First of all, unlike seemingly everyone else, I'm not really a fan of reverting back to 2D. Rayman 2 was absolute perfection. Rayman 3 was also a very good follow up. But here, we're back to seemingly randomly strewn about 2D levels where the only goal seems to be to "collect stuff". In a way where you MUST collect a certain amount of the said stuff to even be able to progress. Most levels also take a couple of minutes at most, giving off the vibe that it's been designed for consoles and/or mobiles. I am also not really a fan of this art style. For a lack of a better term, I'd say it's a bit too... "wacky"? Loved the art style of the 3D Raymen, but this really isn't doing it for me. Most people seem to love it though, so I might be the weird one here... Gone is the feeling of grand adventure from Rayman 2 and 3, working your way towards defeating the main villain through sprawling, intricately designed and, later on, quite complicated levels. You only goal here is to collect stuff, so you can unlock more levels to, you guessed it, collect even more stuff. The ability to change the character you're playing as also feels quite off. Probably a side effect of the 4 player co-op, but it just seems weird that you can play as any random character any time you want. I'm playing a Rayman game, not a Globox, Teensies or whatever else game. Unfortunately, due to all of the above, I stopped playing the game after a couple of hours. Still giving it a 5/10 though, because I can see how a "no strings attached" and simply a "4fun" platformer can have its appeal. I'm just providing a perspective of how as a huge fan of Rayman 2 and 3, this game simply doesn't click with me. I grew up with those 2 and played them to death and I just can't seem to enjoy this otherwise very well acclaimed entry in the series. If you haven't played a Rayman game before, go for it. If you have, then just be aware that this might not be what you expect.
First things first. You might think "5 levels? For 20 bucks? What is this..". But do not despair, the levels are quite expansive. Expect most of them to take over an hour to finish, more if you do some exploration and secret hunting. Levels are action packed and very well designed. Closed spaces or large open areas, the variety should keep things from getting monotonous. There are several new enemies, and all of them feel unique and bring something new to the table. Did you hate Marsh Hoppers in the Encounter games? Well what if they did not die in one hit, had a ranged attack and actively dodged to the side from your shots? Siberian Mayhem has you covered. Besides new enemies, there are also several new weapons. All 3 of them quite powerful and fun to use. Overall, the difficulty can be quite high. Don't expect introductory levels with only a couple of enemies and slow pace. This expansion starts strong and never lets up. But considering the massive power increase Sam received in Serious Sam 4, I'd say that finally, the challenge corresponds to it. One slightly annoying technical issue is how the game handles texture streaming. It loads them only for what you are currently looking at. And most of the time, it is quite visible how the game constantly swaps from low resolution textures to the full resolution ones. In a cutscene, 2 characters talking with each other will be loading their textures every time the camera cuts away and back. In game, you could be standing in place, turn 180 degrees, wait 1 second, turn 180 degrees again and you will be looking at a blurry mess of a wall that takes a moment look as it is supposed to. And this happens pretty much everywhere. I can't imagine the nightmare it would be to have this installed on a non-SSD drive. And one minor gripe, I hated the ending. I was expecting something in the vein of Jewel of the Nile for Serious Sam 3, where it would tie into the main game, but the ending basically voids everything you do in this.
As probably everyone else (seeing how this game is present in pretty much every sale), I got this for less than a dollar and my expectations were extremely low. I finally got around to playing the game after about 2 years it has been in my library and I have to say, I somewhat enjoyed my playthrough. Using the abilities of your dwarves correctly was a lot of fun. You eventually get 3 dwarves. One is a ranged guy with good damage and support for the other 2 dwarves. Second is a melee guy that likes to rage, deal lot of damage and control enemies and 3rd is a stealth guy, able to teleport between hiding spots, stealth killing and the usual "stealthy stuff". Because you have 3 characters, there is a tactical pause during which you can aim/issue commands. Normal combat is what I liked the most. You mainly play a positioning/aggro management game. Using your abilities to the best effect, controlling enemies, blowing them up with area of effect abilities or picking the off one by one with a sniper bow. Your choice. But there are several forced stealth sections in the game which can get somewhat annoying. Many of which are instant failure if you get detected and require you to perfectly execute your actions, like timing your kills or killing 2 targets within an extremely tight time window. You find runes for upgrading the abilities of your dwarves throughout the game. These are pretty crucial because in the later stages of the game, it would be impossibly hard without some upgrades of abilities (especially the stealth guy). There are even some secrets that require a specific ability from the tree. To sum it up, wait for any sale (this game is for -95% pretty much all the time) and then it's well worth the dollar. It should be noted though, that the game is unfinished and ends after 2 chapters with a cliffhanger. It will probably never get finished so keep that in mind. With all that said, I'm giving this a 6/10. Frankly, I have played much worse games than this.
