If you play the games in the chronological order (SS4, SS3, SS1E/2E, SS2) the games are about a dude that slowly becomes mad and gets trapped in a cartoonish hell.
They literally went to France took pictures and tried to make it as real-world accurate as possible. Which while impressive does not fit with the gameplay of Serious Sam which requires flat open arenas.
I worked in 3D simulation development for a while, texturing and lighting character models in Unreal Engine. I'll mention that eyes and mouths are a pain the the 4ss because it's tough to get the internal shadowing you need to keep the inside of the mouth, the nostrils, and the top of the eyes from seeming to glow. It's because of the polygon normals, and how the direction a polygon is facing will determine which direction it can cast a shadow in, performance limitations for self-shadowing, and there are probably many tricks that work well, that I didn't know to use. I think that's why we see the glowing eyes. I'm not at all saying that this is impossible to fix, but after doing a lot of 3D for feature film VFX, I found the way lighting works in Unreal to be very difficult to get used to.
@@radek4634 You can't compare SS3 and SS4... SS3 had monsters from the word go. SS4 had empty ass plains of nothing. I heard they already fixed some of that but damn..
Not necessarily. Cartoony looking games with high rez graphics are still gonna be resource intense I think the main point isn’t that it will be technically less demanding, but less demanding creativity/design wise. Fantasy weird ass games require all sorts of thinking, new designs and revisions to make sure everything flows well with each other to make a coherent world. If you’re using realistic design it’s ‘easier’ to pull off. They can just look at real life, other games and even the previous SS game for examples/assets, rather than creating entirely new things.
@Lord Skeletor 3 had great weapons, a supreme soundtrack, the best one liners and felt badass to play. The level design was hit or miss (people complain about the early game but its definitely levels 10 and 11 that bother me) and some monsters were bad like the witch bride and technopolips but for the most part in was a very good entry in the series.
Why would they even rush serious sam I understand that gaming communities is on a all time high due to this quarantine but serious sam isn’t that hyped enough to be rushed
SS4 was announced in 2013. However it was delayed endlessly because Croteam took on other games. Talos, Scum, other SS VR stuff. Don't take SS4 summary from this video though. It was a review code before the 43GB (day one, or one day before release) patch. Croteam shot themselves in the foot with that. SS4 is doing 80% positive on Steam. Great looking game and great fun to play.
As that's cool, I'm just starting SS second encounter (is that the second game or an expansion of sorts for the first one?) But I'm super excited to play through the rest of them!
@@greatmatt301 Second encounter is like the UT2004 to first encounter's Ut2003. A much improved asset flip. The actual sequel, serious sam 2, is a totally different game.
100% totally agree on the art style. SS just doesn't suit the modern/realistic palette. I much prefer the original games art. Much more in theme. This just looks dull and drab.
You almost can't do a realistic art style as a small studio because it will end up looking like a game from 2007, the texturing and other things take too much time and money. They were fools to use this art style
@@elperronimo My take on this is because they used photogrammetry to scan in (like how RE7 and other RE Engine games use it). Just because you have the means, doesn't really ensure it'll suit your game.
@@therealbubble4696 When the E3 trailer was there and it showed these empty big maps, I thought WTF are they doing? How hard is it to create a Maya temple and a shitload of trees instead of an empty bland looking map?
And it's not even anything new. Assuming that the background NPCs don't actually possess any AI (which seemed to be implied), numerous games have done this. Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, for example, had dozens and dozens (if not hundreds) of NPCs on the Omaha Beach level. However, virtually all of them had no AI, and were just there to add to the atmosphere. It's not a tactic that we should need to rely on anymore; developers should be able to have tons of AI NPCs on screen simultaneously.
@@googlewolly Hell even first and second encounter had awe inspiring number of enemies on screen at a time. For what it was worth back in the day. And it was fabulous! Compared to that, this one looks more like a corridor shooter.
If there was any franchise that didn’t need to be made even slightly realistic it’s Serious Sam. It’s tongue in cheek cartoony excess was what made it fun and stand out in the first place.
SS 2, for sure. SS the second encounter, that is true for some enemies. But SS1 was pretty much realistic. It has goofy moments, the rest is realistic.
@@kofola9145 Umm... the graphics and scenarios kinda are, but it had much more charisma and personality, things that the franchise lost since Serious Sam 3. Serious Sam 2 was a pile of dogshit too.
@DoomestosYT I dunno. I found some of SS 3 scenes kinda funny until I noticed it took itself too seriously and that the parts I found funny were actually meant to be serious. "Growing up"... well, that's like saying Max Payne 3 grew up since Max Payne 1/2 just because it became hyper-violent. In any case, I haven't played SS 4 yet but hooooly fuck does it look horrible with the direction it has taken. Combat looks kinda fun but all those characters and dialogue and upgrades and stuff... just no.
The game looks exactly like the "alpha test" back from 2018. It feels really rushed, and no core mechanic is completely finished. They seriously messed up on the terrain, it looks like a rejected COD game.
Realy sad to see that new Sam looks like a steam early access unity engine game, this series was with me from my early childhood, but this looks even worse than DNF
@@chaosvolt I disagree, Bethesda games are always well polished, *VISUALLY* . This one looks just ugly and amateurish, lacking detail and looking artificial. Like those early access craps that try to pull out an open world, but since they got no experience and resources, you end up with a half-assed map.
I feel like when games take this cinematic storytelling route it almost always backfires alot, Serious Sam is an arena shooter with a ton of action, should have kept it that way during the whole thing and maybe put you in first person during the cinematics so you can atleast feel like you're there
For the kind of game that heavily relies on heavy adrenal action, cinematics pretty much ruins everything and breaks the flow. Except for Serious Sam 2. The cinematics are welcoming and joke around more than covering an event taking place. Some of the cinematics just sums up what you're up against. Like the flying alcoholic witch that smashes into a train, which can also happen naturally while playing. ;)
@@muffinman2546 Personally I felt SS2 was heavily improved by playing in co-op, because the cutscenes don't play in co-op. I really like SS2, but I do hate the cutscenes.
@@todesziege Yeah. They are kinda nice the very first time but really irritating the second time and onwards. + Co-op actually let's you customize the difficulty to irrational extremes like 500% enemy strength and health multiplier but with infinite ammo. ;)
@@muffinman2546 There are lots of benefits with playing co-op -- it's the best way to enjoy Sam in general I'd say -- but I didn't go into anything else since the thread really only was about cutscenes. Comedy will always be a bit subjective, but I don't think I would have enjoyed Sam 2 any less if it didn't have cutscenes -- rather the opposite.
@@DukeoftheAges well the OG serious Sam games are rock solid too and the remasters were done well. There's some questionable stuff in SS3 already thoogh. They've had a few good games but it's been many years since they released a totally new quality game outside of Talos Principal and some remasters.
Probably they knew they are making a stinker, but had to publish something to either fullfill contractual obligations or keep the trademark. Or some other such nonsense
@@lysytoszef nah, they have been developing this for 6 years. If that was the intention, they could had just developed a shitty mobile game. I literally can't come up with a hypothesis to explain this disaster. There was no plausible reason for this to happen. They had the technology. They had the experience. They had the time. The only thing I can think is that they blew the entire fortune they made with Talos Principle in hookers and coke.
@@SGtMarkIV Maybe. But it's as possible that they realized mid-way that the game will simply not work but instead of postponing/suspending/re-doing it they just crap it out cause they simply had to
theyre playing make believe AAA devs, spewing "next gen tech" buzzwords such as "100k enemies on screen" and having pointless cinematic cutscenes and similar fluff they have no idea how to design a quality shooter, they focused on being grand and superficiality instead of all the subtleties that makes an old school shooter great They should learn from DUSK or ULTRAKILL
Yeah.. I don't think I've ever really enjoyed their cinematics in their games. The gunplay and the enemies has always been the point of the series for me, while the cutscenes tended to feel quite boring to watch.
@@Dregomz02 I've been waiting for a good ss game since the second encounter. i thought i enjoyed serious sam 3 but it was just bland. and i was excited when serious sam 4 was announced..noww, I'm just disappointed
I get that it's a serious sam game and that's kinda their schtick to be big and bombastic but truthfully I don't need all that AAA fluff, I just want fun encounter design in a scale that is reachable within the developer's budget. Cutscenes aren't even necessary in a serious sam game in my opinion, just have a little text blurb about why you're there then let the player loose. If you need further lore, add little diary entries you can find in secret areas. Ambition is how the best video games are made, but if you don't have the means, work around limitations and polish what you _can_ do.
@@WatcherKoops4677, well you're right. I am disappointed because i know that they have so much talent, they could make a master peace of the genre, but at the end, they want to appeal the massive audiences
@Amadeus Eisenberg Evidently, the publisher just wanted money. That'll obviously be most (if not all) publishers' top priority, but when it's this bad, it's straight-up greed.
I personally like SS3, especially its DLC (Jewel of the nile), also played through TFE HD, TSE HD and SS2. (Didn't play the next encounter, but seems to be great as well). indeed TFE, TSE are the bests however SS3 is close up right there. SS2 is good, the cartoony stuff is way too much, however the rest of the game is great. SS4 has its moments but, this is the first game which actually felt like more of a cod, doom, nukem, mix than an actual serious sam game. (Next to the bugs and graphics problems, which are obviously problems). SS3 managed to capture the serious sam feeling at least. (Many people hate it for valid reasons, but it is still a serious sam game, the desert levels capture everything what SS is about imho). SS4 indeed needed more time, it could have been way much better. Also time to stop with the prequels and develop a sequel in which Mental can be seen finally at least. (If not fought)
I was actually looking forward to this but the consensus seems to be it’s a subpar Serious Sam game. It’s a shame but I won’t buy it, I don’t want to support a game that’s synonymous with mediocre. Gonna be wasting my money on the Doom expansion instead.
I really hope you're wrong about it being the last serious Sam game, it's been almost twenty years since it started, and it would be a shame if mental was never defeated.
@@rodrigoaugusto2912 well technically, there already is a game where you kill mental, but tormental is a spin-off and it's not canon, we can't even be sure if that's what mental even looks like in canon.
It’s not gonna be the last game. They are also working on a complete reboot of Serious Sam 2 to make it a proper sequel instead of that really cartoony mess.
As someone from Croatia and seeing this stuff firsthand visiting an annual gaming convention we have i can explain a bit from my perspective why this keeps hapening. Our small gaming industry is plagued with devs being up their own asses and shortminded penny pinching, everyone just thinks about how will they make profit without thinking about the actuall product resulting in alot of studios doing mobile garbage, when it comes to actuall games released speaking with devs they are super stuck up saying they invent genres and stuff and when the product gets released it gets bombed to oblivion with bad reviews IF they even do over the years i have seen hundreds of games come and go without ever being mentioned again plus we are behind with trends like at least five years. There you go combine all of that and you get an abundance of at best mediocre games but it's sad to see because this and scum is the best Croatian gaming has to offer and it turned out pretty crappy. Have a nice day everyone.
@@saisameer8771 Bad in what sense? The game was released in a bad state, but the gameplay itself is fantastic, one of the best Serious Sam ever released and the best FPS I've played in recent years. Pure action and fun. Just out of curiosity, did you form your opinion that the game is bad playing for hours or watching the video of a casual noob like GManLives?
@@saisameer8771 3 was a pretty crap detour from the Serious Sam experience as it were. So no, Croteam has now messed up 2 games within the same franchise in a row. Sure they can fix it somewhat in post...but isnt that something we look down upon when done by Activision and EA?
@@saisameer8771 i think its unfair to form your opinion on two reviews, i was the same as you but i also heard good things from other people so i bought it myself to see if it was really that bad and to refund it before my 3 hours on steam if it was and honestly, aside from the legion system which is a total lie and the optimization i actually like it a lot, more so than BFE. dual wielding is a great mechanic, i havent run into any major graphical bugs and even running the game on low settings cause my rig is shit i think it looks really good, and the carcassonne chapter with the castle on the hill is probably one of the best levels in the series.
A russian streamer found HUGE(might even be artificially generated) out of bounds area that isn't used anywhere in the game, seems like they were trying to make an open world.
This was evident in Serious Sam BFE from 2011 too. They tried to make a modern military shooter so the first few hours of the game take place in some war-ravaged urban environments that were suitable for another COD MW game. Well ok they made the assets so why not use them, but these assets do not match with SS theme at all. Same with those massive open world areas that contain nothing. It looks like something out of BeamNG.drive. They were trying to make an open world racing sim or sth? Idk.
"The game is once again a prequel" because Croteam would rather be forcefully converted to veganism than come up with a satisfying ending to the series, when they can just keep jamming in unnecessary back story
Luckily this isnt the final main game im sure,i really hope the fifth part actually means something after the SS1 stuff,like travelling to time and fighting mental off,etc.
@@Laki99000 I wish Croteam respected the fans as much as ID loves them. Fuck I'm jealous of Doom fans! I even heard that in SS4's story they made it canon that "every Sam game takes place in its own timeline/universe".... Yeah Croteam went with THAT while ID confirmed with Eternal that Doom 1, 2, 64, 2016 and Eternal create 1 canon. I just want Sam to get a big W god damn it and not just prolonging the inevitable destruction of Earth as shown at the end of SS3.
amazing how they've learned so little from serious sam 3 after 9 years. after the complaints people had about that game, you'd think they'd go more in the direction of the first and second encounter, not more of 3.
Well said. Give me the wild ancient cities and their varying degrees of verticality, platforming, booby traps and waves of enemies. You can keep the reloading, kill animations and bland modern levels.
@Брандон Кeллeр Absolute bullshit, game design decisions are the major problem not number of people worked on this garbage. They clearly learned nothing from their previous mistakes. The fact that they tried to bite off more than they can chew is smallest of their mistakes. Every single game gets worse and worse and they don't listen their fans.
or maybe that way they could get more time for the console versions. think about it, they get the stadia money to finish the game and once a new year of extra time has passed, the complete game is delivered to at least some people. Let's hope so at the very least, I would hate this to be the last serious sam game when it seems that there are many things that seem unpolished ideas instead of directly bad ones/ broken implementation
Stadia is great and i don't think it's their fault if the game is like this.. i mean. Even if people see stadia as a bad platform, it doesn't mean that it's a place where they put bad games just to find excuses.. I own it and have more fun with the games in general than my ps4 slim. The developers made errors, stadia or not stadia, it's their fault
@@newdraftanimations stadia Is shit, how can u give Money to Google, After all the shit they do... Stick at least to a console, or Better buy a good pc
What do you mean going realistic? Every Sam game has been as realistic as possible. Most are just really old games and thats how realistic things got for the tech of the time.
@@_evildoer yeah, but imo ancient tombs & cities, temples, space, and Big ass waterfalls are way more interesting than a regular street and some empty fields next to a motorway
@@KBWrecker 6 years in develepment for a game that already has 3 games behind it? I swear you have to actively try to make a shitty game to actually achieve this final product
9:30 In the previous games (atleast TFE AND TSE anyway) the crosshair would change color depending on enemies health, but still, DOOM Eternal proved that you don't need health bars, just good damage models, even if plasma rifle's microwave beam kinda shows a health bar.
This is the second health option in this game, first one being the health bars, second being crosshair colour and the third is not showing enemy health at all. I chose second because that’s how it was in TFE and TSE
@@just-fun-stuff6753 was more thinking the one just called turok (360 game i think), where he is some marine in a jungle with no interesting guns and no interesting enemies.
@@Meteorlink The only thing I like about Turok 2008 is the Dinosaur designs since those designs were the best designs at the time (atleast in my opinion).
As much as I didn't want this to be the case, I'm not really surprised. When you take a game and make it's usp "thousands of enemy on screen at once" that comes with a whole host of problems that not even AAA developers would be able to manage effectively like performance and level design time. It's sad because serious sam fundamentally has a very solid loop and concept but the need to go above one upping that seems to be fundemental to a lot of the problems from what I can see. It obviously doesn't help as well that Croteam is a dev who's historically suffered with development issues such as serious sam 3 effectively being built off of another game or just making odd design choices. It's sad but it's a cacophony of issues stacked against them on this one.
EDF has done that even in the ps2 with great result, now they are aiming even more with edf 6 and edf 5 , look for gameplay and you are going to see more than 300 enemies on screen
Two people have mentioned EDF and dynasty warriors. I'm going to add with: samurai warriors, warriors orochi, dawn of war, ninety nine nights and many more. It's not a struggle to put hundreds or thousands of enemies on a screen at one time whatsoever
i just finished the entire thing with 3 buddies via coop and never saw any of these flaws/glitches/bugs. was flawless from beginning to end. so much fun! had a blast
I honestly am not surprised at all about how it turned out. To me, even Serious Sam 3 was a downright depressing game to play just because of the design choices and gameplay. One of the worst games I've ever played.
@Stix N' Stones Well, for me it was THAT bad. Guess I'm not used to playing bad games. I'm being serious. I dislike it that much because it actually created bad memories, lol.
Another great review. I do still think we need to stop saying Covid this and Covid that even has a partial excuse, the problems showed by this game are not a "last 9 months thing", they go deeper
@@smugplush It was only an excuse for maybe a couple months, at most. But other companies are pretty much acting perfectly normal now. That's why I don't consider it that much of a good excuse. I don't think the game would have been ready, Covid or not.
@@smugplush It's a lot more efficient to work from home if you are in the creative business. Have a quick skype call about the project, coordinate your efforts, and then do your part from the comfort of your sofa with your cat sitting on your lap. I can understand a lot of businesses going to shit from this whole thing, but I honestly can't imagine how game development could be made easier by working out of an office. That kind of thing made sense in the infant days of the internet, but now that you can send 100s of megabytes of data in a couple of minutes at worst, there's no reason for the creative types to shave and shower, commute and put on something that isn't a PJ or t-shirt and shorts. The Serious Sam franchise was always about low-budget, high-octane entertainment. If they can't deliver at least half of that, the flu isn't their biggest problem. After all the great games Croteam have created, the only valid excuse they have for this cock-up is: *"We done fxxked up."* Personally, I am not holding out any hope for a Serious Sam 2 2, so at this point, I'm willing to let it die. Sad, because I used to really love the series.
@@evanharrison4054 I think you're forgetting about the "technical" aspect of video games. Trying to fix bugs or coordinate with others to code and program a game without actually being together is a goddamn nightmare. Games aren't $40 paintings that you could become too lazy to finish till you have 4 hours left till your deadline. That being said, that doesn't excuse how bad SS4 is.
It's weird how Croteam doubled-down on the modern military aesthetic considering the intro for First Encounter states that Sam was actually from the far future, where humanity established offworld colonies that were overrun by Mental's forces.
What is this game? Serious lack of budget 4? Something has gone terribly bad if a game like this looks and plays like an early access steam game. What a mess.
it look like they just use whatever pre-made unreal engine assets available then slap it together and... *BOOM* there you have it, Not So Serious Sam 4.
Well Croteam has never been a AAA developer, I don't know where you got that idea, but they're a small indie developer with low budget, always has been, SS4 shouldn't be a big surprise.
It even looks underwhelming. I'm gonna be honest. I understand why people liked the games when they came out, technical limitations back then and such, but this in 2020? It looks like you spawned a bunch of enemies on a default Gmod map.
If I'm being honest that's what most of this series looks like to someone like me who isn't actually familiar with it - a bunch of enemy assets plopped into example maps from a level creator kit. It's why I never bothered with them.
@@ViralOutbreak89 That's honestly kind of what the series is about. What made it a stellar series (the older titles) was the gunplay, the humor on the level of Duke, and the extremely varied locations. But the main selling point was each encounter was a huge arena where you fought tons of enemies. Even on the very first title. The encounters were a scaled back version of Doom slaughterfest wads. But instead of just placing 100x of one enemy on a map and calling it a day. The encounters with serious sam have always been balanced. Each unit brings a unique challenge so when you have them all in a group fighting them, it becomes an adrenaline fueled slaughterfest. Similar to PainKiller. As Painkiller was known for that as well. (But Pain killer took the theme and used gothic levels and enemy types, plus super natural powers instead of just pure gunplay.)
@@ViralOutbreak89 It is... Kinda. The first and second encounter had. a REALLY good level design, combined with music, sound design, humour... This game lacks everything that the other ones had. The previous title may seems like "Gmod arenas" but they were personalised, they had a soul, they had that Serious Sam feeling. The enemies were unique, you had to face each enemy in a single way (kinda like what Doom started doing recently), the game had a soul, an interesting gameplay and a immersive world. This title has none of that, so it literally is a G mod map filled with random enemies... Unfortunately. :(
Moment when they decided to go with mores "serious" theme was the moment SS died to me. Like first two encounters were a perfect balance between being serious and having a comical reliefs here and there. SS2 went a little too far and literally became a comic, but it was still a good game. My look at this is as follows: They wanted to create next Doom so badly, that when their idea was scrapped, instead of going forward and live with it, they decided to do it anyway over and over just to, idk, prove to somebody they are capable of doing modern military shooters. Poor design, poor choices, making everything too serious for sake of being "modern"... nah Sam is dead. I was affraid SS4 might be a disaster because they kept that SS3 look, but it is still painful to watch considering i was a big fan of first entires :(
If you haven't had the chance yet, you should try your best to get your hands onto the original Xbox version of Serious Sam. It's the best possible version you can play imo. First and second encounters combined, weapons from both strewn throughout all the levels, serious bombs, the best cartoon version of the artstyle, and added cutscenes that fit in pretty well
@@netherwolf3012 Indeed, "realistic" ones are plain and forgettable. Cartoonish graphics will be remembered for a long time and will age way, way better.
@@auroriasolaris Yeah, even if overdone. Especially now, with all the bland shooters it doesn't even take that much to really stand out. Not as bad as the late 2000 and early 2010 though.
The sledgehammer was one of the few good things from SS3. That, and you could jump over enemies almost like you could in Blood. Combining those two things made gnars so much fun to fight Edit: also, in terms of the performance, it really is all over the place. I actually got it to run at 60fps on an integrated graphics card, of course in potato mode. I did it for laughs, but it ended up being stable somehow. But potato mode puts it in fullbright, and keeps character models and textures still very high. I'd take shadowmaps over seeing the sweat glisten off Sam in a cutscene. That makes zero sense to me. Hell, I could still see the stitching and stains in his clothing! But no dark areas. Like... why? Yet other people are having crashes and frame drops. But only some of them. And they actually have the hardware. It makes me wonder what the hell is going on under the hood of this game engine. It makes no damn sense at all to me.
The first two games were amazing, and I still play them. Personally, I think the Second Encounter is Serious Sam at his best overall. It's a shame this is so sloppy. I think things went downhill for Sam a long time ago, mostly when they started introducing other characters and trying to add depth to the story. They tried to make him too "serious," and in doing so, just made him and his friends look dumb. The cheesy one-liners make way more sense when it's just a tough, angry joker against hordes of aliens and monsters. I just wish modern developers could understand what made games great back then. It was the essence, not the details - and the deeper you go into detail, the deeper you're forced to go, in a never-ending cycle of exhausted expectations. Keep it simple, yet amazing. Stick to Sam's fundamental appeal, and don't bother with the needless fluff. We didn't play it back then for fluff, and we aren't now either. Still, this game does look like fun, and I'm not hating.
"I don't wanna say it's a broken game. I was able to play it from start to finish." Really? Is that the bar we're setting now-a-days? I guess, by that logic, Fallout 76 isn't broken either.
Maybe I'll sound like a blind fanboy, but watching the review before playing it myself, then playing the first 3 levels for myself and so far... I am actually enjoying Serious Sam 4, quite a great deal in fact. I noticed some jank here and there, but the gunplay is better than ever. Maybe it gets worse later in the campaign? I don't know. But so far,, the gameplay has more than enough to keep me engaged. I'll return to this comment once I get farther in the campaign
>"If you're not using classic skins in Zoom Eternal - you're dead to me" >Never bothers to set classic enemy health counter in SS4. >Plays on tourist Soyman lives
I couldn't disagree more. Compared to Serious Sam 3 I think Serious Sam 4 is an overall improvement. I much prefer the colorful aesthetics, the varied locals compared to the bombed out cities and the domination of shades of brown. Only thing I wish for is for Croteam to drop Sam's military buddies, I care more about the Gnaars I'm chainsawing than I do about what's-their-faces.
Know you sarcastic, but that seems to be what most game devs/ publishers think gamers want in all of their games. Cause that literally is 75% of games these days 😭
I was hoping that they didn't rush this game, THEY said it wasn't rushed. In the end i can't believe they released the game in this state, cause croteam i know doesn't release raw ass game.
I thought it would be good. But then again I just saw screenshots ½ year ago. As soon as I saw some gameplay a few weeks ago, I could see that it looked bland.
@@ahmetkaraosman7509 I still want the game, but will give it some time to fix bugs, and a sale. They really should go back to the style of serious sam 2. That was a great coop game.
THIS! I liked Talos and now I saw the same textures and assets just re-arranged to whole levels. Talos with guns. Really strange... its all quite a sad story
You know, playing this after all the patches and having upgraded my pc made my experience a lot better. SS4 is a game that shows it had a hard development but overall its a decent game. It has its flaws but personally its a step in the right direction after BFE, it really addresses a lot of issues compared to that game, and having added mod support really makes the game a lot more replayable. I would say that if you didnt like it at launch, maybe try it now.
7:30 Thank you! The first thing I thought when I looked at this game is that it looks more like COD than Serious Sam. I mean, look at the scenarios! SS first and second encounter had such great locations, like Egypt, Mayan Empire, Babylon, etc. Even SS2 had some really cool stages: forests, cities, swamps, wastelands and the super technological city at the end...
Honestly expected this to be a mess after seeing how similar it looked to SS3. Maybe Serious Sam 2 wasn't as bad of a direction for the series to go as some people seem to keep parroting :/
@@justiceforjoggers2897 yeah the original 1 & 2 are defo the best in the series and much crazier but not to say 3 was the worst game ever made but then again i've played it on the PlayStation 3 years ago and was the ONLY FPS game that wasn't too much like a Call of Duty clone which was flooded everywhere during that generation and no originality.
I do think this game looks generic and less interesting than the older titles. This trend was started on Sam 3. I thought that one looked fairly generic but the engine was impressive at the time. The PC version has some awesome particle effects. I am hoping they patch this and finish it.
Wanted to say the same i mean for me the pinnacle was Second Encounter, the later levels were great and creative, many jump pads or fighting up-side down etc. But i cant understand why they are thinking yea just scrap these environments and take real life bland COD shit -.-'
3 was cobbled together from a modern military shooter they were going to make and some assets from a Doom game they pitched (hence the obvious mancubus and baron of hell enemies), so at least some of that genericness made sense, and I did still enjoy it once it got going. I just wish they'd let you have more time with that jetpack from the end. I really got the impression this was one they had their heart in from the start, and were wanting to make as a Serious Sam game from the getgo. But...I guess not. The older games really just wholesale look better than this, even 3 did more interesting visually. And the fact that they basically never use that Legion system they touted so much? Absolutely disappointing.
@@FoxDie77777 I really like 2nd Encounter. I didn't like SS2 when it first came out because of the art style change. Once I played it I thought it was amazing. There is a lot of value in that game. The art style is kind of cartoony but I noticed a lot of detail and some amazing visuals later in the game.
It's really disappointing. SS3 was basically a Call of Duty inspired and boring mess, then we get this turd. The first encounter and second encounter have this certain charm to them that the developers abandoned outright for this blandness.
this could have been another doom 2016 but it didn’t have the same baking time looks like needed another 7 year minimum. They spent all their time on the game engine i think and not enough time on the actual game.
But it looks almost completely the same as Sam 3. So, I don't know what the fuck they were doing. Covid certainly didn't cause this much trouble to development, so what did they plan to originally launch in 2019?
@Subi_fan I mean, if the girl resembles California, it doesn't make Croteam in the wrong here, since that's what California is, well, even worse actually but anyway.
@Subi_fan actually, it the opposite. They do what they do for the fans and tries to do the best they can. Stop judging superficially. And do you think a team like croteam in a game like serous sam they care about this things? Think more.
Tied in with the "original" storyline of galactic invaders every few thousand years ('cough' Mass Effect), and enemies from DOOM, lol. I mean, I see the effort is there. They're trying to make an ode to DOOM, Duke Nukem,' and even Wolfenstein, but man...what do you think they need? Better story? Level designs?
@@HenriTheHammer I could not agree more. This is a prime example of the publishers not understanding the strengths of a franchise (ex: Fallout 76), that of a dev team (ME Andromeda, Anthem), or what the gamers are looking for (pretty much all the games we're pissed about).
@@Nikotheleepic This game fully deserves a 6/10 on Steam and all those 1/2 star reviews on GOG. Constant crashes, performance hiccups, questionable graphics, lame art style and level design, + overhyped under-utilized horde system. Change my mind.
That legion system thing reminds me of the trick Square enix did with the 1000 heartless fight in Kingdom Hearts 2. Basically in KH2 when you fight the 1000 heartless the game only puts a certain amount of enemies on screen and when you defeat those enemies it puts more in it's place, also the enemies you cant fight in the background are 2d animated sprites.
Serious Scam 4
Ayyylmao
Kevin Siungdung bruh toxic af
Indeed the game is a serious scam. I feel bad for all the fans.
@@anon_of_kat your just mad that he gave a bad review on your precious series.
Kevin Siungdung what horrible thing has he done to you?
If you play the games in the chronological order (SS4, SS3, SS1E/2E, SS2) the games are about a dude that slowly becomes mad and gets trapped in a cartoonish hell.
This, I like
Insane or not, Serious sam 2 isn’t cannon. That’s official.
@@kestrel4360 I don't think I care what the devs claim to be officially cannon when they've been making (imo) worse games ever since 2
@@kestrel4360Serious sam 2 is cannon
@@kestrel4360 Cry about it, little baby man, it's fun
The open French level looks like something you see when you land outside of an airport in some kind of flying sim.
The french countryside in The Saboteur (2009) looked better.
They literally went to France took pictures and tried to make it as real-world accurate as possible. Which while impressive does not fit with the gameplay of Serious Sam which requires flat open arenas.
you either die a hero or live long enough to be duke nukem forever.
Oof
Bro that shit is worse than Duke Nukem Forever
to be worse than Duke Nukem Forever.
Is Duke Nukem forever really that bad? apart from the out dated looking graphics how's the gameplay?
Legend of Nibbaheem it’s beyond awful. Basically they took every bad design idea that was popular in 2010s and put it in one game.
I worked in 3D simulation development for a while, texturing and lighting character models in Unreal Engine. I'll mention that eyes and mouths are a pain the the 4ss because it's tough to get the internal shadowing you need to keep the inside of the mouth, the nostrils, and the top of the eyes from seeming to glow. It's because of the polygon normals, and how the direction a polygon is facing will determine which direction it can cast a shadow in, performance limitations for self-shadowing, and there are probably many tricks that work well, that I didn't know to use. I think that's why we see the glowing eyes. I'm not at all saying that this is impossible to fix, but after doing a lot of 3D for feature film VFX, I found the way lighting works in Unreal to be very difficult to get used to.
This looks like the prototype for serious sam 3.
No that’s a bit to much
@@razzkelly7565 He is right. You could swap SS4 and SS3 in terms of graphics almost.
That's insulting to Serious Sam 3.
never thought I'd hear "The shooting, when you actually get to do it" in a Serious Sam review
So you never played SS3? :)
@@radek4634 was about to say that. Man why did they went backwards from Serious Sam 2? They did really good with that game...
Rad Ek Damn bro
@@radek4634 You can't compare SS3 and SS4... SS3 had monsters from the word go. SS4 had empty ass plains of nothing.
I heard they already fixed some of that but damn..
@@lightingthief4482 ikr
You know I am kinda surprised they went with a more "realistic" artstyle considering most people hated the first few levels of SS3. What a shame.
They wanted realistic because it's easier to develop
@@jpetras16 And how does that make any sense from design wise???
@@finkamain1621 Requires less effort :)
@@jpetras16 But if the game is cartooney and not realistic, it's easier for PCs to run...........
Not necessarily. Cartoony looking games with high rez graphics are still gonna be resource intense
I think the main point isn’t that it will be technically less demanding, but less demanding creativity/design wise. Fantasy weird ass games require all sorts of thinking, new designs and revisions to make sure everything flows well with each other to make a coherent world. If you’re using realistic design it’s ‘easier’ to pull off. They can just look at real life, other games and even the previous SS game for examples/assets, rather than creating entirely new things.
it feels like Croteam forgot that the serious sam series is all budget games and set their ambitions WAY too high.
Hard to think this came out from CroTeam
Like another person said, they're an indie studio trying to pass themselves off as a AAA studio
@Lord Skeletor 3 was awesome...
@Lord Skeletor 3 had great weapons, a supreme soundtrack, the best one liners and felt badass to play. The level design was hit or miss (people complain about the early game but its definitely levels 10 and 11 that bother me) and some monsters were bad like the witch bride and technopolips but for the most part in was a very good entry in the series.
@Lord Skeletor Sam 2 had some rough edges but was still good for the most part. 3 had some good parts.
Why would they even rush serious sam
I understand that gaming communities is on a all time high due to this quarantine but serious sam isn’t that hyped enough to be rushed
In a word, publishers.
@@phydeux And money.
@@oldreaddy3341 - That's what the publishers beat you with to get you to rush. :)
SS4 was announced in 2013. However it was delayed endlessly because Croteam took on other games. Talos, Scum, other SS VR stuff.
Don't take SS4 summary from this video though. It was a review code before the 43GB (day one, or one day before release) patch. Croteam shot themselves in the foot with that. SS4 is doing 80% positive on Steam. Great looking game and great fun to play.
@@threecats8219 Game is shit lol. Hate the fake forced positive reviews
having played this recently, I can assure you that they have addressed most of these bugs/issues. I absolutely loved it.
well thats good to hear.
As that's cool, I'm just starting SS second encounter (is that the second game or an expansion of sorts for the first one?) But I'm super excited to play through the rest of them!
@@greatmatt301 Second encounter is like the UT2004 to first encounter's Ut2003. A much improved asset flip.
The actual sequel, serious sam 2, is a totally different game.
@@jackmcmorrow9397 ahh thought so, thank you!
What about Gman's point on barren landscapes with few enemies?
100% totally agree on the art style. SS just doesn't suit the modern/realistic palette. I much prefer the original games art. Much more in theme. This just looks dull and drab.
You almost can't do a realistic art style as a small studio because it will end up looking like a game from 2007, the texturing and other things take too much time and money. They were fools to use this art style
@@elperronimo My take on this is because they used photogrammetry to scan in (like how RE7 and other RE Engine games use it). Just because you have the means, doesn't really ensure it'll suit your game.
Thing is, back when they did cartoony, that eas the only style available. And even so, it looked briliant and super realistic due to great lighting.
@@RQUKOfficial just look weapons like M4 modern tactical stuff not for sam. Sam used Thompson SMG in SSFE damn croteam why u made CoD from SS
Developers should just own their art style choice they started with just like how others do it (like gearbox with borderlands)
oof, some of the larger environments in this make it look like an unreal engine asset flip
Yeah, dont know whats bout the look but it looks so... Unproffesional?
Yeah. One of my buddies told me that too when we watched the trailer.
More like a Unity asset flip, or even a fucking gmod map
@@therealbubble4696 When the E3 trailer was there and it showed these empty big maps, I thought WTF are they doing? How hard is it to create a Maya temple and a shitload of trees instead of an empty bland looking map?
Agreed. Almost looks like they just sprinkled some serious sam stuff into an asset flip game
Interviewer: "So tell me about the legion system."
Dev: "It's a really nice trick..."
Should've left it at that bruh.
It's a really nice trick that steals thousands and thousands of dollars from your loyal fanbase at day 1 :P
i mean they said it: its a TRICK. idk why people expected something else lel
And it's not even anything new. Assuming that the background NPCs don't actually possess any AI (which seemed to be implied), numerous games have done this. Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, for example, had dozens and dozens (if not hundreds) of NPCs on the Omaha Beach level. However, virtually all of them had no AI, and were just there to add to the atmosphere. It's not a tactic that we should need to rely on anymore; developers should be able to have tons of AI NPCs on screen simultaneously.
@@googlewolly Hell even first and second encounter had awe inspiring number of enemies on screen at a time. For what it was worth back in the day. And it was fabulous! Compared to that, this one looks more like a corridor shooter.
@@TG-ge1oh Agreed. I can't recall if I played the older ones, but I agree with your claim/sentiment. This game looks rushed.
Trying to make Serious Sam more serious was a mistake
Seriously? =P
If there was any franchise that didn’t need to be made even slightly realistic it’s Serious Sam. It’s tongue in cheek cartoony excess was what made it fun and stand out in the first place.
SS 2, for sure. SS the second encounter, that is true for some enemies. But SS1 was pretty much realistic. It has goofy moments, the rest is realistic.
@@kofola9145 Umm... the graphics and scenarios kinda are, but it had much more charisma and personality, things that the franchise lost since Serious Sam 3.
Serious Sam 2 was a pile of dogshit too.
@DoomestosYT I dunno. I found some of SS 3 scenes kinda funny until I noticed it took itself too seriously and that the parts I found funny were actually meant to be serious. "Growing up"... well, that's like saying Max Payne 3 grew up since Max Payne 1/2 just because it became hyper-violent.
In any case, I haven't played SS 4 yet but hooooly fuck does it look horrible with the direction it has taken. Combat looks kinda fun but all those characters and dialogue and upgrades and stuff... just no.
It was never cartoony. it was a throwback shooter, not fucking garbage Star Command cartoon show
I knew the minute they barely showed any gameplay something was seriously up
you mean down
Yes... SERIOUSly up
That was a SERIOUSLY bad pun...
ah damn it!!!!!
The game looks exactly like the "alpha test" back from 2018. It feels really rushed, and no core mechanic is completely finished. They seriously messed up on the terrain, it looks like a rejected COD game.
And only showing the best parts and talking about that legion thing, they're obviously aiming for that eazy pre-order ca$h
My disappointment is immeasurable, and my day is ruined.
LOL very good
Couldn't said it better...
I know it's a reference
New Left 4 Dead 2 update though
If thats your cup of tea
not just my day, the whole year is ruined
Realy sad to see that new Sam looks like a steam early access unity engine game, this series was with me from my early childhood, but this looks even worse than DNF
@@Liamthewaldo I believe my lying eyes
DNF was a masterpiece compared to this
And on top of that an asset flip.
In a way, that is. They used old assets of an unreleased Doom game they made.
Not just a Unity asset flip, hell it looks like the bastard lovechild of a Unity asset flip and basically any Bethesda game on release day.
@@chaosvolt I disagree, Bethesda games are always well polished, *VISUALLY* .
This one looks just ugly and amateurish, lacking detail and looking artificial. Like those early access craps that try to pull out an open world, but since they got no experience and resources, you end up with a half-assed map.
God, has it already been 9 years since Serious Sam 3? Jesus Christ
I remember when first part was totally new
@@CyrilViXP First one was great, it didn't really get with the times after that
I feel like when games take this cinematic storytelling route it almost always backfires alot, Serious Sam is an arena shooter with a ton of action, should have kept it that way during the whole thing and maybe put you in first person during the cinematics so you can atleast feel like you're there
1st/2nd Encounter were fine with no cinematics beyond showing Sam walking in or out of some room.
For the kind of game that heavily relies on heavy adrenal action, cinematics pretty much ruins everything and breaks the flow.
Except for Serious Sam 2. The cinematics are welcoming and joke around more than covering an event taking place.
Some of the cinematics just sums up what you're up against. Like the flying alcoholic witch that smashes into a train, which can also happen naturally while playing. ;)
@@muffinman2546 Personally I felt SS2 was heavily improved by playing in co-op, because the cutscenes don't play in co-op.
I really like SS2, but I do hate the cutscenes.
@@todesziege Yeah. They are kinda nice the very first time but really irritating the second time and onwards.
+ Co-op actually let's you customize the difficulty to irrational extremes like 500% enemy strength and health multiplier but with infinite ammo. ;)
@@muffinman2546 There are lots of benefits with playing co-op -- it's the best way to enjoy Sam in general I'd say -- but I didn't go into anything else since the thread really only was about cutscenes.
Comedy will always be a bit subjective, but I don't think I would have enjoyed Sam 2 any less if it didn't have cutscenes -- rather the opposite.
I don't get it. Talos Principle was stellar. Why such a sudden collapse in quality?
It seems like talos principle was a really good fluke or something.
@@DukeoftheAges well the OG serious Sam games are rock solid too and the remasters were done well. There's some questionable stuff in SS3 already thoogh. They've had a few good games but it's been many years since they released a totally new quality game outside of Talos Principal and some remasters.
Probably they knew they are making a stinker, but had to publish something to either fullfill contractual obligations or keep the trademark. Or some other such nonsense
@@lysytoszef nah, they have been developing this for 6 years. If that was the intention, they could had just developed a shitty mobile game.
I literally can't come up with a hypothesis to explain this disaster. There was no plausible reason for this to happen. They had the technology. They had the experience. They had the time. The only thing I can think is that they blew the entire fortune they made with Talos Principle in hookers and coke.
@@SGtMarkIV Maybe. But it's as possible that they realized mid-way that the game will simply not work but instead of postponing/suspending/re-doing it they just crap it out cause they simply had to
theyre playing make believe AAA devs, spewing "next gen tech" buzzwords such as "100k enemies on screen" and having pointless cinematic cutscenes and similar fluff
they have no idea how to design a quality shooter, they focused on being grand and superficiality instead of all the subtleties that makes an old school shooter great
They should learn from DUSK or ULTRAKILL
A bad mistake to be on the bandwagon of AAA game
Ss was always like that that's why I never liked it.
Yeah.. I don't think I've ever really enjoyed their cinematics in their games. The gunplay and the enemies has always been the point of the series for me, while the cutscenes tended to feel quite boring to watch.
@@Dregomz02 I've been waiting for a good ss game since the second encounter. i thought i enjoyed serious sam 3 but it was just bland. and i was excited when serious sam 4 was announced..noww, I'm just disappointed
I get that it's a serious sam game and that's kinda their schtick to be big and bombastic but truthfully I don't need all that AAA fluff, I just want fun encounter design in a scale that is reachable within the developer's budget. Cutscenes aren't even necessary in a serious sam game in my opinion, just have a little text blurb about why you're there then let the player loose. If you need further lore, add little diary entries you can find in secret areas.
Ambition is how the best video games are made, but if you don't have the means, work around limitations and polish what you _can_ do.
I didn’t know croteam took some game design ideas from Bethesda.
Always been since 3
@@WatcherKoops4677 yeah lol
Actually they were working to make DOOM 4, and some ideas were reuse to make Serious Sam 3
It seems croteam got poisoned by the generic triple A studios nowadays... been nice knowing you guys
@@WatcherKoops4677, well you're right. I am disappointed because i know that they have so much talent, they could make a master peace of the genre, but at the end, they want to appeal the massive audiences
This makes me appreciate Serious Sam 1 and Second Encounter more. Shows how ahead of the times they were... in 2001!
This looks like it's holding together with duct tape and glue and should've been released 2022.
Nice rhyme.
Or never released.
@Amadeus Eisenberg Evidently, the publisher just wanted money. That'll obviously be most (if not all) publishers' top priority, but when it's this bad, it's straight-up greed.
I personally like SS3, especially its DLC (Jewel of the nile), also played through TFE HD, TSE HD and SS2. (Didn't play the next encounter, but seems to be great as well). indeed TFE, TSE are the bests however SS3 is close up right there. SS2 is good, the cartoony stuff is way too much, however the rest of the game is great. SS4 has its moments but, this is the first game which actually felt like more of a cod, doom, nukem, mix than an actual serious sam game. (Next to the bugs and graphics problems, which are obviously problems).
SS3 managed to capture the serious sam feeling at least. (Many people hate it for valid reasons, but it is still a serious sam game, the desert levels capture everything what SS is about imho). SS4 indeed needed more time, it could have been way much better. Also time to stop with the prequels and develop a sequel in which Mental can be seen finally at least. (If not fought)
That's a real shame. A 'Serious ShAMe' even. Been a fan since the first game released, was really looking forward to this.
Nice I'm calling it Serious Shame 4 from now on.
@@Shadykilla You're welcome.
I thought 3 was shit already, but yeah loved the first 2 games
@@harmleyten4 Same, actually. I was hoping they'd leave 3 behind and look back to the first game for inspiration.
I was actually looking forward to this but the consensus seems to be it’s a subpar Serious Sam game. It’s a shame but I won’t buy it, I don’t want to support a game that’s synonymous with mediocre. Gonna be wasting my money on the Doom expansion instead.
I really hope you're wrong about it being the last serious Sam game, it's been almost twenty years since it started, and it would be a shame if mental was never defeated.
@@rodrigoaugusto2912 well technically, there already is a game where you kill mental, but tormental is a spin-off and it's not canon, we can't even be sure if that's what mental even looks like in canon.
@@Largentina. a shame. would be if you were peeled like a fucking potato. oh wait..no it wouldn't.
It’s not gonna be the last game. They are also working on a complete reboot of Serious Sam 2 to make it a proper sequel instead of that really cartoony mess.
@@romanplays1 it’s just a video game series my dude, and a pretty bad one at that, no need to get violent
It's a shame the legion system is just window dressing when the Earth Defence Force games have managed to actually pull it off.
And for a lower MSRP! Lol
The EDF deploys
Too much content, too little time. Too bad, if only they got more time.
As someone from Croatia and seeing this stuff firsthand visiting an annual gaming convention we have i can explain a bit from my perspective why this keeps hapening. Our small gaming industry is plagued with devs being up their own asses and shortminded penny pinching, everyone just thinks about how will they make profit without thinking about the actuall product resulting in alot of studios doing mobile garbage, when it comes to actuall games released speaking with devs they are super stuck up saying they invent genres and stuff and when the product gets released it gets bombed to oblivion with bad reviews IF they even do over the years i have seen hundreds of games come and go without ever being mentioned again plus we are behind with trends like at least five years. There you go combine all of that and you get an abundance of at best mediocre games but it's sad to see because this and scum is the best Croatian gaming has to offer and it turned out pretty crappy. Have a nice day everyone.
I don't know about that. Croteam has always been really good. This is literally the first truly bad game they've made.
@@saisameer8771 Bad in what sense? The game was released in a bad state, but the gameplay itself is fantastic, one of the best Serious Sam ever released and the best FPS I've played in recent years. Pure action and fun.
Just out of curiosity, did you form your opinion that the game is bad playing for hours or watching the video of a casual noob like GManLives?
@@jpa3974 My pc can't run this game so yes, it's based on gmanlives and framerater's reviews.
@@saisameer8771 3 was a pretty crap detour from the Serious Sam experience as it were. So no, Croteam has now messed up 2 games within the same franchise in a row. Sure they can fix it somewhat in post...but isnt that something we look down upon when done by Activision and EA?
@@saisameer8771 i think its unfair to form your opinion on two reviews, i was the same as you but i also heard good things from other people so i bought it myself to see if it was really that bad and to refund it before my 3 hours on steam if it was and honestly, aside from the legion system which is a total lie and the optimization i actually like it a lot, more so than BFE. dual wielding is a great mechanic, i havent run into any major graphical bugs and even running the game on low settings cause my rig is shit i think it looks really good, and the carcassonne chapter with the castle on the hill is probably one of the best levels in the series.
11:43 "That's not a noife."
He's Australian, he's legally obligated to say that. If he doesn't, he gets deported to Great Britain.
I'd jokingly argue that that would be an upgrade, but not in today's UK
THIS is a noife!
And they were deported to AUS in the first place from there
@@ShenDoodles Even in yesterday's UK, it would be a massive downgrade.
This game looks like a Garry's Mod project.
Swear this was the first thing I thought.
They promoted their Legion system so much but they only used twice in the final game...
A russian streamer found HUGE(might even be artificially generated) out of bounds area that isn't used anywhere in the game, seems like they were trying to make an open world.
But failed,or maybe future use.
Everyone found this area, it's in France. Though i don't think it's artificially generated (at least not all of it)
@@yukisuzuki629 Italy
This was evident in Serious Sam BFE from 2011 too. They tried to make a modern military shooter so the first few hours of the game take place in some war-ravaged urban environments that were suitable for another COD MW game. Well ok they made the assets so why not use them, but these assets do not match with SS theme at all.
Same with those massive open world areas that contain nothing. It looks like something out of BeamNG.drive. They were trying to make an open world racing sim or sth? Idk.
@@daniilka3763 Spain
"The game is once again a prequel" because Croteam would rather be forcefully converted to veganism than come up with a satisfying ending to the series, when they can just keep jamming in unnecessary back story
They're just going to keep making prequels until it wraps around to being set in ancient Egypt again.
Luckily this isnt the final main game im sure,i really hope the fifth part actually means something after the SS1 stuff,like travelling to time and fighting mental off,etc.
@@burney7998 Well ss2 reboot is canned so expect SS5 to be another prequel.
@@Laki99000 I wish Croteam respected the fans as much as ID loves them. Fuck I'm jealous of Doom fans! I even heard that in SS4's story they made it canon that "every Sam game takes place in its own timeline/universe"....
Yeah Croteam went with THAT while ID confirmed with Eternal that Doom 1, 2, 64, 2016 and Eternal create 1 canon.
I just want Sam to get a big W god damn it and not just prolonging the inevitable destruction of Earth as shown at the end of SS3.
Lazy, is what I call it.
amazing how they've learned so little from serious sam 3 after 9 years. after the complaints people had about that game, you'd think they'd go more in the direction of the first and second encounter, not more of 3.
Well said. Give me the wild ancient cities and their varying degrees of verticality, platforming, booby traps and waves of enemies. You can keep the reloading, kill animations and bland modern levels.
Croteam forgot many years ago that the 'Serious' in the title is supposed to be ironic.
I see you didn't play the game
The game doesn't take itself seriously at all. It's just the asesthetic that's too realistic.
@@adam-xt8te I haven't played a second and even I can see this is a comedic game. The Borderlands-but-in-MS-Paint sequences make that obvious.
I'd say they didn't get why the earlier games were more visually quirky than the bland urban sprawl of 3.
@@TG-ge1oh Likely also because technology didn't allow more realistic graphics
I had a grotesque but stealthy gut pain that whispered "it'll be baaaaad" the entire time I saw the trailers.
Are you happy now?
@Брандон Кeллeр Absolute bullshit, game design decisions are the major problem not number of people worked on this garbage.
They clearly learned nothing from their previous mistakes. The fact that they tried to bite off more than they can chew is smallest of their mistakes.
Every single game gets worse and worse and they don't listen their fans.
@@xansaibot3134 'Waiting to die is a kind of torture worse than death itself'
At least I am fking happier, can't you see
@@hannibalburgers477 ok now it's not absolute garbage I am guessing you didn't play and based off your opinion on gmans
We need a serious Sam 2 artstyle mod for this game
I can't believe this was in my Steam wishlist for 2 years.
That's really too bad, I was genuinely looking forward to this one. Maybe they shilled to Stadia because they knew the reviews would be bad.
or maybe that way they could get more time for the console versions. think about it, they get the stadia money to finish the game and once a new year of extra time has passed, the complete game is delivered to at least some people.
Let's hope so at the very least, I would hate this to be the last serious sam game when it seems that there are many things that seem unpolished ideas instead of directly bad ones/ broken implementation
Stadia is great and i don't think it's their fault if the game is like this.. i mean. Even if people see stadia as a bad platform, it doesn't mean that it's a place where they put bad games just to find excuses.. I own it and have more fun with the games in general than my ps4 slim. The developers made errors, stadia or not stadia, it's their fault
@@newdraftanimations stadia Is shit, how can u give Money to Google, After all the shit they do... Stick at least to a console, or Better buy a good pc
I'm seeing a lot of tired faces in this game...
👁️👄👁️
15:30 totally not argent energy absorbtion animation, not at all
but in a bland way
@Ghost You can't necessarily trademark an animation sequence.
Ghost very true, but it looks remarkably similar. Too similar if you ask me
finally someone that brings up the terrible art style. Going realistic was a terrible decision.
What do you mean going realistic? Every Sam game has been as realistic as possible. Most are just really old games and thats how realistic things got for the tech of the time.
evil-doer Serious sam 2 and next encounter didn't really aim for realism.
@@eyedine you have extremely bad taste and every single point from you is now invalid
Yeah I didnt like serious sam 3 envirronements... I prefered the older games with a lot of color andfantasic envirronement
@@_evildoer yeah, but imo ancient tombs & cities, temples, space, and Big ass waterfalls are way more interesting than a regular street and some empty fields next to a motorway
“Nobody has long hair in this game!”
15 seconds later, you’re talking to a character with long hair lol
16:16 .
Yeah ggman doesn’t do attention to detail, at all
Yeah but look how shittily its done hahah
Am I the only one not seeing it?
@@ProxyDoug I don''t see it either.
The lack of footage had a reason i guess. I expected this.
The name may have serous in it but the developers didn’t take it as such
@@KBWrecker 6 years in develepment for a game that already has 3 games behind it? I swear you have to actively try to make a shitty game to actually achieve this final product
Sam 4: totally not a scam
9:30 In the previous games (atleast TFE AND TSE anyway) the crosshair would change color depending on enemies health, but still, DOOM Eternal proved that you don't need health bars, just good damage models, even if plasma rifle's microwave beam kinda shows a health bar.
This is the second health option in this game, first one being the health bars, second being crosshair colour and the third is not showing enemy health at all. I chose second because that’s how it was in TFE and TSE
Serious Sam: Steam Greenlight Edition
"Where the shadows become almost artistic"
You can't call shadow people that anymore dude.
They prefer to be called "un-lit"
21:41 wow they didn't even bother to animate the steering wheel, wtf just happened.
Ah jeez. Miss old serious sam. This seems like the comparison between old turok and xbox turok.
Turok Evolution?
@@just-fun-stuff6753 was more thinking the one just called turok (360 game i think), where he is some marine in a jungle with no interesting guns and no interesting enemies.
@@Meteorlink You know, I wish someone else took a stab at a modern Turok. They could really do something special if the right team does it.
@@Meteorlink ah yeah, that one :D
@@Meteorlink The only thing I like about Turok 2008 is the Dinosaur designs since those designs were the best designs at the time (atleast in my opinion).
As much as I didn't want this to be the case, I'm not really surprised.
When you take a game and make it's usp "thousands of enemy on screen at once" that comes with a whole host of problems that not even AAA developers would be able to manage effectively like performance and level design time. It's sad because serious sam fundamentally has a very solid loop and concept but the need to go above one upping that seems to be fundemental to a lot of the problems from what I can see. It obviously doesn't help as well that Croteam is a dev who's historically suffered with development issues such as serious sam 3 effectively being built off of another game or just making odd design choices.
It's sad but it's a cacophony of issues stacked against them on this one.
EDF has done that even in the ps2 with great result, now they are aiming even more with edf 6 and edf 5 , look for gameplay and you are going to see more than 300 enemies on screen
EDF and Dynasty Warriors say otherwise. Hell, Devil May Cry 5 is getting a new mode that fills the screen with enemies.
Two people have mentioned EDF and dynasty warriors. I'm going to add with: samurai warriors, warriors orochi, dawn of war, ninety nine nights and many more. It's not a struggle to put hundreds or thousands of enemies on a screen at one time whatsoever
i just finished the entire thing with 3 buddies via coop and never saw any of these flaws/glitches/bugs. was flawless from beginning to end. so much fun! had a blast
actually finished it twice, not even one crash xD
"That's not a knoife." Ah you made my day Sonny Jim.
I honestly am not surprised at all about how it turned out. To me, even Serious Sam 3 was a downright depressing game to play just because of the design choices and gameplay. One of the worst games I've ever played.
@Stix N' Stones yea plus the last couple of levels were really fun when things ramped up
@@cameron5367 The last level was fun and painful at the same time(the one before the boss)
@Stix N' Stones Well, for me it was THAT bad. Guess I'm not used to playing bad games. I'm being serious. I dislike it that much because it actually created bad memories, lol.
Why...why, WHY would they get rid of the Sledgehammer!? That shit was iconic!
No, it wasn't. It was only used in BFE, and it becomes obsolete the moment you get the shotgun.
Another great review.
I do still think we need to stop saying Covid this and Covid that even has a partial excuse, the problems showed by this game are not a "last 9 months thing", they go deeper
Yeah, especially considering other studios are releasing full, complete games right now it is a bullshit excuse.
yeah i doubt covid had anything to do with like 50% of the game just not feeling well and not being done to release, they released it way too soon
@@smugplush It was only an excuse for maybe a couple months, at most. But other companies are pretty much acting perfectly normal now. That's why I don't consider it that much of a good excuse. I don't think the game would have been ready, Covid or not.
@@smugplush It's a lot more efficient to work from home if you are in the creative business. Have a quick skype call about the project, coordinate your efforts, and then do your part from the comfort of your sofa with your cat sitting on your lap.
I can understand a lot of businesses going to shit from this whole thing, but I honestly can't imagine how game development could be made easier by working out of an office. That kind of thing made sense in the infant days of the internet, but now that you can send 100s of megabytes of data in a couple of minutes at worst, there's no reason for the creative types to shave and shower, commute and put on something that isn't a PJ or t-shirt and shorts.
The Serious Sam franchise was always about low-budget, high-octane entertainment. If they can't deliver at least half of that, the flu isn't their biggest problem.
After all the great games Croteam have created, the only valid excuse they have for this cock-up is: *"We done fxxked up."*
Personally, I am not holding out any hope for a Serious Sam 2 2, so at this point, I'm willing to let it die.
Sad, because I used to really love the series.
@@evanharrison4054 I think you're forgetting about the "technical" aspect of video games. Trying to fix bugs or coordinate with others to code and program a game without actually being together is a goddamn nightmare. Games aren't $40 paintings that you could become too lazy to finish till you have 4 hours left till your deadline.
That being said, that doesn't excuse how bad SS4 is.
this is a console exclusive for stadia.
*Ironic.*
@Matt Gray The keyword is "console"
A shit game for a shit exclusive console.
Seems like it is YOU is a console exclusive for the stadia, Mr mod jack
It's weird how Croteam doubled-down on the modern military aesthetic considering the intro for First Encounter states that Sam was actually from the far future, where humanity established offworld colonies that were overrun by Mental's forces.
What is this game? Serious lack of budget 4?
Something has gone terribly bad if a game like this looks and plays like an early access steam game. What a mess.
it look like they just use whatever pre-made unreal engine assets available then slap it together and... *BOOM* there you have it, Not So Serious Sam 4.
@Code Turtle but it not look like it
@@tekken.universal2343 how would you know, you used this engine before? dumbass
Well Croteam has never been a AAA developer, I don't know where you got that idea, but they're a small indie developer with low budget, always has been, SS4 shouldn't be a big surprise.
@@AJ-po6up but still ss4 looks awfull if they got back those cartoonish textures it will not look bad
It even looks underwhelming. I'm gonna be honest. I understand why people liked the games when they came out, technical limitations back then and such, but this in 2020? It looks like you spawned a bunch of enemies on a default Gmod map.
If I'm being honest that's what most of this series looks like to someone like me who isn't actually familiar with it - a bunch of enemy assets plopped into example maps from a level creator kit. It's why I never bothered with them.
@@ViralOutbreak89 That's honestly kind of what the series is about. What made it a stellar series (the older titles) was the gunplay, the humor on the level of Duke, and the extremely varied locations. But the main selling point was each encounter was a huge arena where you fought tons of enemies. Even on the very first title. The encounters were a scaled back version of Doom slaughterfest wads. But instead of just placing 100x of one enemy on a map and calling it a day. The encounters with serious sam have always been balanced. Each unit brings a unique challenge so when you have them all in a group fighting them, it becomes an adrenaline fueled slaughterfest. Similar to PainKiller. As Painkiller was known for that as well. (But Pain killer took the theme and used gothic levels and enemy types, plus super natural powers instead of just pure gunplay.)
@@ViralOutbreak89 It is... Kinda. The first and second encounter had. a REALLY good level design, combined with music, sound design, humour... This game lacks everything that the other ones had.
The previous title may seems like "Gmod arenas" but they were personalised, they had a soul, they had that Serious Sam feeling. The enemies were unique, you had to face each enemy in a single way (kinda like what Doom started doing recently), the game had a soul, an interesting gameplay and a immersive world. This title has none of that, so it literally is a G mod map filled with random enemies... Unfortunately. :(
Moment when they decided to go with mores "serious" theme was the moment SS died to me. Like first two encounters were a perfect balance between being serious and having a comical reliefs here and there. SS2 went a little too far and literally became a comic, but it was still a good game.
My look at this is as follows: They wanted to create next Doom so badly, that when their idea was scrapped, instead of going forward and live with it, they decided to do it anyway over and over just to, idk, prove to somebody they are capable of doing modern military shooters. Poor design, poor choices, making everything too serious for sake of being "modern"... nah Sam is dead. I was affraid SS4 might be a disaster because they kept that SS3 look, but it is still painful to watch considering i was a big fan of first entires :(
@@crouchjump5787 and second encounter. those two are the only great serious sam games. everything else...they just don't have that magic
If you haven't had the chance yet, you should try your best to get your hands onto the original Xbox version of Serious Sam. It's the best possible version you can play imo. First and second encounters combined, weapons from both strewn throughout all the levels, serious bombs, the best cartoon version of the artstyle, and added cutscenes that fit in pretty well
Honestly the overly cartoon style would be better than this overly realistic one if I had to choose
@@netherwolf3012 Indeed, "realistic" ones are plain and forgettable. Cartoonish graphics will be remembered for a long time and will age way, way better.
@@auroriasolaris Yeah, even if overdone. Especially now, with all the bland shooters it doesn't even take that much to really stand out. Not as bad as the late 2000 and early 2010 though.
The sledgehammer was one of the few good things from SS3. That, and you could jump over enemies almost like you could in Blood. Combining those two things made gnars so much fun to fight
Edit: also, in terms of the performance, it really is all over the place. I actually got it to run at 60fps on an integrated graphics card, of course in potato mode. I did it for laughs, but it ended up being stable somehow. But potato mode puts it in fullbright, and keeps character models and textures still very high. I'd take shadowmaps over seeing the sweat glisten off Sam in a cutscene. That makes zero sense to me. Hell, I could still see the stitching and stains in his clothing! But no dark areas. Like... why?
Yet other people are having crashes and frame drops. But only some of them. And they actually have the hardware. It makes me wonder what the hell is going on under the hood of this game engine. It makes no damn sense at all to me.
The first two games were amazing, and I still play them. Personally, I think the Second Encounter is Serious Sam at his best overall. It's a shame this is so sloppy. I think things went downhill for Sam a long time ago, mostly when they started introducing other characters and trying to add depth to the story. They tried to make him too "serious," and in doing so, just made him and his friends look dumb. The cheesy one-liners make way more sense when it's just a tough, angry joker against hordes of aliens and monsters. I just wish modern developers could understand what made games great back then. It was the essence, not the details - and the deeper you go into detail, the deeper you're forced to go, in a never-ending cycle of exhausted expectations. Keep it simple, yet amazing. Stick to Sam's fundamental appeal, and don't bother with the needless fluff. We didn't play it back then for fluff, and we aren't now either. Still, this game does look like fun, and I'm not hating.
"I don't wanna say it's a broken game. I was able to play it from start to finish." Really? Is that the bar we're setting now-a-days? I guess, by that logic, Fallout 76 isn't broken either.
This comment should be pinned
Fallout 76 has an ending?
@Michael Smith Bruh I love gmanlives, but I don't always agree with him on certain things. Especially the travesty that was that HDOOM review.
If he doesn't think 76 is a bad game, that's fine.
Fallout 76 doesnt really have an end though
Damn... I was really looking forward to this. Depressing. I at least hope they keep working on it to try and improve it.
Maybe I'll sound like a blind fanboy, but watching the review before playing it myself, then playing the first 3 levels for myself and so far... I am actually enjoying Serious Sam 4, quite a great deal in fact. I noticed some jank here and there, but the gunplay is better than ever. Maybe it gets worse later in the campaign? I don't know.
But so far,, the gameplay has more than enough to keep me engaged. I'll return to this comment once I get farther in the campaign
@Manek Iridius Pretty much
>"If you're not using classic skins in Zoom Eternal - you're dead to me"
>Never bothers to set classic enemy health counter in SS4.
>Plays on tourist
Soyman lives
Shut the fuck up, weeb.
@@Gggmanlives what
@@Gggmanlives Wow, what a nice argument. So mature of you.
@@Gggmanlives says the guy with gal gun review
@@Gggmanlives they'll get so fuckin triggered lmfaooo
I couldn't disagree more. Compared to Serious Sam 3 I think Serious Sam 4 is an overall improvement.
I much prefer the colorful aesthetics, the varied locals compared to the bombed out cities and the domination of shades of brown.
Only thing I wish for is for Croteam to drop Sam's military buddies, I care more about the Gnaars I'm chainsawing than I do about what's-their-faces.
NPCs, quests, cutscenes, dialogues, skill points and empty open world is what everyone wants from a Serious Sam game
That's the issue. They try to go way too serious into this game.
Know you sarcastic, but that seems to be what most game devs/ publishers think gamers want in all of their games. Cause that literally is 75% of games these days 😭
But it isn't open world tho.
Next they'll be including sandbox survival elements I guess...
Or maybe a battle royal mode.
"Like the Borderlands intros done in MS Paint"
If they added a bright background it would've been as bad as the ones in Borderlands 3
Why, Croteam, why?
With the revival of classic shooters post DOOM 2016, I was rooting for Sam, but it breaks my heart.
That's the problem, with the sucess of Doom they probably decided that their game needs upgradable weapons and skills too.
Maybe because they are a fucking indie company in Croatia and they worked on other useless projects like vr sam games and talks principle?
the eyes they look like other joe doing the mass effect "im tired"scene
The problem i have which i also saw in the trailer is that all of the environment just look SO empty, too open almost like an asset flip level.
The eyes remind me of ME:Andromeda.
Ahhhh they do🤣
Who actually thought it would be good? As soon as they first showed off the game I thought, "This looks terrible."
It didn't looked the best I agree. However there were significan't improvements later... We'll see after that big patch.
I was hoping that they didn't rush this game, THEY said it wasn't rushed.
In the end i can't believe they released the game in this state, cause croteam i know doesn't release raw ass game.
I thought it would be good. But then again I just saw screenshots ½ year ago. As soon as I saw some gameplay a few weeks ago, I could see that it looked bland.
wow no offense but i think i am the only person who likes this game
@@ahmetkaraosman7509 I still want the game, but will give it some time to fix bugs, and a sale. They really should go back to the style of serious sam 2. That was a great coop game.
Some of those levels look ripped out of The Talos Principle.
THIS! I liked Talos and now I saw the same textures and assets just re-arranged to whole levels. Talos with guns. Really strange... its all quite a sad story
Talos actually borrowed all those assets from SS3 and SS4.
They simply released Talos before SS4. These assets were from the start made for SS4.
You know, playing this after all the patches and having upgraded my pc made my experience a lot better. SS4 is a game that shows it had a hard development but overall its a decent game. It has its flaws but personally its a step in the right direction after BFE, it really addresses a lot of issues compared to that game, and having added mod support really makes the game a lot more replayable. I would say that if you didnt like it at launch, maybe try it now.
7:30 Thank you! The first thing I thought when I looked at this game is that it looks more like COD than Serious Sam. I mean, look at the scenarios! SS first and second encounter had such great locations, like Egypt, Mayan Empire, Babylon, etc. Even SS2 had some really cool stages: forests, cities, swamps, wastelands and the super technological city at the end...
Honestly expected this to be a mess after seeing how similar it looked to SS3.
Maybe Serious Sam 2 wasn't as bad of a direction for the series to go as some people seem to keep parroting :/
at least 3 was still fun
@@MrDmoney156
I enjoyed 2 far more than 3 though
@@justiceforjoggers2897 yeah the original 1 & 2 are defo the best in the series and much crazier but not to say 3 was the worst game ever made but then again i've played it on the PlayStation 3 years ago and was the ONLY FPS game that wasn't too much like a Call of Duty clone which was flooded everywhere during that generation and no originality.
@@MrDmoney156 3 is just boring as hell.
I do think this game looks generic and less interesting than the older titles. This trend was started on Sam 3. I thought that one looked fairly generic but the engine was impressive at the time. The PC version has some awesome particle effects. I am hoping they patch this and finish it.
Wanted to say the same i mean for me the pinnacle was Second Encounter, the later levels were great and creative, many jump pads or fighting up-side down etc. But i cant understand why they are thinking yea just scrap these environments and take real life bland COD shit -.-'
i blame the people who hated 2. That and second encounter are the pinacle of the series
3 was cobbled together from a modern military shooter they were going to make and some assets from a Doom game they pitched (hence the obvious mancubus and baron of hell enemies), so at least some of that genericness made sense, and I did still enjoy it once it got going. I just wish they'd let you have more time with that jetpack from the end.
I really got the impression this was one they had their heart in from the start, and were wanting to make as a Serious Sam game from the getgo. But...I guess not. The older games really just wholesale look better than this, even 3 did more interesting visually. And the fact that they basically never use that Legion system they touted so much? Absolutely disappointing.
@@FoxDie77777 for me serious sam 2 was the best
@@FoxDie77777 I really like 2nd Encounter. I didn't like SS2 when it first came out because of the art style change. Once I played it I thought it was amazing. There is a lot of value in that game. The art style is kind of cartoony but I noticed a lot of detail and some amazing visuals later in the game.
6:20 "One thing I noticed, that no one has long hair" 6:41 character with long hair :D
That looks like Gibby wearing a wig that doesn’t move at all
The engine is amazing; the Talos Principle uses it really well to get gorgeous visuals with really good performance. I highly recommend that game.
WHAT IS THAT UPGRADE ORB ANIMATION? They straight up copied that from the new Doom games.
SS4 has always looked like a thrown together 2010 game. More flat levels with monsters just running at you.
It's really disappointing. SS3 was basically a Call of Duty inspired and boring mess, then we get this turd. The first encounter and second encounter have this certain charm to them that the developers abandoned outright for this blandness.
this could have been another doom 2016 but it didn’t have the same baking time looks like needed another 7 year minimum. They spent all their time on the game engine i think and not enough time on the actual game.
Just like Sonic Forces. God damn, I'm sorry you Serious Sam fans had to go through this shit. It really must be disappointing.
But it looks almost completely the same as Sam 3. So, I don't know what the fuck they were doing. Covid certainly didn't cause this much trouble to development, so what did they plan to originally launch in 2019?
Ah, the most humanizing aspect of the LGBT community. Rainbow flags plastered everywhere on their attire.
During this review I've counted 5-6 female characters and 4 of them looked like stereotypical butch lesbians... Seems a bit forced...
It appears that that girl is Californian, which makes sense, especially in the contrast to the Texan girl, lol.
Lol I'm a gay dude and I cringed so hard when I saw that
@Subi_fan I mean, if the girl resembles California, it doesn't make Croteam in the wrong here, since that's what California is, well, even worse actually but anyway.
@Subi_fan actually, it the opposite. They do what they do for the fans and tries to do the best they can. Stop judging superficially. And do you think a team like croteam in a game like serous sam they care about this things? Think more.
This looks like a bootleg budget unity version of serous sam 3
It's like HTDF by the original
Tied in with the "original" storyline of galactic invaders every few thousand years ('cough' Mass Effect), and enemies from DOOM, lol. I mean, I see the effort is there. They're trying to make an ode to DOOM, Duke Nukem,' and even Wolfenstein, but man...what do you think they need? Better story? Level designs?
Serious Sam just cranked his last joke on Duke Nukem's grave...
It should be called Serious Sam Forever
Why Croteam, why?
Why no release when ready.
I feel like they have run out of money to pay their employees.
@@viktorvlasov483 It's not the croteam that decides release dates. It's devolver, and guess who's been impatient to get their publisher money.
@@ivoivic2448 Hmm i could swear devolver was the good guy of the gaming industry
@@kabardino1337 publishers are never good guys. granted croteam bit off more than they could chew, tho.
@@ivoivic2448 They ruin a lot of games by demanding quicker development times for example, and you get games like colonial marines...
Sam has gotten out of shape.
Also, is it just me, or does every FPS has to almost be an RPG at this point?
Truth,i dislike how they addd skill points,now all FPS's are just skill points,leveling up,grinding,etc.
It's often done for padding, and considering how unfinished and empty this looks that might be the case here too.
It's all becoming one thing. RPGs are becoming more sandbox survival, shooters are becoming rpg, sandboxes becoming both shooter and rpg...
@@HenriTheHammer I could not agree more. This is a prime example of the publishers not understanding the strengths of a franchise (ex: Fallout 76), that of a dev team (ME Andromeda, Anthem), or what the gamers are looking for (pretty much all the games we're pissed about).
Why make bars above the heads when they did a 100x better option in the old games where the Chrosshair would change the colour based on their hp??????
Ye the old way is pretty inventive and great
You can change that in the menus?
... I can literally see the Talos Principle assets that they re-used. That's really something. What happened to Cro-team?
@Esuard Leder SS2 is garbage. I can see you don’t know what makes a SS game good.
This looks like an asset flip..
The game looks like one of those unity asset scam games
Something I'd expect to see on BigFry's channel...
Yeah, I thought the same. At points, I kept thinking ive seen that asset before...
Josh Gay - Videography & Photography frrrr lmfaooo
Well, that's serious depressed.
This is just depressing.
Really? I think it's hilarious. It would only be depressing if I'd bought this junk, but I'm not stupid, so I didn't.
Really? I'm having a great time with SS4
@@sunnyjim1355 just because you didn't buy the game doesn't mean you aren't an idiot
@@Nikotheleepic This game fully deserves a 6/10 on Steam and all those 1/2 star reviews on GOG. Constant crashes, performance hiccups, questionable graphics, lame art style and level design, + overhyped under-utilized horde system. Change my mind.
That legion system thing reminds me of the trick Square enix did with the 1000 heartless fight in Kingdom Hearts 2.
Basically in KH2 when you fight the 1000 heartless the game only puts a certain amount of enemies on screen and when you defeat those enemies it puts more in it's place, also the enemies you cant fight in the background are 2d animated sprites.
Duke nukem: Come on Serious Sam, Doom has clearly won this fight.