Lush vegetation and decorations make distinguishing targets or items much harder. The levels suffered from this problem a lot. I am glad not to see the cartoonish nonsense of Serious Sam 2, but aiming for a look that is far too realistic isn’t really helpful when trying to read the action. Same with the power-ups and other items, I wouldn’t be able to distinguish most of them from background noise if it weren’t for their highlighting glow. The beheaded soldiers returning from older episodes were very welcome but also had visual issues, as the color of their shirt was too dark to differentiate them (in order to quickly prioritize killing one type or another). I just didn’t like the visual design of the enemy foot soldiers known as “Octanians”. Many new additions to the bestiary are very interesting in their move-set and attacks, such as the Vampires that transform into bats/mist to get behind you, or Pyromaniacs that propel themselves into the sky before raining down a barrage of fire upon you and your team. Headshots deal extra damage, for those enemies that were stupid enough to bring their head to the fight. Do you want a Minigun on your left hand while carrying a Devastator on your right hand? Be my guest! I sometimes dual-wielded Canons to obliterate the toughest enemies… Glorious massacre.Īnd with all that destructive power, what do we use for target practice? Most classic Serious Sam enemies are back, from the headless Kamikaze yelling “AAAAAAaaahhh” before exploding in your face to the Bulls that ram you across the arena. And I do mean ALL the weapons, in any combination whatsoever. And if all the above new additions were not enough, the game has an upgrade system that quickly enables Sam to dual wield all weapons in the game. But there are a bunch of new tricks that help deal with overwhelming situations, from a Holographic Decoy to simply an artificial Black Hole that sucks all enemies in the vicinity and crushes them. Heavy weaponry is so prominent in Serious Sam 4 that I had more trouble with the large waves of smaller enemies than the big ones. Some weapons received an alt-fire, such as a death-beam that makes the Lasergun extremely efficient against large enemies, or locking missiles that give a second youth to the Rocket Launcher. It launches rocket-propelled chainsaws that seek and drill through several enemies before exploding. In terms of weapons, Serious Sam 4 is not stingy at all, with a composition mixing most weapons from Second Encounter and Serious Sam 3, with a few additions such as an automatic shotgun and most interestingly the secret FRPCL – imagine Turok’s Cerebral Bore but even stronger. But if you are into Serious Sam lore, you might be interested to hear that this game takes place before all other entries in the series, so before Serious Sam 3 whose ending leads to the start of First Encounter. Just additional flavor to the traditional formula, and a funny & charismatic badass hero that does not feel outdated like Duke Nukem in Duke Nukem Forever. Also there are reasons for each trip, this is not a narrative-driven game. But do not worry if you are not into that, the cutscenes are short, and if you really hate them, they are skippable. Yes, I am praising the writing in a Serious Sam game, what has the world come to! I must have lost my shoe. At the beginning I was rolling my eyes, in the middle I was cracking smiles, and in the end, I was genuinely attached to the characters, and positively surprised that Serious Sam 4 handled death and mourning better than most mainstream blockbuster movies & games. There is a whole cast of colorful characters who literally compete to pull out the best one-liners after killing an enemy. Thankfully, everything gets better over time. Still, Serious Sam 4 remains also a bit slow to start, distilling its weapons and enemies rather parsimoniously while at first engaging the monsters in the tight streets of Rome, while listening to the comments of a random sidekick. The only thing that is truly missing is the rooms filled with traps, whether simple spikes or gravity-defying walls. On the other hand, the scale of the fights and the roster of weapons are much closer to what players of the first two episodes are expecting to see in their Serious Sam games. Serious Sam 4 learned the lesson and stirs back toward the original experience, while still not completely moving away from Serious Sam 3: some weapons can use the iron sight, and there are many cutscenes with other characters than Sam Stone. Things were so slow to pick up, that I only felt that the game was truly epic in its last level. A bit like that DOOM game that was canceled before becoming DOOM (2016). Serious Sam 3 seemed to disavow its own origins and for a long while its adventure felt closer to the spirit of Call of Duty.
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