Serious Sam 4

[hitbyambulance]

a return to wide-open spaces, yay

[Paingod]

Serious Sam was a result of people liking the "Speed Swarm" levels in Doom, right?

I could never enjoy those. I never cared how fast I beat the levels, I just enjoyed the strategic/skill aspect. I didn't care much for just killing a hundred things running at me. Still don't.

This is an easy "Pass" for me.

[GreenGoo]

Doom was like a dungeon crawl but with guns for me. That's the part I liked. Plus the technology was a completely new experience for me. I wasn't playing video games when Castle Wolfenstein hit the market. Sure I had played turn based RPG's in a 3D environment, but this was real time, and the camera was free on the horizontal access. You could go anywhere and see anything (on the horizontal). You weren't moving 1 tile at a time, with views in the cardinal directions only.

I didn't feel the same way about Duke Nukem, and so that franchise means almost nothing to me. Serious Sam even less so.

[hitbyambulance]

now with a release date: August 2020 (and available for pre-order):



i'd pre-order, but it seems smarter to wait for some sort of incentive deal.

(and on 'console', apparently a 'Stadia exclusive' lolllll: https://kotaku.com/stadia-exclusivity-w ... 1843568732 )

[hitbyambulance]

from Croteam:

It’s been a wild ride for us, and it’s about to be even wilder for you when Serious Sam 4 obliterates normality this August. And by August we actually mean September 24, 2020.

[Daehawk]

Is that a full song from that second to last trailer about?

[hitbyambulance]

it's out today. all the other installments i have of this game are on Steam (or CD) - but i'm kinda wanting to get this one on GOG.

[Daehawk]

Getting savaged in reviews. My online bud is sad. he had been looking forward to it and hoping it would do well for Croteam. Said himself though he wished they'd made it more like 1 & 2 but went for 3 which is too bad.

[hitbyambulance]

well, that's too bad. i only ever played through SS3 once - it was all right but it didn't come close to the heights of First + Second Encounter. (i did play all the way through SS2 finally a few years ago and while it wasn't as meh as when i first played it, it still wasn't up to what i was looking for)

i'm still going to get it to support Croteam. GOG version is $39.99 . if i went Steam i'd go through Fanatical, where i can use a 5% coupon ($37.99) and get a bonus indie game. (going directly through Steam, i'd get charged for WA state sales tax). if i could be assured the GOG version will get the same patches as the Steam version at the same time, i would go for that for sure - Croteam released a constant stream of updates for SS3 and i am positive SS4 will be no different.

EDIT: found out there was going to be no native Linux version, so the Proton support would be ideal here. got it on Fanatical/Steam, installing now.

[hitbyambulance]

i guess i'm the only one who purchased:

- the performance autodetected CPU speed at 'Ultra' (AMD Ryzen 5 3600) and GPU speed at 'Lowest' (nVidia Geforce GTX 970 - i manually set it to "Medium" but it's a bit herky-jerky looking. need to tweak settings a bit more...)

- plenty of menu options for FOV/motion sickness and other modern allowances, in addition to old ones (e.g. 'hippie' blood setting)

- why did they have to follow the SS3 model for the story? nobody liked it. cinematics are incredibly cheesy and unoriginal with elements ripped off from all over the place (tho i am pleased to find Sam "Serious" Stone has the same opinions on book authors i do). and why are we still on earth? aren't we supposed to be taking on Mental about now...

- you can now dual-wield weapons, finally

- set difficulty to "Hard" and yeah, it's tough so far. i'm out of practice and need to get back into the mindset for this one.

[hitbyambulance]

it gets more into the spirit of the original games after the first two chapters (once you're out of Roma and into Pompeii) - i was starting to feel like i should have waited for this to go on discount before purchasing, but it's currently much better and my disappointment has abated. for now. i do feel they chose Italy for the beginning of the game so Croteam would have an opportunity to reuse the Talos Principle art and environment assets - which really does seem to be the case.

the direction the story-telling went is weird, as it tries to inject a feeling of pathos and... actual humanity into the game? speaking specifically about the 'Bill Corwin' radio broadcasts, it really feels like an intentional allegory for the current world pandemic.

[Jaymon]

WARR!!


I am enjoying the crap out of this game. But I have enjoyed them all, so thats pretty much expected.
The secrets seem to be well hidden, I am finding less than half, here in my first playthrough.

The companions are less useless than most video game companions.

The cut scenes are terrible, its like they hired somebody off of (NSFW) to slap them together. But the combat is just what i expeted.
Loud, shotgunny, and full of enemies that teleport in behind you. Just like a serious sam game.

[hitbyambulance]

The cut scenes are terrible

ranging from pretty bad to incredibly cringey

[Sudy]

The review video I watched was pretty critical, but it did tend to focus on the cutscenes and some other jankiness. It seemed to approve of the gameplay, once you get to it.

I dunno, I played a lot of the original and Second Encounter. I don't know if I "liked" them, or they were just there. Back then, I'd missed the first wave of FPSs, so I didn't really know what Serious Sam was allegedly an homage to, first hand. It's weird, because I remember my friend showing me the demo and commenting, "these guys are designing an FPS more like the classics". But this was 2000 or 2001... Doom was only eight years old lol. And while there was definitely an emphasis on enemy A.I. and gameplay diversity after Half-Life, I don't really feel things had advanced that far. Imagine a game coming out today that billed itself as going back to the "roots" of a genre classic from 2013.

Anyway, I had enough fun with them. But at a certain point, circle strafing kleer skeletons with a shotgun was more chore than fun. And I never enjoyed the bullet-spongy mini-bosses. I didn't get far into SS3 at all. Playing Doom just this year though, it was a blast. I think because the environments never got too big.

[hitbyambulance]

in SS3 and SS4, the cutscenes are just something to be endured until you get back to shooting. i'd rather not have them at all, but i guess the publisher or some players or maybe even the devs themselves want them there, so it is what it is...

for me, a fun part is finding chokepoints (no matter how far back i have to run to get to them) and picking off enemies with the pistol, knife and melee as they enter. yes, this is pretty much counter to the entire point of this series but i never get tired of it. haha

still feeling this and SS3 were missed opportunities. SS2 wasn't great for several reasons, but it did at least try to change things up.

[hitbyambulance]

i seriously suck at finding some of these secrets. i did get to one that trapped me - i looked in the forums and apparently it was because i was using a saved game from an older build and i would need to re-do the level, or just ignore the secret... i chose the latter.

hate the new hammer-wielding guys that are invincible from the front. and the vampires. but especially the witches.