Seriously?  This $#!t Again?!? – Serious Sam 4 Review

Serious Sam has been kicking around for a while.  The guys over at Croteam have been throwing massive hordes of enemies at us FPS gamers for almost 20 years now and they’ve been doing it with style, pizzazz, and one-liners that whole time!   The original Serious Sam game was an absolutely unexpected treat filled with a bevy of hidden areas, secret weapons, spawn traps, and vicious battles.  Ever since that first game, the franchise has continued to toss more and more tongue in cheek dialogue and vicious battles at gamers.  Now it’s nine years after Serious Sam 3 and courtesy of publisher Devolver Digital, there’s a new entry into the franchise – Serious Sam 4!

As you’d expect from a Serious Sam game, there’s a juxtaposition of comedy and massive battles throughout the game.  However, the recipe has been shifted somewhat.   Croteam decided to stick with the more realistic look of Serious Sam 3 here, rather than the cartoonish and slightly exaggerated style of previous games.  This is probably the most realistic looking Sam yet, as you’d expect on a new engine this many years later.  It also features more cinema sequences than ever before, weaving a more complex (though not too complex) narrative than any other game.  There are story segments at every level and on side missions as well, and everything is fully voiced as usual.  This time around though, Sam has a whole team to support him and various characters back him up on a few of the missions.

Now, there’s been a lot said about Serious Sam 4 already and it’s hard to contend with the sheer volume of reviews and opinions.  Frankly, they’re all over the place and for a good reason.  Serious Sam 4 feels like it doesn’t have the same sense of identity that other titles in the series had.  There are several reasons for this and they have a noticeable impact on gameplay.  That being said, the game is still fun as all hell and definitely not something to be passed over with nary a backwards glance.

First off, there’s the obvious.  The acting is hokey and the animations are not particularly modern in cinemas.  It’s true, but it also doesn’t really matter.  This is not a game that you play for the cinematography.  This is the FPS equivalent of a hokey B movie, only more polished.  And if you consider that, it does its job admirably.  What would the point be of spending months polishing up cinemas that are essentially comedy throwaways?  None.  As it stands, the story is just enough to pay attention to and drive the story without becoming distracting, because, let’s be honest, you’re here for the action.

But that’s not where the issues end.  There are also some significant level design issues in Serious Sam 4.  Comparing SS4 to other titles in the franchise, one of the most notable differences is in the enemy spawn patterns.  Enemies always appeared abruptly in Serious Sam, usually when you walked past a certain point in a level or picked up a suspiciously obvious health item, usually with Admiral Ackbar’s watery voice yelling ‘It’s a trap!” in your head.  That’s mostly gone in Serious Sam 4 (and definitely missed) and by the time you have a few levels under your belt, you’ll be picking up every item you can and not even expecting to be attacked.  You can actually run so far away from massing enemies that they’ll be unable to even get to you, significantly alleviating the pressure that previous games forced on you by putting your back literally to the wall.

Another key difference from other Sam games is that the levels are absolutely huge.  Load times, even on a gaming PC take as much as a minute or two, but they do load the entire level at one go.  And while the levels were huge even on the original game, SS4 has a lot more mapping and objects around, deep valleys, a variety of terrains, and more.  The volcanic level was particularly busy and impressive for that.  But these open levels allow for a lot of areas that don’t lock you in to fight hordes of enemies, leaving the field wide open for you to escape and snipe away at the monsters one by one.  Many of the biggest battles let you hide and take virtually no damage, picking your targets easily and not forcing a full all-out confrontation, which is kind of the entire purpose of this series.  It’s hard to say why Croteam missed the boat on this but they definitely did.  There are plenty of areas where even the largest enemies can’t get to you and you can casually pick them off with shot after shot from a rocket launcher or cannonball.  Even on normal difficulty, there are enough exploits that there’s really not that much challenge in Serious Sam 4.

Add into this mix a weapons array that’s pretty much the same lineup we’ve always had and there’s a bit of a slump in SS4.  Sure, you can dual wield most weapons and you get a bigger, badder rocket launcher, but there’s only so much that grenade launchers on shotguns can do for you.  The auto shotgun is great when you get ammo for it though, and the new items are also quite nice, offering a range of perks including health on the fly, rage-inducing serums, time dilation, psychotropic drugs and more.  Hell, you can even get a damned nuke to shoot at enemies, and man, does that ever violate all the laws of physics while you watch it go off from a noticeably unsafe distance!  But mostly it’s just shotguns, chainguns, rocket launchers and sniper rifles, and it just doesn’t feel that innovative.

Then there’s the enemies themselves.  Serious Sam has some absolutely fantastic new enemies.  From acid launching blobs to blazing fast vampires and even infected humans that mass and attack you, there’s a whole new lineup to join the original nasty aliens from previous games.  In fact, well over half of the enemies are entirely new!  On top of that, there are ultra-powerful hidden enemies strewn throughout the levels, some of which are absolutely shocking.  Giving it away is a terrible idea, but it’s definitely worth it to explore.  And man, the boss battles!   There’s no skimping on those gruelling blast-fests, that’s for sure!  Boss fights are utterly engaging and challenging in a way that the regular levels never seem to manage.  All that being said, the actual enemy AI feels under powered at best.  Many areas allow you to snipe all the enemies from a distance and you can even clear almost an entire area with just the pistol and some patience.  While that shouldn’t be possible as the enemies should spawn, it most definitely is.  These issues make the enemies a bit of a mixed bag as well.

Graphically, there’s a bit less to Serious Sam 4 than you might expect.  It runs silky smooth on a GTX 1080 ROG Strix card, but there’s a lot of empty space with very little foliage, and there’s a lot of repeated textures in maze-like levels.  Enemies look great, weapons look excellent, but overall, the levels themselves are tedious due to a noticeable lack of variation.   Different levels certainly change up the background, but nothing ever stands out or feels fresh or particularly new.  Empty levels with smaller hordes of enemies than you’re used to are everywhere and they feel easier than before.  Sure, there are some massive hordes later on in the game and even some wicked cool vehicle action, but the majority of the game is you picking off a few enemies at a time here and there or fighting a large group in a field or area so open that there’s limited challenge to it.

Now, all these gripes have been pretty publicized since the recent release of the game and it’s turned a lot of players away from Serious Sam 4.  Don’t pack things in quite yet though.  What’s important to remember here is that gaming is to have fun.  And while this might not be the exact Serious Sam experience you may have expected, the game is still decidedly fun!  Killing enemies at close range is just as gratifying as it used to be.  Discovering the myriad of hidden areas and secret bosses is an absolute blast.  Blazing through levels at breakneck speed while firing behind you is great and using the new items is fun to experiment with.  In short, this is a good game that could have been an absolutely mind-blowing game.  And that’s definitely nothing to scoff at.  This is a title that will scratch the itch for hardcore Serious Sam fans and be fun to play for newcomers to the series as well.  The quips are solid, the core gameplay is great, and there’s even some mild progression as Sam absorbs new powers and manages to do things like dual wield heavy weapons or melee attack massive enemies in complete violation of the laws of physics.  That’s objectively fun!  Sometimes a dose of mindless unreality and an open and loose interpretation of what a game should be can be just as satisfying (in an entirely different way) as a carefully crafted intense experience as  like Doom Eternal, the current gold standard for such things.  And that’s what you get with Serious Sam 4.  Satisfaction.

Sure, this isn’t the greatest game since sliced bread.  It has its warts and lumps.  But overall, this is a fun game that manages to be a solid entry into the Serious Sam series, and at $40, most people won’t feel ripped off, especially if they know what they’re getting into.  Not everyone, but most people.  Oh, and there’s a co-op mode for up to four players too by the way.  It’s nothing super exciting, but it’s definitely an extra mode that you can enjoy if that’s your style!  Whether you’re a fan of the series or you just want to blast some weird aliens, Serious Sam 4 is definitely worth picking up! Now go kick some alien ass!

This review was based on a digital copy of Serious Sam 4 provided by the publisher.  It was played on an I7-8700K with 16 GB of DDR4-3000 RAM, an Asus GeForce GTX 1080 ROG Strix graphics card, and a Logitech G910 Gaming keyboard with an, um, Logitech M570 Wireless Trackball (leave me alone, I love the damned thing!).  Serious Sam 4 also worked quite well with the Xbox One controller, but the mouse and keyboard were naturally more suited to the game.  Serious Sam is available exclusively for PC on Steam.  Most screenshots are of actual gameplay.  Some press shots were used to the the difficulty in capturing action live in a game this fast (at least for me).