Driveable vehicles make a return after their absence since Serious Sam 2, and there’s a small skill-tree accessible when Sam huffs a purple alien gas. At times, Serious Sam 4 can feel as if it was developed almost back-to-back with the last game, and for some reason shelved for years. The uncanny emptiness of the open levels returns, the streets of Rome and Carcassonne merely an arena for carnage which rarely rewards exploration. In addition to the familiarity of the weapons and enemies, there is the same sense of a clash between the fairly realistic settings and the outlandish monsters. Despite the shift to European settings, the extent of the similarity to BFE is striking. Expect to spend a lot of time running backwards, doing the familiar coach gun dance with Kleer skeletons, and pumping rockets into four-armed magic lizards perched on ancient buildings.Ĭroteam’s reluctance to switch up the formula becomes apparent very early on.
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While exploring the environments in Italy, France and Russia, the player will inevitably trigger a series of large-scale fights in which familiar weapons and enemies return. Established fans of the series will appreciate the return of the familiar gameplay loop this entails. While it’s hard to see the repetitious and dated gameplay winning many new converts, fans of the series are likely to be satisfied with Sam’s return.Ī prequel to Serious Sam 3: BFE (which was itself a prequel to the other games in the series), this new entry sees Sam and the beleaguered Earth Defense Force fighting an alien invasion of Europe. While developers Croteam have sometimes explored changes in tone and art style between games, they have never significantly altered the gameplay formula and this pattern continues with Serious Sam 4. For other series, such a long gap might bring with it expectations of a major overhaul to gameplay – or even some kind of reboot.
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Serious Sam 4, long-delayed, follows a full nine years after the previous entry. Nevertheless, the wait between main games in the series has been long. As the saying goes, time flies when you’re mowing down Sirian were-bulls with a multi-barrelled laser cannon. The Serious Sam series is now a venerable part of first-person shooter history, having been with us for almost two decades – the original game was released way back in March 2001.