Serious Sam 4

This goes back to the old Serious Sam 2 formula that worked so well. Everything has been improved...graphics, story, level design, weapons, etc. Really no weaknesses here.

Yeah, what a piece of shit.
I kinda hoped they patched it up a bit over the five years since it came out, but nah. Why even bother?

this game is proof developers should not listen to fans ever, unironically gaslit them into thinking serious sam 2 was good and that 3 was bad

I swear Croteam spend most of their budget of this game on the last mission.

After a giant marketing scam campaign trying to sell you a Call of Duty by calling it a "classic FPS", and by classic they didn't even mean the generation Serious Sam is from, they rolled out the fourth game with zero advertising, and as if without seeding review keys, because i never saw anyone even mention it. So if 3 is Before First Encounter, when does this take place? When we get a sequel to Serious Sam 2 instead of beating the place where the horse has died in the First Encounter?

It is based on BFE so genre-wise this is a CoD Nukem Forever game — an action game with a variety of half-arsed mechanics. You have stupid NPC, and NPCs steal your kills and waste your ammo, because they look the same as enemy and you try to shoot them. There are out of body cutscenes every five minutes. There are damn slenderman notes and audiologs. And you have press "E" to kill. It's one same damn takedown for every enemy, instead of unique animations from 3. There's the new tech tree system with re-allocatable points, that allow you to heal from takedowns and to takedown bigger enemies. On the bright side one branch allows you to dual-wield everything, including sniper guns and cannons. You exchange accuracy for bigger alpha damage or DPS at close range. Some guns have new alternative firing modes you can unlock, and those can be used only with solo guns. The FoV is limited to meagre 120. People say you can increase it in console, but no one says how. Combined with these graphics tiny 120 FoV actually hurts my head.

Of course there are vehicle sections. Popemobile look alright at first as a set-piece. But then it repeats two more times, which ruins the popemobile joke retroactively. The game has many optional side-quests. Some of them are really out of your way, but others are directly in your path. Some of them have associated achievements, some don't. What even is up with the decision to make optional side-quests? The game is not open and isn't filled with them to make them disposable. By skipping the side-quests you basically skip half the game. Why is there an option to play less of this game? The devs weren't sure people wanted to play it in the first place? Is that a gamesjournos mode, to skip half the content to churn out a grabage boring review no one in the right mind will see?

The game has absolutely terrible nearly Trespasser-tier platforming and physics. It has insane inertia and your bottom is a tetrahedron. Roll for dexterity. It doesn't matter during the fights, but all the secrets is a giant purple circle somewhere up high, that you are supposed to reach by a lot of platforming on thin walls. And the last fight is all platforming on moving platforms with somehow bad controls and infinitely respawning enemies shooting you.

They open the game with the same amateur-arse city level-design of the third game. But after a while you actually encounter something on par with The First Encounter. You start seeing open maps with big plains more often. The layouts and vistas are still much more dull than even the pyramids, but at least gameplay-wise it is decent. The invisible walls are still very obvious. The last level is a super long epic fight, then a super epic set-piece. But after playing the whole game with a GPS marker it disappears when you reach the interactive cutscene and die by the scripts if you go any direction. You are supposed to do something, and then the boss cutscene triggers. The last boss could work if not for terrible platforming, weak controls, and the stupid respawning flying enemies.

The graphics hurt me. It's a decent presentation on the budget, but there's something about them that is painful. It's like what dazzle camouflage was supposed to be but like with high painful contrast. Everything is very noisy. And then because of all that and the detailed graphics you can't see the enemies even a couple metres away, they just blend with the backgrounds. That works for modern military shooters which simulate war is hell full camo sniper in a bush. But with an arena horde shooter you are supposed to see the enemies. And of course they updated the models again, making the colour schemes even less colourful and more dull. Painkiller has good graphics, but you still can clearly see the enemies.

Then there's constant texture popping everywhere, especially in cutscenes where they are the centre of attention. And i'm on 10900k 3080ti 128 RAM, the 2020 game is on a PCI-e 4 NVME SSD. I don't think it needs any more power.

So why does this game hate women? All females are absolutely ugly as hell, worse than aliens. There's not a single normal lady in the entire game. And this is not Oblivion situation, not everyone is ugly as sin, half the males look normal, like people. Have they seen a woman in their life? They are not supposed to look like character-actors playing villains in horror movies about disfigured psychopaths.

And then there's the fucking music. By itself the soundtrack is already erotic sounds of butt-hurt. And then the game uses abysmal dynamic crime against humanity "dynamic music". You encounter one enemy, you shoot it, you continue forward. The main OST stops, too late, it plays the first notes of the battle OST, it stops, it returns to playing the main OST from the start. That crap is switching constantly. Every couple of steps. You will hear the same starting notes milliards of times. Your time will come, and so will you.

Well, after the terrible Sam 3, this one is at least a half more like The First Encounter, but it is still not on par with even that.

While gadgets, crits, and companion missions mark a departure from the classic Serious Sam formula, by far the worst issue is how often the game crashes. When I had to post my crash logs to the "tech support" forum (which is completely inactive btw), my crash log was so big it exceeded Pastebin's character limit.

not worth 40$

If you looks like fresh guy, this game is not recommended.

Better long running franchise than Super Mario.

Excellent!

Without doubt the most enjoyable, pretty and well made game in the series.

If you like Serious Sam, shooters in general, stupid (but good) humor, silly guns, or humongous fights: Just buy it. It's a no-brainer.

20 ish hours campaign might feel short, but each area is well fleshed out and fights are interesting and challenging. You'll easily add more hours beating it again on "Serious" difficulty, which require significantly different approaches. Secret hunting is also interesting and can add a few hours.

Many memorable moments and quotes that I won't spoil here. Go play the game and discover them yourself for some good laughs.

A few negatives, or near-negatives:
- The ultimate Ackerman fight (or whatever its name was), feels unbalanced, confusing and annoying. I blame only 50% on skill issues
- Some fights can feel overwhelming, but there's always a strategy, weak point or better weapon selection that solves them
- Easy to get lost in some areas, but the augmented reality gps solves it elegantly
- Some areas allow you to travel really, really, really far in the wrong direction, where there is nothing to find. Arguably a positive, as it showcases impressive technical abilities of the engine, with large scale areas. However, it can be frustrating when you think you're hunting secrets but discover you're actually 10 minutes away from anything of interest (nice exploration though)

It's just a great, polished game.

It's Doom 2016 but worse in pretty much every way.

I'm a big fan of Serious Sam games.. Love them..But this one is just.. Feels rushed, graphics even worse than the old Serious Sam 3 game.

Feels cheap, runs pretty bad for it's graphics, lots of popups fps drops from 100 even on 4070Ti super..
I gave it few chances but everytime i close it after 5 mins because it just feels like cheap unity game from 2010 that you play on browser.....
I was really excited to play SS4 but yeah.. Just stick with the old titles.

Great game overall. Very challenging. Ending was quite difficult.

Feels like an inferior game to original SS games in every way.
Feels lower budget, unfinished and with a coinfused direction.

All open regions seem pointless, first half is too slow nad boring, and only the very ending feels like a real SS game where we start getting large scale fights.

WHY SO... SERIOUS!?

no seriously... its a good game, trust me bro.

The game starts out slow but it REALLY Picks up and gets REALLY good the further you go in. Keep playing it and you wont be dissapointed. You just HAVE to keep going and keep playing even if you think the game is bad. Give it ATLEAST 4 Hours it will 100% be WORTH it, TRUST Me on this.

Tried to give it a fair shot again, got disappointed from minute 1. Graphics are worse than TFE HD that came out 6 years earlier, texture and models keep popping and fading in even on Ultra settings. The game tries too hard to be funny for it's setting all the time with no charme, if you want a funny and enjoyable Serious Sam go play Serious Sam 2. Enemy design is bland and pretty boring. I gotta say the basic weapons like shotguns and assault rifles do feel a lot punchier in this game so thats a plus. Of the levels I played most of them were pretty boring, mostly because the setting doesn't fit a Serious Sam game at all in my opinion, for me Serious Sam excels in settings that aren't based in "present" times where you are not bound to the limits of real life. Overall massive disappointment as a long time Serious Sam fan since I was 6 years old, it's an OK shooter but as a Serious Sam game it just falls short.

hay lắm , tôi hi vọng sẽ ra phần tiếp theo cho tới kết thúc , tôi rất nể phục người làm game này , hi vọng họ sẽ phát triển lâu dài

One of the best shooters to play with boomer friends.

One of the best co-op shooters.

Serious Fun for Serious fans.

I love Serious Sam, I've played them all from First Encounter up to 4 and none of them have ever dissapointed me. This last installment is no exception. It's just fun and big and over the top like all previous games.
The game did not start great and I feel that the Italian campaign is perhaps the weakest part of the game (except for that glorious Popemobile), but once Sam gets to France I was having an absolute ball and it just got better and better. I bought it on sale and I've already added Syberian Mayhem to my wishlist if the expansion is as good as the game, I'm sure I'll have no regrets.

Pretty decent Serious Sam game in comparison to 3 this entry felt closer to TFE and TSE in terms of gameplay with 2's story elements being kinda funny listening to your teammates banter even if the lines come out pretty jank most of the time.
No shortage of secrets with zero clues and very overwhelming fights on harder difficulties that leave you exhausted just like the old days.
The addition of skill points and gadgets makes it kinda feel like a cheap Doom Eternal but overall I think it breathed a bit of life into the gameplay loop so im not complaining.

TFE, TSE, and 2 are some of my favorite shooters, but this game didn't hit the right spots at all. They scaled up too much when they should have just condensed things down into the core SS formula while adding in elements that compliments that formula.

Each successive game is getting worse. This time, the developers tried to do something new—specifically, open-world levels. I really liked the concept, but the game does not capitalize on it. The concept is underdeveloped and diluted by a factor of 10 to 1 in favor of the old, outdated gameplay. Basically, Sam was surpassed by Doom, and the developers are too afraid to do something new on a big scale. I also rage quit on a boss in the castle. No other game in the series is that difficult. And this isn't just fair, Dark Souls–like difficulty—it’s almost intentionally infuriating, reminiscent of "I Wanna Be the Guy" difficulty. I'm just too tired. I've already beaten a couple of hard bosses/locations (mine was insane), so I know I can do this. But you're telling me that I need to either restart the level to stock up on armor because the developers forgot to place a restock before the boss, or restart several levels to get the chainsaw I missed, which would annihilate the boss? No, thank you. That's too much effort for a brainless shooter.

Get all achievrments!!!!

performance issues on steamdeck

Run and Gun, Have Fun

Serious Sam 4 takes the series in a new direction. This time around its a prequel that takes place before the older games. A 4-player coop mode is designed to allow friends to work as team to take on enemy forces. Of course the game is also single player.

The graphics in Serious Sam 4 are modern and more designed around modern consoles. The MSI Katana with RTX 3070 can handle this game fine. The game is barely playable in a GTX 1050 Ti.

If you like the Serious Sam franchise, this one will not let you down.
The fights are intense and fun
The story is actually good
The jokes are funny
The graphics are actually good
I can only recommend it! :)

I almost didn't bother with this game because I wasn't keen on the direction that Croteam took the series, but I picked it up during a sale because I was on a Serious Sam kick and figured that it couldn't hurt to have more Sam, and I'm almost embarrassed to admit how much I enjoyed it.

It feels a bit different from the earlier games in the series, but the heart is there, and I feel like Croteam put a lot of effort into learning from missteps in Serious Sam 3 to blend elements from every game in the series in a mostly successful attempt to make a perfect balance of all of them (even the VR games, I suspect, as one of the skills that you can unlock allows you to dual-wield different weapons at the same time).

The combat feels as excellent as ever, with many weapons that feel great to use and stay useful through the whole game (yes, even the single shotgun). In fact, the moment when I knew that I was going to enjoy the game was when I fired the shotgun for the first time and noticed how great it felt to use, and reassured when the next weapon was one of the punchiest double-barrel shotguns I've ever used in a game. It just kept getting better from there, with the addition of powerful weapon attachments that finally turn the status quo from being driven back by hordes to being able to push through them, and unlockable abilities that don't always hit the mark but are fantastic when they do (if you're not convinced by anything else, I implore you to take the dual-wielding skills and see how it feels to fire two shotguns or double shotguns at once).

As an improvement to Serious Sam 3, there's far less reloading (not eliminated entirely, but only a couple of weapons reload and they hold much more ammo than before, especially when dual-wielding), weapons are much more accurate without needing to aim down sights (even if not 100% accurate like in the first game), the melee system actually has a use, now (even if it's still kind of copied from the new Doom games), and you can actually see while fighting kamikazes, now, as they don't kick up enormous dust clouds. The game is much more colourful and less boring to look at overall, and there are far fewer hitscan-based enemies, so it feels much more fair to play.

To touch on the story, I was surprisingly okay with it, even if I don't necessarily agree with it being right for Serious Sam. Yeah, it's as dumb and cliché as people say, but that kind of felt like the point; like one of those unexpectedly poignant B-movies, it's all about fighting off nihilism through the hope that comes from what humanity does best, which is the sheer primal joy of dumb violence, dumb humour, and dumb clichés. It's stupid as hell, but it's fun, and a surprisingly wholesome and much-needed positive message right now. It all made sense when I found out that it's by the same writers as The Talos Principle. Unfortunately, in typical Croteam fashion, the story has issues with keeping a consistent tone, but I still enjoyed it for what it was.

Yes, the game isn't perfect and it earned some criticism - I don't think that it looks as bad as people say, but some of the environments could have stood to be less repetitive. I am very happy that it's all much more colourful than Serious Sam 3, but a few of the levels, while fun, are meant to be "ruins" but amount to a mess of plain brick walls strewn about almost randomly on grass fields. There are many times when it feels like the map designers just forgot to close off parts of the map and you can wander off to the end of the Earth because it isn't clear whether an opening is a secret or a place where you can just walk out of bounds into an unnecessarily huge map - every other game in the series had a way to prevent you from doing that (TFE/TSE had you die of heat stroke/hypothermia if you wandered out too far, SS2 had generally naturally enclosed environments, and SS3 had the Sand Whale), so I'm confused about how this happened.

Overall, the game is a combination of fantastic gameplay elements held back a bit by some questionable level/visual design and an admittedly divisive story, but not enough to stop me from loving the gameplay the entire time. If you can look past those, there is a lot more to love about this game than many series fans would care to admit, and I would personally highly recommend it.

Nice game.

I don't even know where to start.

{Gameplay:}
Like every game i started this one on hard.
Why? I like to challenge myself and see what the game has to offer.
You also experince how good the game is, because you'll notice every Game error.

And thats where this game fails so miserably.

-The Enemys do NOT synagize at all with each other.
As an example:
“Sending in 100 bombers let the player kill 50 of them and then the rest gets eliminated by an other enemys is just boring and not really thought thru.“

-Over all sending in 100+ Enemys of the same type is really braindead Gameplay.
Me standing in a corner pressing left click and then sometimes R is not really good Gameplay at all.

"But not only the pure enemy dumping is bad."

-The bigger Enemy types are just not thought thru aswell and painfull to play against.
As an Example:
Having a Tank which does a lot of melee damage makes sence, giving him Fireballs which deal 50dmg and work like a sniper shot does not.

There are of course Enemys which i liked but the Gameplay again got dragged into the mud by other Enemys or just pure dumping them in.

-The Excuse of the Developer is to use your Gadgets.
And I give them a few credits, but in my opinion the gadgets are too strong and it's not really fun to use them.
Also, you have to find these gadgets first, which is made more difficult by the fact that the game only allows 10 gadgets of the same type.
I don't think you should only win battles with these gadgets because it's not guaranteed that you'll actually have them.

-The Bossfights are also not thought thru
Some of the bosses are just dead meat and don‘t even try to hurt you.
Other once like the Mech Bossfight is just pure trash.
The way to fight them is really anticlimactic.

-Levels are giant, which really just kills the Gameloop and the time to load a single level.
Just cutting the level at some point really only would be a positiv point.

--Rating: 1/10
The whole gameplay is questionable, I had fun at first, but the more I played, the worse it got

{Graphics:}
-The Style of the whole Game is trashy on purpose.
Thats fine but still gives me an uncanny feeling, like AI did everything.

-There is no real character design or facial expressions.

-The games cutsence resolution is really bad.
Every time the camera angle changes, the textures need to load again for like 1-2 seconds.
(RTX 3070 TI not a "ME" Problem)
--Rating: 5/10


{Story:}
Trashy on purpose, but i still liked it.

--Rating: 9/10

{Stability:}
-Game runs like a bucket of beans at times.
As i already said this has to do with the giant level design.

-The game also crashes at random times, very unfortunate when it crashes in a cutscene after a boss fight.
-Autosaves are a joke, if you run to far ahead it could be that you trigger a autosave while you are dying.

-Hitboxes are wild (very inconsitent)

--Rating: 2/10


{Price:}
-Game comes from 2020, if it was older i could maybe excuse some problem but for 2020 thats just sad.
-40 Bucks for a 5 Year old Game with a caliber like that is wild.
Doom 2016 cost 20 and does everything this Game does but 10x better.

--Rating: 0/10

{End:}
Do i recommend this Game?
No, sadly i really started to hate it.
---Rating: 3/10

Serious Sam 4 has been overall enjoyable. There are some gorgeous levels, the gun play feels very satisfying, and the gameplay has the classic Serious Sam moments with an overwhelming amount of enemies. As a fan of the series, it was very enjoyable. There's been noticeable performance issues that held the game back, and certain moments throughout the game felt less like a challenge to overcome, but bad design choices that were just unfun to trudge through. The story is also a mixed bag, feeling like a corny 90s-2000s action movie. The dialouge can just be annoying and the story can feel like something you just have to deal with to get to the good parts, which should never be the case. I'm curious to see how else Croteam could present a Serious Sam story.

can be fun but doesn't feel like a serious sam game

Love the game, too bad the mission i'm on spammed me with so many enemies i don't want to play it any more.

the game doesn't save. TF is the point in playing? I'm very happy I got this for next to nothing because that's absolutely unacceptable.

Крутая игрулька, как и сюжет, вот бы только ещё потом выпустили продолжение после tse

If you know serious sam, this game checks all the right boxes (in my opinion). Yes, it could be more optimized and feature rich, but it feels so good that I feel like it redeems itself. Feels like the original SS1, but more challenging in areas.

Also an underrated part of the game is the characters and story. It genuinely has character, and I feel like it went unnoticed.

If Croteam reads this, they should come back and do a reboot. Keep it close to this, but optimize the shit out of it, pack it with features, fix up survival mode. It would be 10/10

Otherwise I really enjoy this game. Classic shooter gameplay. Rewards weapon choice. Pretty epic battles and good bosses.

I personally am a huge fan of Doom's reboots so I know where people's hearts are at when they say it could have done better, but you have to judge it by it's own series' standards, and by those it does excellent. I only wish it had the optimization and elegance of SS: TFE HD, but its good for what it is and I find both worth playing!

Must have for the fans of Serious Sams series. Good gameplay and story.

Had to launch the game files from installed location to even launch the game. Its still not very much polished and devs needs to fix some of the issues. But no updates rolled out after 2021.

Serious Sam 4 is a masterpiece of chaos. No pretentious storytelling, no unnecessary mechanics, just you, an arsenal of absurdly powerful weapons, and thousands of things to kill. The action never stops, the enemy count is insane, and every battle feels like a war against the impossible.

The soundtrack is a relentless force, pushing you forward as explosions, screams, and gunfire fill the screen. The environments are massive, beautifully crafted, and exist purely to be turned into battlefields. Sam himself is as sharp as ever, delivering deadpan one-liners between mowing down hordes of monstrosities.

The weapons are brutal, the enemies are relentless, and the sheer scale of the battles is unmatched. This is old-school FPS at its peak,fast, challenging, and ridiculously fun.

10/10 – The king of chaos returns.

Serious gameplay, would recommend.

its good but the skill tree is really stupid or poorly executed i feel

It's a Serious Sam game :) if you've played one and like it you will enjoy this. A few bugs but nothing game breaking. A good time to remember the old style of FPS games. Constant movement, a ton of weapons, and unending enemies.

Lots of cool new features, but feels VERY rough, unpolished, cheap. Looks somehow worse than BFE.

Just a fun shoot everything game.

If you always enjoyed or Loved the Serious Sam Games than this one Sure Delivers really Great Game definite recommend

This game is so f****** boring. It's just about straight going 2000m between the goals and killing similar monsters. So you should be going by your legs for 6000 m per chapter. Monsters are monotonous, the game "treat" you with just one new monster per 3 chapters. There are 15 chapters in the game, so there is three types of monsters in first chapter and then they will just match. The main disguise in this game is the "beat all monsters, then pass to the next stage of chapter". So you need to kill 200+ similar monsters for 10+ minutes in every chapter and then you can pass. There is no fun, because you can't get enough ammo for fun guns and get the game of just shooting with default desert eagles. No interesting perks, just classic two guns two hands shit. The plot for me ended in place, where the game told me to go with bike for 9000 m to the next place through open field. It's just so boring and you can't get fun out this game.

this is game is just fun, its the most fun ive had on any game in a long time. the team have done a great job and there is nothing to complain about

It took about 10 minutes to realize the game 1 shouldn't be in third person and 2 is janky as hell.

Expected a romp but it felt like a bad arcade game.