This happens at the start of every chapter. The opening hours of Serious Sam are seriously slow, and by the time you get a stacked weapon loadout, the chapter ends, and you're forced to start the next chapter with nothing but your pistols. Alas, Serious Sam 4 suffers from some serious issues in this department as well, particularly in its pacing. You might be able to see passed these glaring issues if the gameplay was solid.
If not, maybe the mod community might be able to save Sam from himself.
None of these issues are game-breaking, and a day-one patch launches along with the game, so there's a chance these issues could be fixed. Serious Sam 4 has an unfinished, lifeless feeling that permeates through the game. Sometimes they even miss their cues during cutscenes. In my playtime, I watched bodies skate across the landscape at top speed or die in place with no animation at all. Textures fail to load in properly, objects pass right through characters, and the physics are all over the place.
Serious Sam takes you across Italy and the French countryside, but you'd be forgiven if you couldn't tell one from the other. Janky animations and thousand-mile stares make it feel like I'm watching mannequins that have sprung to life.Įnvironments don't fare much better either. Sometimes audio comes in too loud, too low, or doesn't match the subtitles at all. Sometimes they don't even blink! The audio is also poorly mixed. Character models look nice enough, but their janky animations and thousand-mile stares make it feel like I'm watching mannequins that have sprung to life. There's a distinct lack of polish throughout the game that detracts from the overall experience. You can tell immediately from the opening scene to the end credits. Unfortunately for fans expecting this game to be a step forward for the series, Serious Sam 4 is a mess. Croteam also promises to release the Serious Editor tool, which will allow fans to mod the game, shortly after launch. It's a far cry from the 16-player coop featured in Serious Sam 3, but it works.
The game can also be played with three other friends in a highly customizable coop mode. These additions encourage players to explore the maps in between firefights. Sam also has a skill tree that can be upgraded as you find Sirian Artefacts of Might, or S.A.M. The weapon attachments unlock alternative fire modes, while the gadgets offer offensive and defensive bonuses to Sam.Ĭertain gadgets, like the black hole and mini-nuke, were incredibly fun to use but don't appear as often as you'd like. New additions to the Serious Sam formula include branching paths with optional objectives that lead to gadgets and weapon attachments. There's plenty of weapons to shoot and plenty of enemies to shoot at. While they're mostly cannon fodder, there is an undeniable feeling of awe as you watch hordes of screaming enemies run across the horizon and straight toward you.
Using the Legion System, Croteam can create large scale set pieces that feature thousands of enemies on screen at once. Last year, Croteam and indie game publisher Devolver released The First and Second Encounter, Serious Sam 3, and a new campaign called The Last Hopein VR.Serious Sam 4's biggest draw this time around is the sheer size of its battles.
The latter received some favourable, but relatively underwhelming reviews (the game has a 72 rating on Metacritic) which put the series to bed until 2017.
The first two games were remade in 20 respectively before Serious Sam 3: BFE dropped in 2011.
A sequel, The Second Encounter, arrived a year later followed by the PC and Xbox exclusive Serious Sam 2 in 2005. The camera then pans back to reveal a horde of gruesome enemies and the message: See you at E3 2018.Ĭroteam released the first Serious Sam game in 2001. Of course, he's soon attacked by a "headless kamikaze," which Sam dispatches with a casual shotgun blast. Now, though, we have a teaser trailer for Serious Sam 4: Planet Badass, which shows the titular hero driving through the (French? Italian?) countryside on a classic motorcycle. Instead, developer Croteam released The Talos Principle, a critically acclaimed puzzler about androids and AI. A fresh instalment of the bombastic shooter franchise was teased in 2014 but never came to fruition. There's a new Serious Sam game on the horizon.