Horde-style combat is not a bad thing in and of itself, but the highly touted ‘Legion’ system which can apparently render thousands of characters on screen at once is basically a bust. It’s the sort of thing where you need to take out this type of enemy before the next type spawns in, and it wears out its welcome quickly. The core Serious Sam design hasn’t really changed all that much over the past couple of decades, most if-not-all encounters here devolve into straight-forward wave-after-wave battles without the arcade-style ‘Wave 3 of 4’ indicator to let you know how long is left. That said, most of the large-scale battles feel like the same skirmish rinsed and repeated, rarely living up to the promise of cutting through hordes of enemies and giant lizards and demonic cyborg-y bipeds. Okay, the PopeMobile being a giant mech is the right kind of out of nowhere over-the-top silliness that you’d want from a Serious Sam game. Serious Sam 4’s cinematic campaign is a Duke Nukem Forever sized mess, from performance issues to sloppy level design to outright ugly visuals. The story is C-Grade and the voice acting is campy and not at all amusing. And really, the elongated development time should have been the indicator for what to expect. And on paper at least, the bright visuals, large open-spaces, and commitment to hordes of enemies and projectile-based carnage should be the sort of read-soaked fun we all need right now. With developer Croteam still at the helm, Serious Sam 4 has been a long time coming. Like other foul-mouthed veterans in the first-person field, Sam has been missing for some time – with the last entry proper, Serious Sam 3: BFE, dropping back in 2011. And one that featured some cutting-edge visuals to boot. Large open maps with waves of enemies, projectiles aplenty, and an arsenal designed to offer up the biggest ‘Clean up on Aisle 2’ mess possible. In ways other historical figures like Quake or DOOM or Duke Nukem can draw on a history of sprites and rudimentary 3D spaces and character models, Serious Sam – to adopt a Tolkien timeline – made its debut during The Second Age.

Serious Sam dates back some but it’s also a new millennium FPS.

Serious sam character