But even here the game defeats itself with just two maps to play on. As quickly uninteresting as the story mode is on your own you can play through it with up to 15 other people online, which as far as we know is completely unique and a real hoot with decent allies.Even better is the survival mode, which makes Gears Of War and Halo feel like turn-based strategy games by comparison. You can dial down the difficulty and the problem is solved but then the game’s too easy and you’re left without a happy medium.With a perfunctory competitive multiplayer that Croteam never seem to have been interested in Serious Sam 3 would be a disaster if not for one thing: co-operative play. Limited health we can understand but the game is so stingy with ammo it sometimes feels more like an old school Resident Evil than Doom. This isn’t a flaw but part of the design and the whole old school aesthetic.What we don’t understand though is why the ammunition is so limited on the Normal difficulty level. None of the new monsters are as memorable as the classics though and the giant bull beasts and horribly screaming kamikaze bomb monsters are still the standouts.Especially as most of them do nothing more than run at you in a straight line, without a hint of strategy or artificial intelligence. Even the weapons are almost all the same as before.There are new additions to each, including a grey cityscape that might be meant as a parody of modern military shooters but we’re not quite sure. The enemies here are almost all identical to those in the original game 10 years ago and one of the primary settings for the game is still Ancient Egypt. There is an artistry to even the most apparently shallow of games and Croteam have certainly cornered the market on one note shooters.The problem is they’re not willing to vary the formula by even the smallest timbre. Instead the appeal is fighting back dozens of enemies at a time, not just the two or three at a time of most modern shooters, and not caring about anything other your ammo and health count.How appealing that description sounds to you will largely depend on your history with PC-based shooters, although the pacing and wave design of enemies also has much in common with golden age coin-ops. But all we’ve had is misfire Serious Sam II and then the entirely unnecessary HD remake of First Encounter.Serious Sam 3 is a prequel (BFE stands for ‘Before First Encounter’) but the very last thing you play a game like this for is the story. Especially as they make their own graphics engine and are clearly technically very talented.
Thanks to a series of delays though it ended up looking that way though, with its thoroughly old school mechanics.Inspired by Doom and apparently little else the original game was harmless, silly fun but we always assumed Croteam were going to go onto bigger and better things. We do get the joke though, after all managing to sell almost exactly the same game three times to the same audience is pretty clever going.Originally released in 2001, Serious Sam: The First Encounter was never intended to be a reaction to the more complex and realistic breed of shooter emerging at that time. They’re clearly a pretty wacky lot at developer Croteam, some may even need classifying as zany.
Stop us if you’ve heard this one before, but the funny thing about Serious Sam is… it’s not very serious. Serious Sam 3: BFE (PC) â youâll never die alone