Serious Sam 4

It is definitely a part of the series and has its own humor. The side missions and scene changes are also positive. Unfortunately, the finishers in close combat, for example, are rather a downgrade from the third part.

Best game ever. Would be great if serious sam 2 was available to play too.

Not the best game of all time, surely - but as a Serious Sam game it is clearly the best of the series. They could really have let all those (forced-) cutscenes go and the game would have made more sense and ultimately be more fun (but shorter). And that really is my only gripe with SS4, if it weren’t for those cheap “atmosphere building” devices I would have given it 5 stars. The graphics are not as bad as many say they are. They are highly customizable. Performance on ultra settings in 1440p on my gtx1660ti is about 65fps, smooth as butter and no hitches. But – ONLY on dx11. Dx12 glitches out often (is also smooth, though) with shadows and lighting flashing on some maps (and all cutscenes).

Serious Sam 4 is well worth playing with smooth gameplay and lots of enemies to blast into gibs. It's sort of a combination of Serious Sam 3's more 'real' locales (but no bombed-out Middle Eastern cities) and TFE/TSE's colorful carnage. All the classic weapons and enemies return with a facelift and a surprising amount of detail. Audio is generally very good with meaty weapons fire and distinct sound cues for each type of enemy; if you have quality surround sound speakers or headphones you can enjoy the thundering bass of the minigun and Werebull hooves, among other things. There is a story told through radio messages and cutscenes throughout the game, but thankfully the latter mainly occur between missions and fights (and they can be skipped if you wish). Croteam gives lots of options for the game, including the ability to disable quest markers and other popups modern games enjoy shoving in your face. Video settings have a variety of options and some presets, so those with weaker PCs can tweak them to find the right setup. There's a benchmark option where you can test your settings before starting a campaign, which is quite helpful for seeing how it performs. Pros: - Good variety in levels, from urban streets to wide open countryside. - Weapons are very satisfying (except for the knife, which they could have left out). - Combat is very smooth and responsive with mouse and keyboard. - Most fights are quite fun and have good pacing. - Some secrets are fun to figure out and have multiple ways to achieve them (sometimes in ways Croteam may not have expected). Cons: - Some levels are absolutely gargantuan, but exploring outside the intended play area is usually a waste of time and can be a little glitchy. - Ammo is too plentiful in most areas while Armor is surprisingly uncommon. - Certain boss battles are tedious due to the annoying gimmicks involved. Serious Sam 4 is a solid entry in the series with a few flaws. If you enjoy other games in the series, dig in!

TL;DR It's better than SS2, but worse than any other game in the series. On it's own it stands as a very average shooter at it's best, if you ignore all the story and characters. I'm giving it a below average score because of all the focus on pointless things. Not so TL;DR Take Serious Sam, get rid of beautiful environments and replace them with boring modern ones, then jam a bunch of obnoxious characters and a story into it, top with occasional stutter on a modern hardware and that's SS4. Croteam has forgotten what made SS so great. Back in a day the game WAS cool, because it focused on the gameplay and visual level-design. Now the game TRIES to be cool first and treats gameplay and design as a secondary concern. It honestly feels like the game tries to insist that it is in fact cool, but if you've ever known a person who always acts like they are cool - you know how uncool it actualy comes across. Instead of putting you in a classic environment, you get ruined modern cities. Instead of being alone, fighting hordes of aliens, you are accompanied by a bunch of bad characters. You'd think the game would try to ridicule the idea of having several protagonist-like one-liner-spitting bro-dudes, but no - it does it's best to insist that all of those characters are incredibly cool and you should like them. They are not. And don't even get me started on the story - for the love of fuck - who would ever think to try and put CUTSCENES with DIALOGUE into a fucking Serious Sam game?! The focus was put in the wrong direction and it shows. Shooting is just fine, but everything else, from boring levels to terrible characters and a forced story makes me not want to play this damn game. Serious Sam should be about you, being alone and fighting hordes of aliens across great environments and this ain't it. This feels like a bad EDF game with doped-up graphics. Please play SS 1st Encounter and 2nd Encounter, leave Serious Sam 4 to rot in hell. What a waste of time and money...