Serious Sam 4 does come with some fresh improvements over previous games that are mostly good. There are good things to be found here though. Despite a massive day-1 patch all these issues remained, which is worrisome. Not well necessarily, yet not crashing to my desktop either. I know the “recommended” specs suggest an 8-core CPU, but I expected the game to at least run when the screen was packed with enemies. Serious Sam 4 also loved to crash whenever its new Legion System got into full swing. The game automatically set me up with the Ultra preset, but that was rarely stable and led to multiple memory crashes. Framerates frequently ocillated between 130 FPS and 50 FPS with noticeable hitching and stuttering for no discernible reason, even at “Medium” settings on my arguably punchy rig (an i7-8700K 5.0Ghz and GTX 1080 Ti, with 16 GB of 3400Mhz RAM, while running at 2K resolution). 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. 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. 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. I’m stopped whenever I find a side objective. 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. 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. 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. 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 4 “doesn’t fix what ain’t broke”, but after playing it I was left wondering what still worked.
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