Serious Sam 3: BFE

Frenetic old-school action shooter brings hero spitting one-liners like Duke Nukem to its best. If you like to recall the days of doom-like shooters Serious Sam the best way to go. [Jan 2012]

At it's best, Serious Sam 3 is almost like a first person shooter-version of Geometry Wars: An intense dance with the enemy hordes. But it takes a while to get to this point, and towards the end the whole experience gets a bit samey.

A hugely fun, mega frenetic co-op shooter that embodies the soul, and depth, of 90's twitch shooters. [Mar 2012, p.78]

Pure classical gameplay, a first person shooter that's more like the original Doom than a modern game.

Serious Sam 3 convinced me that somewhere along the way FPS genre lost something but on the other hand the game's old school vibe might become tiring if you overdose it. [January 2012, p.54]

Serious Sam 3 brings back pure old school first person entertainment and boy it is fun. Some bugs and the completely dead levels doesn't stop this from being a recommendation to fans of hardcore action.

Serious Sam 3: BFE will ultimately exhaust its players by virtue of its screen-filling mega-confrontations, its non-stop repetition and the sense that you are almost always mercilessly outgunned. Sam 3 is good but could have been better.

I can really only think of one down side to Serious Sam -- it costs $40. This is a game that provides hours of good, stupid fun, sure, but that just seems a bit steep for a game that's neither particularly novel nor very long from start to finish.

It's disappointing that despite its great level design and adrenaline-fueled shootouts, Serious Sam is not always fun to play. But that's the fact of the matter. Unless you can deal with a wide range of frustrating quirks, you're probably better keeping this one off your Christmas list.

Serious Sam 3 does what it set out to do and nothing more. A faithful and heartfelt ode to old-school FPS carnage, it certainly delivers the dumb fun that Duke Nukem Forever so dismally failed to recapture - and that, for many retro-heads, will be more than enough.

After a less than awe-inspiring beginning Serious Sam 3 slowly gathers speed and delivers in its second half the fast-paced fun of shooting things the predecessors introduced. But even in its best moments the game never brings anything new to the table and the few innovations there are like the melee combat are poorly implemented. Furthermore Serious Sam 3 lacks the frivolity of the former games, often taking itself, ironically, too serious.

It feels lightweight and the price is high but this provides gleefully brainless entertainment. [Feb 2012, p.94]

Quotation forthcoming.

After ten years, Serious Sam series has strong symptoms of fatigue in its gameplay. BFE is a frenetic old-school FPS, but the lack of innovation penalizes a title only released for fans of the franchise.

The lack of humour is the real wound; Serious Sam 3's violence often made us smile, but it never made us laugh. So, while there's still gleeful carnage on an impressive scale, the game is still a little dimmer than it might have been if not for the sadly slightly straightened face that Sam wears.

The frantic and exhaustive action is still there and looks better than ever, but you are now required to take extended breaks for the sake of sanity.

Serious Sam 3 BFE is the archetype of a breed of games that in 2011 is difficult to propose to the big audience. Boring and repetitive if played alone, due to obsolete gameplay and some level design choices, the game gets better chances to entertain when in coop. Do not expect anything new compared to what you played six (or ten!) years ago.

Crisp visuals and legions of enemies struggle to invigorate the lackluster Serious Sam 3: BFE.

Serious Sam comes back to get rid of waves of ever-stronger ennemies. Something it doesn't quite do at the beginning, though, but the action starts to ramp up later on. Of course, SS BFE isn't the top of the crop technically, but it's the only FPS of the lot offering this type of gameplay... it will undoubtedly find its fans (if the price drops a little).

The dev team clearly believes "more is more" and the funny thing is that sometimes they're right – other times, a bit of editing on the enemy numbers would have really tightened the experience up. Instead of more enemies, there should have been more colors in the palette and more variety in the level design.

A loving homage to old school shooters but one that refuses to take the steps necessary to become its own game, even with the excellent new co-op modes.

While the gameplay mechanics are a blast, the level designs are so questionable as to make me wonder about Croteam's reasoning.

There is not too much charm in this new iteration of the Serious Sam series. Before First Encounter lacks of imagination and talent, and the game doesn't live up to the excellence of its antecedents.

A pretty big disappointment. [Issue#118, p.104]