![]() ![]() Like all of its forebears, there is no regenerating health, no option to crouch/go into prone position, and no option to flank your opponents. He will give them death, and they will love him for itĬroteam have a keen eye for what makes a good arcade shooter, and the top-notch gunplay is easily Serious Sam 4’s biggest strength. Of course, Mental gets wise to their plans and thereby sends Sam oodles of cannon fodder to calibrate his rocket launcher. ![]() This time they are looking for none other than the Ark of the Covenant which… for some reason… leads Sam and his buddies to look for clues across various locations in central Europe. The EDF therefore go on the hunt for the next, powerful magical artifact that will give Sam the edge to reclaim Earth from Mental’s legions, and take the fight straight to the evil overlord itself. As usual, Mental instead sends its endless supply of alien minions to wipe out Sam and the rest of his squad known as the Earth Defense Force. Sadly, Sam’s nemesis still doesn’t make even the slightest appearance, so fans hopeful that the time has finally come will yet again be denied. Once again, players take on the role of the titular hero, Sam ‘Serious’ Stone, who finds himself entangled in defending Earth from an evil intergalactic overlord known as Mental. If you peel back the modern graphics and a few gimmicks, Serious Sam 4 is fundamentally identical with what endeared fans to Croteam’s original release all those years ago. It comes as no surprise that this same core formula has traveled nearly two decades, and landed right on the doorstep of Serious Sam 4. Man this is what I came for! And to think the game can throw even bigger numbers at you. The weapons in Serious Sam therefore succeeded in making the player feel very powerful, like the walking definition of a one-man-army. Through some clever optimization, Croteam’s in-house engine could support both the game’s environment and enemies within a relatively realistic physics system. Unlike many of the most famous first-person shooters of the day, Serious Sam didn’t so much reward the player for how accurately they could shoot up enemies, but instead challenged how many enemies the player could take on at once.Īs such, the aptly-named ‘Serious Engine’ really pushed PC hardware into sending incredible numbers of alien monsters stampeding towards the player in real-time. Another Serious Sam game, another artifactīack in 2001 when computers were beige and players were forced to install their games off something called a ‘CD ROM’, the public was graced with the release of Serious Sam: The First Encounter. Bugs, some questionable design choices and a stark lack of polish bombards the experience nearly just as hard as a stampeding hoard of headless kamikazes. While Serious Sam 4 certainly has considerable potential as a modern reimagining of this franchise, the game bears the telltale scars of just not being ready for a public release. ![]() ![]() The bad news is that Croteam must have run out of time, funding or both before they could round off their usual magic in this fourth installment. As someone who has been playing these games repeatedly for almost two decades, seeing the return of these classic Serious Sam staples in 2020 feels like stepping through a time portal. Good news for fans is that Croteam have stuck to their guns in making Serious Sam 4 as most of the franchise’s most recognizable weapons, enemies and mechanics have been brought back to the future. Their method seems to have paid off because despite the core gameplay staying relatively static over the years, every sequel managed to offer a surprisingly fresh experience. With the release of every new Serious Sam installment, this talented studio has grown increasingly ambitious in experimenting with their I.P.’s visual style and content. When it comes to making sequels for the Serious Sam games, Croteam tends to follow a rather radical strategy. ![]()
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