Serious Sam 4 is just the campaign-there's no survival mode, and I wish there were-but you can play through the whole thing in four-player online co-op with customizable rules (turn on infinite ammo, if you want). Like Duke Nukem, Sam Stone doesn't lampoon anything contemporary (for that, may I suggest trying a brooding father?), though he’s a lot more fun to be around than Duke-less machismo, more chill.
The running joke of Serious Sam 4 is that Sam and crew are workshopping witty one-liners to say after killing big aliens (the boss fights are pretty easy and not the focus), but the idea that action heroes workshop their one-liners feels like more of a cliché than action heroes saying one-liners-action heroes don't actually do that anymore. The attempts at pathos and romance are let down by the plastic action figure character models, and most of the gags are generic. Meanwhile, the story about seeking out the Holy Grail (actually an alien artifact) with a Russian priest is cute, but isn't going to make a star out of Sam Stone. The big technical achievement here is that many more enemies can appear on screen at once, and that results in some impressive scenes, but once the spectacle wore off my reaction was, “Ah, great, another wave of those skeleton bastards.” You can only focus on deleting so many beasts at once. They repeat the same death animation every time, thousands of times. The enemies don’t ragdoll hilariously, for instance.
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Still, as much as I enjoyed the high framerates, I'm disappointed that the computing power available in 2020 isn't put to full use, even in service of more jankiness. Though it looks almost as old, Serious Sam 4 incorporates modern ideas that make it better than Serious Sam 3. The fun of shooting at swarms of flying drones was overestimated (also, guys who spawn on faraway perches and shoot homing projectiles), and certain sections are tiring, but for the most part I was just harried enough, not frustrated. Normal kept me on my toes, while Easy let me relax without it becoming a cakewalk. The cannon gun somehow fires rolling cannon balls that are larger than Sam himself and turn everything in their path to goo, and of course I was delighted when the game introduced it and then said, 'Hey, don't worry about ammo conservation, just run around this maze bowling down giant pink fleshy alien mech-guys for 10 minutes.'Īt its worst it gets too methodical, but the difficulty is well-designed. Serious Sam 4 is at its best right after it introduces a new weapon, because it fills an arena with ammo and then throws gobs of enemies at you so that you can go wild. Rarely in shooters is it a good idea to face enemies head on in the open, but Serious Sam 4 lets you have a few Braveheart moments. I waited until I could see the glow of its demon eyes before firing both guns into its forehead, and then reloaded them simultaneously (how?) while dodging out of the way of its tumbling corpse-just for style points, as it would've clipped through me. In one of my favorite scenes, I charged across the French countryside wielding dual double-barreled shotguns at a bull that was charging back at me. Serious Sam 4 lets you have a few Braveheart moments.īullet-hosing hundreds of beasts is satisfying in the way power washing a house is, but I also enjoyed occasional finesse shots with the overpowered Devastator, and showy maneuvers that I did just for the hell of it. That tension sustains almost all of Serious Sam 4's 10-or-so hour campaign, which is playable solo or in online co-op.
You're always on the verge of being overtaken, gripping the edge of control as you shoot at cyclops beasts and kamikaze guys and vampires and insectoids, putting just enough space between you and them to give your bullets room to travel. At least the jank is endearing (mostly), and Serious Sam 4 is fun-like the other Serious Sam games it's still about murdering overwhelming hordes of aliens with enormous guns while moving backwards at the speed of a figure skater.
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