![]() These gadgets can help turn the tide in battle, but you find them so rarely that you need to be choosy with how you use them. Other times, it might grant you a gadget, which can run the gamut from health kits to portable black holes or a bomb that slows down time for everyone but Sam. Sometimes these diversions grant you a weapon mod, like that rocket launcher upgrade. You can also expand your roster of tools by completing side quests-a new addition in Serious Sam 4. Each gun has its use, and I enjoyed the process of figuring out which gun worked best against which enemy. And, my favorite, the portable cannon, is back, too, allowing Sam to launch massive cannonballs into enemies, destroying even the meanest minotaurs in a few hits. The minigun is essential for crowd control, ripping through dozens of aliens in a matter of seconds. The rocket launcher returns, now with an upgrade that allows you to lock on to multiple enemies. ![]() ![]() But the enemies are defined by distinctive designs, behaviors, and often audio cues, so you're rarely caught by surprise.Īs Sam manages these crowds, the chiseled hero draws on the same impressive arsenal he's wielded since the beginning (and a few new tools, as well). All of this happens in the space of a few seconds and the game rarely does you the favor of sending each group separately. But then a pair of Reptiloids appears on far off towers, so you switch to the sniper rifle to pick them, and their homing projectiles, off from a distance. Once they're dispatched, you hear the ground rumble beneath the feet of the Sirian Werebull and pull out the rocket launcher to finish the herd off with a string of one-hit kills. Say you hear the Beheaded Kamikaze's signature scream and switch to your assault rifle to handle the dozen the game throws at you before they get close enough to explode. The Serious Sam model-drop a ton of enemies in an arena and dare you to come out on top-only works because each enemy is easy to recognize and, as a result, internalize and remember how to handle. It's an impressive roster composed of some of the most memorable and well-designed enemies in gaming. One of my personal favorites, the Reptiloid, often posts up on a tower, then hurls acid green homing missiles that will follow you until they find their target, or until you shoot them out of the air. It can also be led into a larger crowd of enemies before you shoot, setting off a powder keg of blood and gibs. The Beheaded Kamikaze, which boasts a pair of bombs in place of hands and a scream you can hear from a mile away, is also back, and will force you to pick it off before it gets close enough to explode. There's the Sirian Werebull, a fleshy creature with horns that charges headlong at you, unless you can take it out with a few well-timed blasts from your double shotgun. If you've played Serious Sam before, you'll recognize most of them. The alien horde has already won, but the resistance hopes to score a strategic advantage by tracking down the Holy Grail, which is actually an alien artifact hidden somewhere among the art and architecture of an impressively unspoiled Italy.Īs Sam embarks on this quest, he faces down a familiar horde of enemies with a familiar arsenal of weapons. In this outing, which functions as a prequel to The First Encounter, Sam and a small group of resistance fighters are attempting to push back the villainous Mental's assault on Earth. Croteam is simply willing to throw a ridiculous number of enemies at you at all times and it has the tech to pull it off. But, in this newly crowded landscape, Serious Sam 4 has a secret weapon. It's been nine years since the last mainline entry, and in that time we've witnessed the revival of circle-strafing shooters thanks to games both big (Doom) and small (Dusk). And, as in First and Second Encounter, the gameplay is razor-sharp and front-and-center. As in Serious Sam 2, there's vehicular combat and humor to spare (and a surprising portion of the jokes land). As in Serious Sam 3, the graphics are realistic (though a little stiff). It was never broken, but each game finds the developer trying to fix it.Įnter Serious Sam 4, yet another reinvention that seems to draw from every period of the series' long life. But, at times, that loop has been obscured by some of the strange decisions Croteam has made with the series. You will always back-pedal, you will always circle-strafe, and you will always fight dozens of Sam's memorable cadre of alien enemies at once. Through each entry, developer Croteam has held onto the core gameplay loop that defined Sam's initial jaunt across Egypt. In Serious Sam 4, the long-running FPS series may have finally found a workable identity.
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