, it looks like the folks in Croatia have gotten the series back on the right track.

Once again you play as "Serious" Sam Stone, a grizzled shoot-first-ask-questions-later tough guy in the Duke Nukem tradition, who must take down his arch-nemesis, Mental. This time, you have to collect all five pieces of the Medallion of Power -- forged by a blind blacksmith -- which will make Mental vulnerable to attack.


To do that, you'll have to take down wave after wave of evil creepies. Enemies spawn and respawn at a ridiculous pace, which means that there's not too much down-time for your trigger finger. And here, it's not just the boss battles where you have to be on "code red" alert -- it's all the time. Just when you've think you've taken care of the onslaught, another squadron of oddball nasties comes your way. Take care of enough of Mental's minions and you're rewarded with the level boss. Given the shear number of things you have to off and the limited time you have to do it -- if nothing else -- a few levels of Sam will improve your first-person shooting skills. With more than 40 huge levels to tackle, spanning seven distinct environments -- jungles, frozen tundra, cities of the future, etc. -- you'll be able to get in plenty of practice.

All the humor that you expect from the game is here. There's the rogue's gallery of whacked-out bad guys you have to take on: the primitive "primitives"; the shotgun-toting "zombie stockbrokers"; the chunky, red-skinned, gothgirl-looking "hellchicks"; etc. And there's the equally whacked-out weapons you'll use to bring them down. Hang around long enough and you'll be able to do your damage with all-powerful "serious bomb" or exploding kamikaze parrots. Moving the storyline along are the sometimes hilarious cutscenes. I won't give too many of the highlights away, but the "day after" snap shots of Sam's partying with the Simba tribe are a real smile.