Serious Sam 4
Serious Sam 4 reignites the classic FPS series in a high-powered prequel loaded with an explosive arsenal, intergalactic carnage, and perfectly timed one-liners. Humanity is under siege as the full force of Mental’s hordes spread across the world, ravaging what remains of a broken and beaten civilization. The last remaining resistance to the invasion is the Earth Defense Force led by Sam “Serious” Stone and his heavily-armed squad of misfit commandos. Croteam returns with a high-powered prequel to the Serious Sam series that scales up chaos to unprecedented levels. The classic Serious Sam formula is revamped by putting an unstoppable arsenal up against an unimaginable number of enemies that requires players to circle-strafe and backpedal-blast their way out of impossible situations.
Steam User 42
The game itself is simple: take a big weapon and kill ordes of cannon fodder monsters because they're bad and we're good :) But it's fun with its cheesy lines and playfully cliche' situations. The perfect game to stop thinking and escape from reality.
Steam User 25
"Yeah I'd be mad too if I couldn't see my own junk."
- Sam Stone.
Steam User 27
Pros:
It's Serious Sam.
The weapons are awesome.
The enemies are awesome.
The graphics are awesome.
The environments are awesome.
Fun gadgets. Portable black hole? Check. Gas to make monsters infight? Check. Holo-Sam? Check.
S.A.M. skill tree lets you dual-wield weapons and ride enemies around.
Flaming Rocket-Propelled Chainsaw Launcher. Say it again: Flaming Rocket-Propelled Chainsaw Launcher. Could there BE a more awesome weapon in name and concept? Executed flawlessly as well.
Cons:
Have to reload the Tommy Gun, Devastator, and Auto Shotgun.
You lose all your gadgets later in the game so you can't save them for the big boss fight.
No deathmatch (but who plays Sam for deathmatch?).
Dual-wielding drastically hurts accuracy so it's very situational.
Lacking some classic enemies.
Some open sections lacking enemies.
Secrets.
I found Sam 4 to be in many ways more enjoyable then Sam 3, and I like Sam 3 so they're both good games. The core gameplay is pretty solid. There are a few vehicle sections that are not entirely terrible, but I found the motorcycle section to be unpleasant. It's long, open, kind of boring, and for some reason riding the motorcycle made me feel dizzy. I didn't have that issue with the other vehicles, so I'm not sure what was up with that. Even outside the vehicles, there are some sections where you go a long way without finding enemies. Usually you trigger fights by picking up an item or entering a specific location, enemies spawn in, you fight, and it's over. First Encounter I think did the best job of making sure there was always someone to fight without having to run a long ways to find them. Sam 4 could have handled enemy placement a bit better.
New to the game are some serious weapon upgrades. The Rocket Launcher gets a multi-homing rocket attachment, the Grenade Launcher gets a multi-grenade remote detonation, the Single-Barreled Shotgun gets an under-barrel grenade attachment that is VERY useful, and the Laser Cannon gets a Death Ray. I have nothing bad to say about any of these upgrades. They all kick ass. That doesn't even bring up the FRPCL. It looks like a rocket launcher painted red, but that's where the similarities end. The primary attack launches a rocket-propelled chainsaw that homes in on its target and saws into it, doing massive damage. If the target dies the chainsaw will then find ANOTHER target and keep sawing until it does a certain amount of damage and finally explodes or hits a solid object and explodes. What's better is the secondary attack lets you use it as a melee weapon. Hordes of Gnarr or Reprocessed become piles of gibs and you get to save bullets. Who ever said that a chainsaw isn't a ranged weapon really needs to try this thing out.
Also new are gadgets. They're holdable items you can use whenever needed. These range from health boosts, a bullet-time device, a portable black hole, a holo-Sam decoy, attack drones, "rage" serum that ups your movement speed, fire rate, and damage, a mini-nuke that works like a Serious bomb (Only 2 exist in the game), and gas that makes your enemies in-fight. It is very satisfying to see a horde of enemies charging at you suddenly turn and start going after each other after tossing one of these, especially when there's kamikazes in the mix. Same goes for the black hole. Just throw it and see for yourself.
Last, there's what are known as Serious Artifacts of Might, or S.A.M.'s. Collecting these lets you pick abilities from a skill tree, from having enemies drop ammo when killed to dual-wielding weapons to performing melee attacks on progressively larger enemies. You can ride around on werebulls, hammer-wielding fanatics, Khnums, and even biomechanoids. You can upgrade your ability to reload faster as well.
My biggest gripe about Sam 4 is the secrets. There are a lot of them, but mostly they consist of finding a gadget hidden either behind a bush, wrecked cars, up on top of a ledge, or on a building's roof. I really, really do not like the jumping mechanics in the Serious series and having to parkour to get to yet-another-health-gadget is kind of obnoxious. The creativity with secrets from The Second Encounter is very much lost. There's a few health item traps to trigger some enemies, and two good callbacks to classic Sam trap secrets, but 95% of the secrets are just finding a hidden item tucked away. No exploding walls, no boulders rolling at you, no biomechs disguised as a bush.
Overall Sam 4 is a great game. It could be better, but it's a worthy addition to the series.
Steam User 43
This is triple A boy you gotta survive with style
Steam User 19
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Steam User 22
If ADHD was a game
Steam User 17
Simple but challenging and a lot of fun if you like basic FPS games