About Serious Sam 4 GamePosted by Munn Hogan on January 6th, 2021 Nostalgia is really a hell of a drug. And like all drugs, it may be harmful to become reliant on it. Serious Sam, I believe you have a issue and require an intervention. Sure, 2011's Serious Sam 3 felt like a pitiful throwback to a long time, but at 2020 Serious Sam 4's brand of nonstop run-and-gun shooting feels utterly primitive. It layers to a few new ideas like dual wielding and a skill tree, at least, although Doom has reinvented itself to modern times, Serious Sam seems to revel in moving forward nor backward. It's just sort of strafing to the side.happy wheels For whatever reason, there is a narrative that tries to justify all of the bizarre carnage you will cause, and it is equally as much of a jumble as the battles. We receive a series of stiffly animated cutscenes where Sam Stone and his army buddies struggle to set an alien overlord at Europe by... discovering the Holy Grail, as why not? Sam's voice seems just like he's gargling liquid Duke Nukem as his allies rattle off an endless barrage of barely funny one-liners, constantly workshopping their comedy out loud. I like a fantastic pun over many, and also this wore thin fairly quickly. The true gameplay boils down to moving from one giant, largely empty arena to another, each time fighting enemy horde following enemy horde with an arsenal of straightforward, mostly unimaginative weaponry. Three sorts of shotgun, and assault rifle along with two miniguns, two sniper rifles, a rocket launcher, a grenade launcher... almost none of it feels completely distinctive. The only weapon which feels like it has a true character to it is your coming Cannon Ball, which is absurdly potent and flames with various velocities based on how long your bill up a shot, and if you just roll one out it will bowl over several enemies roll around on hills. For such a zany game you'd expect far more crazy weaponry like fewer and that off-the-shelf firearms. I shall give Serious Sam 4 so much, however: the sheer number of creatures you fight is insane in more ways than you. It is a hodgepodge of heaps of different types, which range from the simplest zombies and also the iconic/obnoxious screaming headless kamikaze bombers into laser-packing cryptic soldiers, flaming mummies, galloping horned skeletons, bizarre little one-eyed beasts, scorpion-men together with miniguns, charging werebulls, giant four-armed lizard-men, telekinetic witch queens, numerous direct Doom and Quake demon ripoffs, real nosferatu-style vampires, along with many, many others. There's certainly some spectacle to seeing a swarm of just a hundred enemies bearing down on you, and it gets busy fast. However, this menagerie doesn't make any sense as a selection of enemies in a single game, ensuring the Serious Sam's universe never feels like a plausible place. Most enemies only run at you and take, but some have distinctive behaviors to counter tops and can unite to be especially deadly. What's smart about it's that they pretty much everything make distinctive sounds so that you know what is coming until you see it, that is essential since more could teleport in at any location at any moment. Survival is about juggling your guns to decide on the perfect instrument for each target, whether that's taking out a swarm of small enemies with a spray of bullets or bringing down a significant one with focused firepower. Unlocking the ability to dual wield and grip another gun in every hand helps a lot with this because you don't need to change between them often and can double your damage output (it is quite satisfying to melt down a crowd with dual miniguns), but comes at the cost of having the ability to use alternate fire abilities like leaning with the sniper rifle or even employing the effective death ray attachment to the laser minigun. Much like most of the previous Serious Sam games, that the major thought in Serious Sam 4 would be"But suppose there were even more enemies" There is not much more to this than this. This style of run-and-gun activity is definitely challenging, it's just getting played out, and the yields on the expense of just increasing the enemy's count and adding dual-wielding have diminished. The number of bad men thrown at you is remarkable but there simply aren't enough interesting weapons to keep the battles from becoming dull, and the deficiency of drop-in co-op is inexcusable in this day and age. Like it? Share it! |