You can only reduce so many enemies to red mist before you become numb to it.You also occasionally get some consumable superweapons to break in case of emergency, such as a decoy that lures enemies away, time-slowing device, a portable black hole that sucks every enemy in range into oblivion, and… a syringe that restores 50 health. Unlocking the ability to dual wield and hold a different gun in each hand helps a lot with that because you don’t have to switch between them as often and can double your damage output (it’s pretty satisfying to melt down a crowd with dual miniguns), but that comes at the cost of being able to use alternate fire abilities like zooming with the sniper rifle or using the powerful death ray attachment for the laser minigun. Survival is all about juggling your guns to select the right tool for each target, whether that’s taking out a swarm of small enemies with a spray of bullets or bringing down a big one with concentrated firepower. What’s smart about it is that they pretty much all make distinctive sounds so you know what’s coming before you see it, which is essential because more can teleport in at any place at any time. Dealing with a swarm of flying drones that force you to look and aim up means you’re not watching the ground, leaving you a prime target for charging werebulls or kamikazes. Most enemies just run at you and shoot, but a few have distinctive behaviors to counter and can combine to be especially lethal. However, this menagerie doesn’t make any sense as a collection of enemies in a single game, ensuring that the Serious Sam’s universe never feels like a plausible place. There’s certainly some spectacle to seeing a swarm of a hundred enemies bearing down on you, and it gets chaotic quickly. It’s a hodgepodge of dozens of different types, ranging from the most basic zombies and the iconic/obnoxious screaming headless kamikaze bombers to laser-packing alien soldiers, flaming mummies, galloping horned skeletons, weird little one-eyed beasts, scorpion-men with miniguns, charging werebulls, giant four-armed lizard-men, telekinetic witch queens, numerous direct Doom and Quake demon ripoffs, actual nosferatu-style vampires, and many, many more. The sheer variety of monsters you fight is insane in more ways than one.I will give Serious Sam 4 this much, though: the sheer variety of monsters you fight is insane in more ways than one. For such a zany game you’d expect a lot more crazy weaponry like that and fewer off-the-shelf firearms. The only gun that feels like it has a real personality to it is the returning Cannon Ball, which is absurdly powerful and fires with different velocities depending on how long your charge up a shot, and if you just roll one out it’ll bowl over multiple enemies and roll around on hills. Three types of shotgun, and assault rifle and two miniguns, two sniper rifles, a rocket launcher, a grenade launcher… almost none of it feels remotely distinctive. The actual gameplay boils down to moving from one giant, largely empty arena to the next, each time fighting enemy horde after enemy horde with an arsenal of straightforward, mostly unimaginative weaponry.
Every once in a while a decent gag lands, but just as often the script will inexplicably turn completely serious with no punchlines to it and it feels bizarrely out of place. I love a good pun more than most, and this wore thin pretty quickly.
We get a series of stiffly animated cutscenes in which Sam Stone and his military buddies fight to overthrow an alien overlord in Europe by… finding the Holy Grail, because why not? Sam’s voice sounds like he’s gargling liquid Duke Nukem as he and his allies rattle off an endless barrage of barely funny one-liners, constantly workshopping their comedy out loud. It’s just kind of strafing to the side.įor whatever reason, there’s a story that attempts to justify all the weird carnage you’ll cause, and it’s just as much of a jumble as the battles. It layers on a few new ideas like dual wielding and a skill tree, at least, but while Doom has reinvented itself for modern times, Serious Sam seems to revel in neither moving forward nor backward. Sure, 2011’s Serious Sam 3 felt like a goofy throwback to a simpler time, but in 2020 Serious Sam 4’s brand of non-stop run-and-gun shooting feels downright archaic. Serious Sam, I think you have a problem and need an intervention.
And like all drugs, it can be dangerous to become reliant on it.