And the worst crime? Performance is subpar for how it looks. It barely holds up to today’s standards (the LOD distance is absurdly short, for instance), despite the bajillion graphics settings in the game.
Serious sam mental full#
Speaking of older Serious Sam games: Serious Sam 3 came out in 2011, and Serious Sam 4 often feels like a sequel that was released a couple years later, not a full nine. Even ancient Egypt in Serious Sam: The First Encounter, as repetitive as it was, felt better designed for a fight than the locales within Serious Sam 4. So much for being a big, bold badass fighting off an invasion single-handedly. This affects the quality of the fights as well, because most of the arenas you find yourself duking it out within have geometry that’s easy to backpedal into, halting your movement and opening you up to a deathblow. Serious Sam 4’s level design is excessively dry. This is a franchise set in the future during an alien invasion there’s creative soil to till here. Don’t let the short first mission fool you: 80% of Serious Sam 4’s level design is seriously stale. The best part? The back half really isn’t any better. Do you like generic Italian streets and crumbling ruins? Cause that’s the game for the entire first half, barring one level that changed things up just a wee bit. I’m stopped far too frequently for some plot-beat I could care less about, when all I wanna do is point the business end of my pump-action shotgun at a gaggle of meaty bullet piñatas.Ĭroteam’s attempt to tell a worthwhile tale further handicaps the game via the stale level design. I’m stopped whenever I find a side objective.
![serious sam mental serious sam mental](http://www.cubed3.com/staff/tempo88/serioussamne_april4.jpg)
Had the story and characters been worth a damn I wouldn’t have cared, but I’m stopped whenever I reach a checkpoint. I wish I didn’t have to spill all this ink about story, but it often feels like it detracted from what made this franchise great: wholesale slaughter with little to no downtime. They make it hard to invest in the story, and the story isn’t worth investing in to begin with.
Serious sam mental ps3#
Human NPCs all look like they came out of an HD remaster of an early-generation PS3 game, and not a good one. They’re stiff, lifeless, and the lip-syncing seldom lines up with what’s being said. The eyes – oh, the eyes! I’ve seen better facial animations and more expressive eyes in my Air Force training programs. It doesn’t help that all the characters emote about as well as a storefront mannequin. If there is one highlight it’s Sam’s increased reliance on wit over one-liners, but even these lines are hit and miss. This is a rote story with forgettable characters that detracts from the main attraction: mass alien murder.
![serious sam mental serious sam mental](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/P4f5lAWxmRQ/maxresdefault.jpg)
The dialogue is as generic as it gets, and any attempts to humanize the members of Sam’s team come off as superficial at best. Considering Serious Sam as a franchise has always been more concerned with turning vast armies of aliens into a bloody pulp it’s a bit strange. There are cutscenes aplenty, a full lore page in the menu, and even audio logs to pick up. Serious Sam 4 has an actual, honest to Mental story.
![serious sam mental serious sam mental](https://www.dsogaming.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/SSDD_General1.png)
He and his small team from the Earth Defense Force have been dispatched to Rome to grab the relic, and it’s on Sam to ensure Mental’s forces don’t get to it first.Ĭroteam pulled the co-writer of the exceptional The Talos Principle and his partner – Jonas and Verena Kyratzes – to pen the script for Serious Sam 4, and. Mental is laying waste to what remains of the human race on Earth, and at this point in the story Sam is more concerned with acquiring the Arc of the Covenant than jumping back in time to ancient Egypt. Let’s start from the top: Serious Sam 4 is a prequel to Serious Sam 3. Problem is, the game’s antiquated design often hinders more than helps. On the surface it’s still fun to franticly dash about spitting hot lead, and there are brief moments of brilliance within Serious Sam 4. If you’re an existing fan you may be overjoyed to hear this: you’ll still circle-strafe and backpedal around arenas killing hordes of enemies before they gib you. The gameplay in Serious Sam 3 felt a bit out-of-date back in 2011, and Serious Sam 4 has done little to move the needle forward. Serious Sam 4 is as “boomer-shooter” as a game can get in 2020 one that often feels like it came out in 2008. Serious Sam 4 has some serious problems, and unless you’re a diehard fan its many faults may be more than you can stomach. Croteam’s latest entry in the long-running franchise plays it too safe for comfort, and its marque new feature – the Legion System – isn’t worth the performance issues it creates.
![serious sam mental serious sam mental](http://gamingpastime.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/SSC2.jpg)
Serious Sam 4 “doesn’t fix what ain’t broke”, but after playing it I was left wondering what still worked.