For a little while, it seemed like Serious Sam had decided to follow in the footsteps of theother 'roided-to-the-gills action movie parody he so gleefully mocks. Serious Sam 3 was announced and then... crickets -- and not even one of them was armed with a gun that fired flaming cannonballs. Remakes helped pass the time, but there's no denying that the shooter genre picked up an absurd number of new tricks while SS3 was on the back burner. Cover systems, regenerating health, experience points, social features, buckets and buckets of gray paint, etc.. One thing, however, hasn't changed a bit: Serious Sam couldn't care less.
"We all want variety, so many gamers are also looking for less 'serious' shooters like Serious Sam 3: BFE to kick-back with and let loose on absolutely insane masses of crazy monsters,"Croteam CEO Roman Ribaric told me during an interview.
"Our team doesn't see classic arcade-style shooters as direct competitors to other FPS but rather a different flavor of shooter altogether, especially when others are dropping co-op or have that two-player co-op only. We have everything -- a single-player campaign, 16-player campaign co-op, various other co-op and versus modes, dedicated server support, and access to the Serious Editor for fan mods at launch."
It shows, too. Even if you feel like every other shooter's passed you by, Sam's got your back. The first level I played was a colossal Egyptian expanse, replete with all the expected landmarks: giant pyramids, crumbling pillars, and -- of course -- teeming swarms of giant scarab monsters. Better still, the game played like a dream. Sam moved with the speed of Sonic the Hedgehog and the firepower of Shadow the Hedgehog -- but, you know, good.
The flow of combat, too, was classic Sam. Enemies -- of which there were hundreds -- sprinted after me with a level of bloodlust that bordered on hilarious, and my modern shooter instinct to cower behind cover exploded into bloody chunks almost immediately. Serious Sam 3 is pure, undiluted run 'n' gun. You run. You gun. That's it. It's sort of like Horde mode before Horde mode was cool. Other shooters focus on barking solider men and gobs of gratuitous slow-mo. In Serious Sam 3, I cared about precisely two things: the gun I was using and the enemy whose organs it was pureeing into a fine paste. Fortunately for me, there were plenty of both.
"You pull the trigger and enemies suddenly realize that maybe the buddy system isn't always the best policy. "
Among other things, the explosive shotgun put a smile on my face that probably blinded the sun. It's exactly what it sounds like, too. You pull the trigger and enemies suddenly realize that maybe the buddy system isn't always the best policy. If they stuck together, I blew them apart. Well, mostly. The splash damage occasionally felt a bit wonky, with enemies right in the thick of things escaping completely unscathed. By and large, though, it was gloriously satisfying.Then there was the cannonball gun, which is... also exactly what it sounds like. Its alt-fire, however, was the star of the show, sending a flaming cannonball hurdling through hordes of enemies. I finally understood the appeal of bowling: bringing horrible, burning death upon my enemies. Those are just a couple standouts. The arsenal's positively enormous, and you won't find any silly two-weapon limits here.
Enemy variety and level design riffed off each other quite nicely as well. For instance, the Egyptian ruins featured a wide-open oasis area, and -- as I waded through -- it seemed like the game had finally decided to give me a quick breather.
Haha, nope.
I heard screams. Wild screams. Hilarious screams. And they kept getting louder. Louder.Louder. Serious Sam's signature headless kamikaze enemies began appearing on all sides -- only stopping their maniacal battle cry when they were safely six feet under. I laughed out loud and then -- mid-breath -- switched to a terrified scream and ran for the hills. The expansiveness of the level fit that moment perfectly. No matter where I ran, there were more shrieking terrors running straight at me.
Charging monsters used the level similarly well, and, in a wonderful twist, a perfectly timed cannonball shot would literally split them into two perfectly symmetrical slabs of meat. Meanwhile, a more enclosed level -- that took place in a crumbling Middle Eastern city thathad to have been a sly nod to Modern Warfare -- was populated by lanky, spiny murder beasts with claws that'd give Wolverine crippling inferiority issues. Those bastards could lunge, too. The end result? No place was safe. Monsters lurked around every corner, hearts set on ripping mine right out of my chest. It was a very frantic brand of fun -- the kind you barely notice you're having until your fight-or-flight response finally decides you don't need to be a shuddering, sweat-soaked ball of adrenaline anymore.
From what I played, Serious Sam 3 has a solid shot at setting a new high watermark for old-school shooting. I'm really not a fan of speaking in doting hyperbole -- nothing's perfect, after all -- but Serious Sam 3 seriously impressed me. There's so much nuance to what's allegedly "just" a brainless blast-fest. So much care and attention paid to little things. Even then, though, this is 2011, the year Duke Nukem triumphantly returned only to face-plant after slipping in a puddle of his own irrelevance. But Croteam knows exactly what Serious Sam is, and it's embracing that fact. That, Ribaric told me, is why Sam won't suffer Duke's anticlimactic fate.
"We don't believe in changing the foundations of the franchise and that style gameplay just because of trends," he explained. "In Serious Sam 3: BFE gamers will pick-up their health/armor rather than regenerating it and have access to all the weapons as they're discovered. As we all know, Sam has some seriously deep pockets and can carry quite the arsenal all at once. So, why limit Sam to only two weapons at a time?"
"Ultimately, it's about sticking to what the core fans expect and want to see in each iteration of a series and we believe we have done that with Serious Sam 3: BFE. Fans of the series, or those that have just recently come to know it, will be available to identify it as a true Serious Sam game within seconds of picking it up. That's how we know we've stayed to true to form." LINK
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