NightFright, on 22 April 2018 - 12:40 PM, said:
It's a pity that Serious Sam II isn't included in Fusion. It was the most colorful and comic-style release of all Serious Sam iterations and I still consider it the pinnacle of the whole serious, errr, series.
What Ninety-Six said, also: the situation is actually so "serious" that Croteam doesn't even consider SS2 as part of the canon anymore. The thing is that apparently 2K Games, SS2's publisher was heavily involved in creating the game's cartoony art style so Croteam doesn't really like that game from hindsight, that's why they want to remake it. Even when it comes to the fanbase you're in the minority, most players prefer the style of FE / SE / HD so the remake will have an art style that is more akin to those games. Croteam also dislikes the weapon designs so those will get the axe too in favor of the traditional Sam arsenal and the story will be different too.
Anyway even though Croteam hates SS2 they still support it thanks to their "no game gets left behind" attitude (and thanks to Devolver owning the publishing rights now instead of 2K) so if you buy the game on Steam you'll see a different version of it these days. They fixed a bunch of bugs and added proper widescreen support with the correct UI scale, FoV and everything so while it's not in Fusion it still has a bit of modern spit and polish.
As for your opinion on the art style I have to say that while I like SS2 just fine I think they went over the line with all the cartoony stuff. Serious Sam was always a bit stylized and super silly but to me Sam 2 feels like an actual Saturday morning cartoon made for kids and I think that must have been 2K's idea when it comes to positioning the franchise. It's just too much and you can feel that the character designs and the violence was toned down in favor of presenting that cartoon vibe. A good example of this is how the headless kamikazes look: SS2's art style is so kid friendly that they had to redesign that iconic enemy. The kamikaze design is supposed to be an exercise in dark humor, it's a morbid looking character that deliberately doesn't make sense but in SS2 it's just a guy with a bomb for a head. I mean just look at this, the SS2 kamikaze sticks out like a sore thumb:
However I think that there is one game in the franchise that nails the cartoony look: Next Encounter, the only FPS in the series that wasn't made by Croteam. The cartoony stuff is not overblown there, it's just a more cartoony Sam game that still manages to resemble FE and SE a lot.