Serious Sam 4 - Review

Over the years, we have had tactical shooters, gritty shooters, twitch shooters, team shooters and shooters that relied on ink, but there hasn’t been anything like Serious Sam for a while. The question we have to ask ourselves is, does the return of Sam bring back some old school fun, or should this artefact of gaming, be left alone?

Aliens have invaded and Sam uses an army’s worth of guns to blow them up, that is the story, well it was in the past, but this time around there is actually a proper story being told. Aliens have invaded, that much is true and Sam is a member of a specialist group of soldiers, who travel the world, taking on any alien threats and also take control of any potentially dangerous and powerful artefacts they discover. Sam is no longer a one-man army, in the sense that he has other people with him, there is the rookie Kenny, the pilot Hellfire, the alien conspiracist Carter, the loudmouth Rodriguez and the silent one Jones. Each member adds something to the dynamic and while Hellfire and Carter tend to be more hands off in the action department, but the other members will be heavily involved and the mission they have seems simple, find a priest in Rome, easier said than done, help them locate a powerful weapon and taken down the alien threat, simple.

The story more or less plays out as bookends to the games chapters, though you occasionally get some story in the middle of them, this is a bit of a double edge sword. Setting up a mission is fine, but the cutscenes at the end tend to ignore everything that happened to get to that point, even when Sam first meets the big bad, they ignore it and just push forward. It is nice to get more context to the running and the shooting, I just wish it tied together better, the problem is I can’t give a great example without spoiling the story and I won’t because it is still interesting, it just would highlight my point perfectly.

As I mentioned before, the game is still just running around and shooting everything, it is just basically dancing with guns, because when waves of enemies come at you, there are a lot of dodging and shooting. This was always something the series loved to do, but here they have managed to amp it up further here, because there are times when the enemy count can easily break 100 and that is only the beginning. Initially you only start out with a pistol and a knife, which is ok, but pretty soon you find a shotgun, then a double barrel shotgun and the gun count keeps increasing, but you are not handed all your guns, which helps highlight one of the nice new additions the game offers, freedom. By freedom, what I mean is that the game provides you with a number of side objectives that you can undertake or ignore, if you do ignore them, you might miss out on some sweet weapons or extra items, I know I debated on one and the reward was a mini nuke, but I was wanting to push on, so I skipped it.

The addition of the side missions helps highlight that the game has evolved a bit, since the series began some 20 years ago and while those additions are nice, they are not all the game is bringing with it. You can now upgrade Sam, there are not a heap of options, but the ones there are nice and you will want to upgrade him, because doing so will let you duel wield weapons, reload faster and more. Being able to choose how to upgrade Sam meant that I felt more connected to him than ever and I wasn’t just controlling a robot guy, so that was a nice touch. Once you leave Italy and head to France, things become even more open for you and if you thought the levels around Rome were large, you ain’t see nothing yet. The only downside is that I lost all my weapons, so no more Rocket Launcher, no more mini gun and no more portable black hole, I had a pistol and my knife again, the problem is that the enemies remained the same as before, plentiful and powerful.

All of the new additions to the formula are fine because those do exist in most every game at this point and what is included works well, the problem is they are missing a few things. There is no map available to you, meaning if you want to see what is around you, then you just have to explore and exploration is something I am 100% behind, but when you have maps that are massive, not being able to see what is around is a pain. The other thing the game sorely needs is a radar of some kind, because when the enemy count kicks in and it does often, there are times when the amount of noise from the Werebulls or the Beheaded Kamikaze is so loud, trying to learn where they are coming from, whilst dodging projectiles and attacks from others is just to chaotic. While those are things I would have liked to have seen, them not being there doesn’t break the game, but there are some issues.

The biggest one I found was asset loading, the game takes forever to load a level and once it is in there, there was constant pop in of things in the distance and while you can overlook that from time to time, this is pretty consistent. The other issue is that when the game transitions to and from cutscenes, it ends up with that Borderlands loading issue, where things start loading up slowly and while in Borderlands they mask it with a slow fade and cartoon visuals, this has none of that. At one point the logo on Sam’s shirt was a large black square and it wasn’t until it was on screen for a good couple of seconds that it loaded the icon in. The game had also crashed on me a few times, once was during a particularly chaotic series of encounters, so maybe it just was to much for my PC, the second time was while I was driving around, on my own, without any enemies in site.

I wish I could say the overall presentation was better, but I can’t and for two very obvious reasons, the first is that the voice acting is pretty generic, Sam is still Sam, but everyone else sounds like an 80’s movie stereotype and while fun for a bit, after awhile it drags. The other issue is the characters looks, specifically their eyes, they are downright creepy and it never gets any better, Sam manages to avoid this as he wears sunglasses at all times, but everyone else, they look surprised at all times and it just looks wrong. The sad part about that is that the character models are pretty decent, from the members of Sam’s squad to the people he meets, they are pretty varied, but once you see those eyes, you will not see anything else. In addition to those issues, things like the subtitles were random in when they would show up, even with the feature turned on and when they were there, they would sometimes run a few lines ahead, then vanish, to only return later on, it was weird.

I don’t want you to get the feeling that it is a bad looking game, because it is not, the level design and overall artistic look are really well executed, but there are some issues that need to be fixed. The enemy design, at least for the new ones is some of the best in the series, the returning enemies have also never looked better, so there are real moments of delight to be found, just have to sort through the ugly moments.

The audio side is a bit weird as well, again, the voice acting is pretty generic, but the games audio for their weapons and musical score is top notch, almost. The guns sound great, the first time you pick up the mini gun, outside of the opening moments of the game and let it rip is just pure joy, because you have that sound, the music and a horde of oncoming Kleer Skeletons, it is a great blend of noise. Speaking of the score, it is once again a crazy, bombastic mix of music and when it kicks in, helps bring you into the fight and I love it, but there is a problem. There are a few tracks where there are elements that sound like the Beheaded Kamikaze’s, so when I would hear it, I would have to stop and try and see where they were coming from, the problem was when I thought it was the music but turned out to actually be those explosive little pains.

Serious Sam 4 is a game that long time fans will enjoy, it adds a few welcome additions to the core gameplay, upgrades, side missions and such, that helps make it feel new and fresh, but it needs a few more. But those coming into the series for the first time, might be confused as to some of the core gameplay hooks, and when you see those characters, it will make it hard to take seriously. The game is a lot of fun, but after such a long wait for it, I was hoping for a little more.

The Score

8.0

Review code provided by Devolver Digital

The Pros

+The new additions to the gameplay add more layers to the constant shooting

+A proper story is a welcome addition, even if the characters are a bit lifeless

The Cons

+The new additions are great, but they needed to take them further

+Performence is a mess, with slow loading textures, crashes and those eyes..