Serious Sam 4

Serious Sam 4 takes us back to a simpler time in first-person shooters, where massive guns and well-timed one liners make up the bulk of the action. There's a bit of jank that's impossible to miss and Croteam isn't breaking any new ground here but Serious Sam 4 is a great way to just shut off any critical thinking and blast away at a few thousand aliens for an afternoon.

At the end of the day, SS4 is what it sets out to be — a racous, over the top, arcade FPS that is best played with up to three friends. If that’s the kind of game you’re looking for, it’s very easy to recommend it. With a launch price of $40, it’s a lot more feasible to get some friends to buy in as well than if the price were $60, so keep that in mind, too.

Mowing down thousands of aliens in Vatican City is worth doing at least once.

Serious Sam remained true to its legacy and therefore is charmingly archaic – which is not a flaw in this case. It’s easy to point out that side missions are uninspired and fail to provide the diversity they were supposed to introduce, or question the quality of graphics and optimization, but it’s not really that important when burying enemies under piles of bullets is so much fun. [12/2020, p.34]

Croteam has yet to surpass its first two Serious Sam games, with Serious Sam 4 basically being one more entry; one that is great fun, but far from an evolution of the series. The flaws are aplenty, although they are rarely very serious (pun not intended), making this fourthquel more disappointing than bad - because, make no mistake, this is very good. Sure, it's not the best Serious Sam game… but still a Serious Sam game. Fans of serious action will understand.

Serious Sam 4 won't rewrite the book for narrative FPS campaigns and that's perfectly fine. It sticks close to the series' roots while offering some contemporary improvements and improved presentation. If you're hankering for some straightforward shooting action that doesn't take itself too seriously, Sam "Serious" Stone's got your back.

There’s a solid base at the core of Serious Sam 4, and it’s tough not to smile after navigating the puzzle of a 500-enemy encounter. Swapping between weapons and adapting to each type of enemy takes skill and understanding, it’s just a shame that the experience grows overly repetitive. As it exists, Serious Sam 4 is a mish-mash of the absurd and the overly banal, and I wish that it was more willing to commit in one direction or the other. That being said, sometimes the need just hits to go absolutely ham on some bad guys, and you’ll find few other games that let the player unleash with so little baggage of fluff.

Serious Sam 4 delivers dumb, fun action, but not much more. The humour doesn’t really work, the story is as stupid as it gets and there isn’t really any variety. However, to relax after a hard day at work, this might just be what some people need.

Serious Sam 4 may be repetitive, with an overly simplistic story and could be better in graphical terms... But it's a love letter to those who enjoyed the 90's FPS where killing things was the important shit. In these early days the proposal lacks some more game modes such as mods, multiplayer, coop options and more, but it's enough to have a crazy fun game night.

Serious Sam 4 is a no-brainer for fans of the series and is a game that fans of singleplayer/co-op shooters will likely enjoy too.

It's challenging to find something worthy of mentioning, and that in itself is bad. I like the fast-paced gameplay, the voice acting, and the somewhat crazy story that makes no sense. It's the best anyone could extract. Now even the inclusion of a cooperative mode doesn't save it. The stale gameplay is probably the biggest issue. Not much has changed, and the concept feels old. The graphics are forgettable, the weapons are not interesting, the animations are not great, and the overall quality leaves to be desired. Playing on our melancholy can only go so far.

Serious Sam 4 is as fun and chaotic as you'd expect, but after ten years since the last game, we expected for more innovations in its gameplay mechanics and arsenal.

Serious Sam 4 is not a bad game. I’d go so far as to say that it wasn’t trying to be anything amazing, either. Croteam just wanted to put out a game full of catharsis, and it feels reasonable to say that they succeeded in that endeavor. It doesn’t bother itself with being anything other than a bullet-spewing good time, and I’m frankly fine with that. The fans wanted more Sam-laced insanity, and they definitely got it here. While the jank is present for all to see, it’s not something that completely ruins the experience. Regardless of that, it’s a cheesy good time that’s worth at least a playthrough. In this day and age, sometimes we just need to hold down the trigger and scream at the top of our lungs. Serious Sam 4 succeeds on that front, and delivers it with a dual rocket launcher-wielding grin on its face.

Serious Sam 4 does what Serious Sam has always done: deliver short-lived cathartic thrills that manage to be fun despite its creaky engine and dated mechanics – but you have to wonder how long they can keep flogging the same horse.

Serious Sam 4 is a successful synthesis of the series' disparate identities, with humor to spare and jaw-dropping large-scale battles. But technical issues, tired tropes and a lack of gameplay variety make it just a solid foundation rather than a new pinnacle for Croteam.

Serious Sam 4 doesn't want to change your life or make a revolution in the genre. Fun and mad co-op with a very repetitive formula.

Impossible, then, not to feel a bit of a bitter taste in your mouth in the face of a dated and limp technical sector, which shows the signs of still incomplete optimization work. In short, Serious Sam 4 has put a half-smile on our faces, even if we do not make any effort to recommend the purchase to all the historical fans of the series.

Ultimately, Serious Sam 4 has a bit of an identity problem. It hews pretty closely to the standout features that made the series great — immense battles, weird enemies, crude humor and frantic action. It also steals from the playbooks of recent shooters and has more story, a cast of characters and slightly more measured pacing. Over time, the wave-based battles become more fatiguing than fun because they’re often so similar, but Serious Sam 4 is overall true to the singular series and its fans should be happy to join their hero once again.

Serious Sam 4 is fun to play – and an even bigger joy if you bring co-op into the mix. If you’re a fan of the series, then you’re going to feel right at home. If you’ve never played a Serious Sam game, then just don’t go into it expecting the same level of narrative as story-driven games, because you aren’t going to find it here.

Serious Sam 4 is still an entertaining experience but the structure of the game shows the weight of time.

While the gameplay works, some design and even technical flaws make this comeback less enjoyable than we hoped.

Serious Sam 4 shows a repetitive and bland level design with no fresh solutions for modern players. It is not an evolution for the series, nor what a 2020 shooter should be.

Even such an old-fashioned Sam is better than nothing. But honestly, after all these years Croteam should’ve brought more creative passion to the fourth installment of the series. [Issue#249, p.72]

Serious Sam 4 plays like its predecessors when it comes to the general shooting, featuring open areas and hordes of enemies. But it could have been better if it cleaned up the various technical and presentation issues that ruin the fun.

What you see is what you get with Sam’s fourth adventure. There are no surprises here but there is comfort to be found in decimating wave after wave of alien nasties while cracking bad one-liners.

Serious Sam 4 is a nostalgia trip that takes us back to the “good-old-days” of gaming but presents itself in a modern environment. However, they are a bit too late, as the lack of innovation and obscure map design put this game way behind leaders as is currently Doom. The back-pedalling Sam is still there, but his quips and lovable character will ware out after the 10th wave of the same enemies.

Even if Serious Sam 4 feels truly dated, with visuals that will bring you back a few years, the game is still a blast to play, with thousands of foes ant the same time, and a very good gameplay that mixes fast-FPS with beat'em all. Just wait a bit until all the bugs are ironed out.

Serious Sam 4 could have been a total reinvention of the franchise, a step forward to revitalize a series that still has to take advantage of this new golden age of old school shooters. However, this is a wasted opportunity: the same game, but with the largest number of enemies to fight. If you're looking for the same Serious Sam, then this new installment may end up meeting your needs.

Sam lost the last remains of creativity. The result is an ordinary megalomaniacal action with a charismatic protagonist who faces endless hordes of monsters. Shooting is fun, the rest is dusty gray. [Issue#307]

Serious Sam 4 is the sad story of a franchise that tries so hard to adjust itself with the flow that forgot its own origins. The result is a game that can neither attract new players nor entertain the old fans. If you are looking for a massive, fast paced shooter full of strange enemies, Serious Sam 4 is not a solution for you.

The mentality behind the development of Serious Sam 4 is summed up in the saying of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. It adheres to this saying so much that it forgets that this logic could very well fall in the trap of “diminishing returns”. Unfortunately, that is the case with the fourth instalment that seems to be nothing less than a rehash of the previous instalments, just with the obligatory but a bit unsatisfactory revamp of the graphics engine.

This is a solid over-the-top oldschool shooter carnage – that is, if no bugs, shallow jokes or monotonous level design get in the way.

Serious Sam 4 feels like a decade old game, and some of its elements are plainly outdated. Sometimes it's best to just leave things behind, and maybe it's time for the Serious Sam franchise to take a much needed break.

When combat is firing on all cylinders, and the Legion System isn't crashing your PC, Serious Sam 4 is a decent slice of old-school shooter goodness. Yet, in sticking to its guns, Serious Sam 4 ends up being an aggressively mediocre experience.

I wouldn’t venture to judge as to what troubles befell on poor Sam. Maybe he’s been through development hell, maybe he’s having a mid-life crisis, but in any case, this calamity is far worse than a horde of alien invaders.

Serious Sam is a series that has long alluded me and I’m starting to think it might have been for the better. Although this fourth iteration might feature some staggering, titanic battles and silk-smooth gunplay, its existence feels like a clear reminder that it’s often best to let the past stay dead. Serious Sam 4 is an excavation from a long-outdated era that is more Duke Nukem Forever than it is Doom.

This VERY traditional shooter can handle the basics, that is the great feeling of unhinged action. But everything is spoiled by bad level design and woeful brokenness.

Serious Sam 4 had the opportunity to go a little wild, to try some new things, and yes, potentially fail. Instead it chose the cowards way out and did almost nothing, making it a better benchmark test than a video game.

Serious Sam 4 still has the spectacle of hundreds of enemies bearing down on you, but its long stretches of run-and-gun shooting quickly become monotonous.

Serious Sam 4 repackages, rather than reimagines the iconic shooter’s core mechanics in a way that will amuse fans of the original games. Sadly, a lack of innovation and outdated sense of hmour will undoubtedly put off newcomers.

Croteam have delivered the goods when it comes to the Serious Sam series before, and some of that is peppered throughout Serious Sam 4. From hopping into a giant mech that also happens to be a Pope Mobile to a gun that fires giant cannonballs that can mow down anything in its path. Played in co-op with unlimited respawns and you could even go so far as to recommend it to fans looking purely at that side of the game. But then you remember that the cannonball gun doesn’t show-up until several hours into the campaign, right near the end, and that you had to use a piss-weak pistol for a lot of the time. Shooting at the same aliens from Serious Sam’s of old - in environments that are, well, even uglier than a one-eyed reptilian.

Rushed is basically the best way to sum up Serious Sam 4. In development for around eight years, I imagine the current global pandemic played a big role in how scattershot everything is. At its core, the weapon feel and early level designs aren't bad. There's a solid game buried under these weird choices, but Croteam seems to have shoved it out the door with little finesse.

Serious Sam 4 is a legitimate sequel to the franchise, true to its origins in both substance and form, but that's it, and that’s the point. Video games have evolved. The players and their expectations have changed in 2020. A franchise needs to innovate, like the reboots of Doom and Wolfenstein, or else it will be overwhelmed before it has even had time to draw. This is clearly not the case with Serious Sam 4, which is mired in a dated vision of the video game.