Serious Sam 4

Game play is fun but the cut scenes and characters are annoying.

This game feels like the good old Serious Sam games, but according to the modern graphic standards. The shootouts where pretty challenging (playing in 'hard' mode), with lots of enemies in large open spaces, and made me feel like the good old Serious Sam game I used to play long time ago. At 'hard' difficulty mode the balance between being quite challenging and becoming frustratingly difficult really works for me. There is even some kind of story added to the game that doesn't add that much, but also isn't a big distraction from what Serious Sam is about; shooting at a huge amount of monsters. At my PC it runs like a charm, without any lag or stuttering.

I played this after a while, knowing it was a technical disaster on launch. Major bugs have been fixed. Some glitches like texture popping, lighting flashing, and monsters getting stuck are still there. The game is really different from what it was advertised: Open world? No, just very large maps just like in the previous titles. But larger open fields for fights. Legion system? No, just in the last battle. Vehicles? There's a system for it but it's just some vehicle sections. Perk tree? Yeah, they can give you extra firepower and they are fun, it's not an RPG and it's not trying to be. Instead you get: The carnage: there are tides of enemies, more than i could think on previous titles. Many levels have above 1000 enemies, and the last one had only 1800? Trust me, it felt like there were 5000. Soundtrack: awesome as ever Enemy variety: better than 3 and 1, worse than 2. Weapon variety: more than ever. With alt-fires and dual wielding. Graphics: A step down from 3 but allows for huge maps Animations: Clunky and crappy as ever Story: it's generic and spoonfed but who cares, it's enough. Humour: Not too serious, makes you laugh sometimes. Mechanics and design choices: Reloading is bad but dual wielding is fun. Sprinting is fine. The fake jumps you make do not let you avoid projectiles like in previous titles. Maps: HUGE but they don't seem to have the same level of care like the previous titles. Fun: Very fun. And I was prepared for disappointment. This is a Serious Sam game and it's good. I have no serious issues on it as a fan, and bugs didn't plague my experience. I missed these games so much... Main issue is that the marketing team of Croteam made a horrible work, giving light on the worst and most insignificant aspects. I mean: French "open world" map doesn't make sense and it's there because it's in the trailer. It's clear that the marketing team does not know its audience.

About 90 fps with 3080 Ti, but it feels like 30. Stutters and fps drops. Unplayable and just terrible.

Graphics are the biggest disappointment by far. As the camera switches in cutscenes, the game loads all the textures in from the disk again or something; I can't explain the texture pop-in any other way. I have the game on an SSD with an up-to-spec build but the quality pop-in is kind of distracting. Clearly delineated side quests are welcome, but re-tracing the entire route I took to do the side quest (typically without any new enemies to cut my teeth on) is kind of a bore. I would expect encounters like these to dump me back out onto the main path right after completing them, in the way a dungeon in TES: Oblivion almost always loops back on the entrance so you don't end up back-tracking. The levels aren't necessarily always designed well for the kind of enemy dancing I'm used to. I often find myself walking backwards into obstacles that shouldn't really be there. That said, it's got secrets! It's got one-liners! It's got weapons! It's got a diverse set of new, interesting enemies, as well as the classics you expect! What cutscenes are there are skippable (praise baby jebus, unskippable cutscenes are a war crime)! If you enjoy other entries, odds are high you will find something to enjoy here too. Croteam could be charging a full $60 in 2021 based on how other devs treat their customers, but it's already $40 at the time of this review.