Serious Sam 4 Review

Ever since 2001, Croteam has surprised everyone with their serious Sam franchise, competing with heavy hitters such as ID, Microsoft, and Valve. Unlike most games of that era, Serious Sam didn’t have an epic storyline like Halo: Combat Evolved or a silent protagonist like Half-life. It did have killing aliens and witty one-liners. At first glance, Serious Sam does look like a Duke Nukem or doom clone but it does have one thing that Duke Nukem doesn’t have and that’s a protagonist that you don’t want to repeatedly slap.

The series follows mercenary Sam “serious” Stone voiced by John J Dick, as he attempts to save the earth from a crazed alien overlord who wants to destroy humanity.

After numerous sequels and prequels and an agonizing nine years after the last installment comes Serious Sam 4 surprisingly still developed by the same studio, at first glance it just seems like the same 3 games just reskinned but closer at inspection it has vastly changed but not entirely for the best.

Pros:

The graphical overhaul that the series has had it amazing I just wish there was ray tracing and DLSS, but even without that kind of stuff it still looks good.
The system requirements make it so even the oldest processors and graphics cards could run this to give you an enjoyable experience.
Controller support, I know there are tons of people who say FPS games should be played with a keyboard and mouse but with Serious Sam 4 accuracy isn’t the aim of the game, destruction is!
The vast array of weapons is just awesome, if you think the doom guy has a super shotgun well Sam has akimbo double barrels that devastate even the toughest foe.

Cons:

Even though there is a huge array of weapons to tear threw aliens they have cut a lot out such as the sledgehammer and the Sirian mutilator.
No console release! Unless you plan on playing it on Google Stadia or Steam your kind of out of luck, the last Serious Sam game on a console was in 2011 with serious Sam 3, unless you count the spin-off Serious Sam Double D, which wasn’t even developed by Croteam.
The motorcycle section, this section took me longer than any other part of this game, the bike is almost impossible to handle, I ended up glitching above the map.

Even though I am a huge fan of this game I cannot recommend it at the price Steam is asking for it, £30.99/$39.90 and that’s for the base edition, if it was around the £25 price point I’d say jump at it. So my conclusion is if you are a fan of Doom, Wolfenstein or Blood like myself wait for the price to drop and pick it up, if not then save your cash.