*[sets up the beacon]

• Bacon set! Bacon… Bacon? … I shouldn’t have skipped breakfast.*

Time for another hot take I guess because I am seriously confused as to what everyone is smoking when reviewing this. SS4 is the most coherent and balanced that the series has ever been!

I love Serious Sam, but I’ll be the first to admit that every single game in the series is noticeably flawed, some more than others. But generally the good overweighs the bad. In the case of the first game, it WAY overweighs it! But even that game has moments of mounting frustration. For example, that giant fucking tunnel of endless enemies (which I suppose they tried to recreate in SS3 and made it even worse), or that arena before the final boss. Let’s just say, sometimes Serious Sam does not know moderation.

But that is perhaps the only thing you CAN’T say about SS4. While the previous games orchestrated these large-scale scenarios, the moment-to-moment gameplay often suffered. SS4 DOES NOT have that problem. You can clearly tell that there’s been more thought put into level design, enemy placements, item placements, difficulty balancing, weapon balancing, physics, animations and the overall polish.

I will say this one thing about SS4: it does not really capture the magic of the first game. You can almost say that it opts for a different formula. SS1 was about horde-management: you had to make quick decisions on which guns to use against which enemies and which enemies have to be taken out first to prevent the horde from reaching you. It’s a very unique approach to first-person shooters that I’ve never really seen executed well in any other game, even the sequels. With every new SS game, I had the feeling that Croteam doesn’t fully understand what made the first game click and were only occasionally able to recreate the highs of the first game, seemingly by accident.

SS4 plays a little different. Weapons seem to be effective against a wider range of enemies, which dumbs down the strategic element. But in return you get a more intuitively engaging combat. The way the movement, animations and gunplay were overhauled, it makes it more fun to just jump around and blast monsters with your double-barreled shotgun while dodging their attacks. It’s a more classic, Doom-style FPS. In fact, with this game I often felt like it’s what Doom 2016 should’ve been. I think SS4 takes at least some inspiration from it, but doesn’t stray as far away from the classic Doom formula as Doom 2016 did.

The game is much more careful about how many of each type of enemy it throws at you in any given fight. You no longer feel swarmed by headless kamikazes or werebulls. Crowds are very manageable as long as you play it smart. In other words, it’s become more fair and skill-based. However, that means much fewer moments of that classic Serious Sam gameplay. I suppose the frequency of their appearance is comparable to SS2 and 3, except now the game is still fun when they don’t happen. Sam is faster than ever and can level up and unlock passive skills, adding even more variety to the gameplay. Plus instead of power-ups that get used on pick-up, you now get gadgets that you can use whenever you feel like. This is super useful, because you can store them and unleash all of them at the same time during the more intense battles.

The levels are also more varied and bigger than ever, and you can traverse them much easier. Sam’s movement reminded me a lot of the aforementioned Doom 2016 and Titanfall 2, except here you can’t grab onto ledges, double-jump or use a jetpack, and you almost feel like you should be able to. There is a lot of verticality in levels, and with how actions transition into one another, it would really make sense for you to be able to leap into the air or grab onto the edge of a roof and pull yourself up. But even without that, exploring the levels is probably more fun than ever. There are huge optional areas that the game will never tell you about, which will take you like 5-10 minutes to clear out. It also helps that most levels (the sunny ones) look gorgeous, even though I was playing on minimal settings (which it’s a miracle that the game even runs at a playable framerate on my potato laptop, Vulkan ftw). Don’t forget to change the color preset though, the default is too bland.

- The moron who burns twice as bright, dies twice as fast.

Fun fact, the quote he’s paraphrasing is NOT from Laozi, despite the characters in the game stating so. It’s a common misattribution.

This time around there is a much heavier emphasis on the story, which I would’ve probably normally thought was a bad thing, but it’s actually really well-written. It’s a kind of self-aware 80s B-movie type story, but it’s fucking hilarious. I can’t recall the last time I laughed so much when playing a video game. Sam has always been a kind of a wisecracker, but here his one-liners are genuinely funny and make the overall experience of the game way more enjoyable. There is also a cast of supporting characters, all of whom are genuinely likeable, which is again very rare for the series. SS1 had pretty much no story, SS2 had a mushroom drug trip of a story with immature humor, and SS3 in retrospect feels almost like a testing ground for what they did here. When the final credits came on, and the characters were sitting around the fire and reminiscing about those who didn’t make it, I genuinely got emotional.

One aspect of the game that I feel is a downgrade is the music. It just sounds kinda generic. Every previous game had a kind of ethnic tribal ambient shit going on, or something like that. Whereas here it’s like a mix between melodic metal and orchestra (symphonic metal? Idk), which just isn’t my kinda thing, and I don’t think it fits the aesthetic and tone of the game as well as the older soundtracks did. Also, it definitely makes this one feel less atmospheric. There was a kind of sense of mystery as you explored abandoned ruins of ancient civilizations in SS1 and 3 (to a lesser degree). Here you don’t have that. But there are a couple of themes that are variations of older themes, and they hit you in those nostalgic feels.

*[when fighting a giant crustacean boss]

• Stop being so shellfish and die!*

I do think the game drags a bit in the middle, both in terms of the gameplay and the story, but it does pick up towards the end, especially if you’ve upgraded dual-wielding and sprinting. Around that time the game starts throwing huge crowds of enemies at you, and you become an absolute death machine. It turns into a slaughterhouse in the best way possible.

Some of the weapons now have alternate fire modes, which makes, for example, the original shotgun remain useful even after the double-barreled one is unlocked. And idk how I'm gonna go back to the old rocket launcher without the homing missiles... And then the fucking death-ray for the plasma gun? chef’s kiss I feel like a sadist saying it, but it’s so fucking satisfying to use. That thing rips everything TO SHREDS! Imagine a fucking Quake rail gun that shoots at the speed of light? Yeah, something like that.

The final mission is just incredible. The Ugh-Zan fight is obviously a very appreciated nod to the first game, but the way it’s executed is so much more fun and so epic. I’m not even gonna describe it here cause I don’t wanna spoil it for the people who haven’t played yet.

A lot of people have complained about the Legion system. Some saying it’s underutilized and others that it’s just a trick. To the former I wanna say that it would’ve been ridiculous to have more than one battle this fucking huge. It’s only appropriate that it’s used for the final mission only (and a quick glimpse of it in the prologue). To the latter I’ll say: who gives a shit if it’s a trick? It works. It does successfully create the illusion that you’re fighting like a million enemies. In fact, if some reviewers didn’t mention that most of those enemies are just sprites, I wouldn’t have even noticed.

The game’s tone in general is that of a big-budget blockbuster, and it supports that with a lot of cutscenes and scripted set-pieces. But this is probably the first time in the series where that actually kinda works. It definitely feels like the first AAA Serious Sam game where everything seems to be working exactly as planned. There is still some jank here and there, but for a game that provides this much freedom in exploration and variety in weapons, enemies, upgrades, etc. I think it would’ve been impossible to avoid all jank altogether.

Now some people have said that the Siberian Mayhem is a better game than this. I honestly can’t imagine how it could be because this here is a masterpiece in my opinion. I still prefer the first game over it, but I have my doubts that Siberian Mayhem is gonna be a perfect blend of SS4’s and SS1’s best qualities. But we’ll see.

Playing this actually made me wanna revisit all the other games in chronological order because of how good the story was here and this game being a prequel, which also makes it perfect for newbies. I haven’t played Fusion yet, and SS2 recently received an update that integrated my favorite mod into it, so it’s a good excuse to revisit the entire series.