https://www.cybersport.ru/games/articles/obzor-serious-sam-4-aromat-svezheskoshennogo-gnaara

The apotheosis of the formula was Serious Sam: a simple guy in jeans and a white T-shirt was blowing all sorts of alien filth to shreds and doing it incredibly stylish. The players immediately remembered the hero, and the series acquired the status of a classic. Of course, the fourth part of the franchise, which has experienced its ups and downs, was waiting for many. And they waited apprehensively.

In the beginning there was a cannon

The events of the fourth part begin shortly before the start of the third – such is the prequel prequel. In the near future, aliens led by Mental, an alien dictator who managed to conquer many worlds, attacked Earth. The earthlings, of course, did not like this, and with all their might they began to repulse the alien invaders. Among the rebels was Sam Stone – a hero of the militia and a living legend, on account of which there are so many dead aliens that he has long lost count.

Sam and his comrades go in search of the Holy Grail – an artifact of unprecedented power, in fact, has an extraterrestrial origin. He supposedly has to help in the fight against the army of Mental. Sam has a long journey ahead of him, full of explosions, corpses and change of scene.

It is interesting that the fourth part almost for the first time relies on the plot – its manifestations are unusually many for the series, the plot of which always sounded not much more complicated than that of the hits of the 1990s. Missions are often interrupted by cutscenes that reveal the characters and their distinctive features. The depths are not worth waiting for: more and more gallant soldiers compete in who will come up with the most successful joke about the death of another enemy, but they remember the past battles. Alas, puns are often painfully inappropriate, and translation only makes them worse. The pinnacle of “evolution” is undoubtedly the echpochmak gag.

Run and shoot

The gameplay has remained the same: Sam, armed to the teeth with a variety of weapons ranging from a combat knife to a cannon firing hot chainsaws, destroys dozens and hundreds of enemies in a continuous dance with death. Sometimes the hero has to interrupt on side quests or search for secrets, but even there he still often has to discharge clip after clip into alien adversaries.

Serious Sam 4 delivers incomparable pleasure in its best moments. The developers did not lie when they promised the largest number of opponents on the screen in the entire history of the series: the kill counter at certain levels easily reaches one and a half thousand, so getting achievements like “release more than 900 rounds from the minigun without pulling the trigger” is not difficult. The game also constantly throws up a very diverse crowd of enemies: a dozen Syrian bulls rushing towards Sam can be accompanied by a raid of harpies, continuous attacks of arachnoids located in unobvious places (and they shoot, oh, how sure!), And a couple of biomechanoids. We say “a couple” – we mean about a dozen individuals of small and large sizes.

Different opponents require a different approach: you have to constantly switch between guns and deftly maneuver in a stream of attacks flying from all directions. In especially difficult situations, gadgets will come in handy, which can be obtained in secret locations or in side missions. Choose from great gadgets such as a portable black hole, a portable nuclear warhead and a gas grenade that makes monsters attack each other. There are also items that are used on Sam himself, such as portable first-aid kits (translated as “KAJF”) or rage serum, which increases the strength and speed of attack, and also makes the movement of an earthling many times faster.

New toys

There were some innovations, the most controversial of which seemed to be the pumping system, and the most interesting was the transport, which we have not seen since the second part. In practice, everything turned out to be exactly the opposite: pumping logically develops opportunities and gives additional fun, although it is not entirely clear why it was impossible to just give the same shooting from two hands right at the start. You can upgrade not only yourself, but also weapons: for example, you can hang a grenade launcher on a shotgun, and install a homing system and a module on the rocket launcher that allows you to simultaneously fire up to five missiles. A trifle, but nice.

But transport … Transport has rather become a disadvantage. For the passage they give you a ride on a motorcycle, a tractor, a combine, a “dad-mobile” and a couple of times in a full-fledged fur. The first two are incredibly dull pokatushki from point A to point B, and not with the best control. The harvester is more fun: it dashingly grinds into porridge all those caught under the reel, and it is not that difficult to shoot the monsters stuck to the cabin.

The last two are, in fact, the same: Sam is loaded into a large walking robot and, wielding coaxial machine guns and rocket launchers, blows large and small enemies into the dust. Even the largest adversaries like khnums are made up of a couple of attacks from a walking machine. And a trifle that gets underfoot can always be burned with a charge of released napalm.

Separately, it is worth mentioning the much-vaunted Legion system, which should display more than ten thousand opponents simultaneously. It’s funny, but the key feature of the game is shown twice for the entire passage: at the very beginning, about 15 seconds, and in the final – also literally for a minute or two. And even this time is enough to understand that all this is fiction: opponents die from any hit, and death animations do not always work at the same time. There are very few real opponents among this sea.

Fall into textures

The big problem with the game is that you have to live up to the fun described above. Serious Sam 3 was once scolded for its inexpressive introduction and strange runs through dark basements with a flashlight. The local start of the game, alas, is not much better: the rather low dynamics of the first levels is in stark contrast to what awaits you closer to the end. In addition, it was at the beginning that the emphasis was placed on local humor – outrageously ridiculous and strange. The confrontation with the first boss is accompanied by a long discussion of vanliners, one worse than the other. It’s amazing how much the shooter changes in the future: judging only by the first couple of hours, the impression is extremely negative.

Bugs also do not help perception: an attempt to dig deeper into the settings on release was accompanied by an almost one hundred percent guarantee of a crash (especially in the case of a change in render), opponents refuse to react normally to Sam and just bump into the walls, and flickering shadows and textures that are loading before our eyes greatly affect the general perception … You can also face more critical problems: breaking save is the same reality as incorrectly loading sections of levels. It gets to the point of absurdity: collecting certain secrets can break the passage due to the fact that the game simply stops loading opponents who need to be killed to open the gate. Getting stuck on a level because the game is not working properly is not a pleasant feeling.

Steal like an artist

Another fly in the ointment is the local level design. The developers talked a lot about the fact that the levels in the fourth part will become the most ambitious, and, in general, they did not lie. Another question is that the scale is not that good for the game: at some moments it takes almost five minutes of real time to get from one point to another, while absolutely nothing happens in the game itself. With the last patch, the problem was partially solved by adding even more monsters to the void. To be honest, the result is extremely dubious: the levels in France have to be crossed on transport, the shooting in which is implemented clumsily just enough that it is easier to get off the motorcycle or tractor and shoot everything that moves, and then sit behind the wheel again. Nothing but additional hassle is created.

As if this is not enough, it is striking that a good half of the game was created from assets inherited from the third part and another title of the studio – The Talos Principle. Ruins are recognizable, individual solutions like doors with keys, and even sounds are often borrowed from themselves. And with the appearance of individual monsters, the design strikes the eye, as if it came from Doom. The answer is simple: at some point, Croteam almost received the rights to develop the franchise and began to create developments, which migrated to the fourth “Sam”.

o.addEventListener('load', function () { callback(); }, false);

s.parentNode.insertBefore(o, s); } }

asyncLoad( 'https://platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js', function () { window.instgrm.Embeds.process(); }, !!window.instgrm );

asyncLoad( 'https://cdn.playbuzz.com/widget/feed.js', function () {

}, !!window.PlayBuzz );

asyncLoad( 'https://static.apester.com/js/sdk/v2.0/apester-javascript-sdk.min.js', function () {

}, !!window.APESTER );

asyncLoad( 'https://wtrfall.com/widget.js', function () { if (!window.WTF || !WTF.bootstrap || !WTF.bootstrap("wtf-broadcast")) { setTimeout(arguments.callee, 50); } }, !!window.WTF );

asyncLoad( '//vk.com/js/api/openapi.js?147', function() { if (!window.$ || !window.VK || !VK.Widgets || !VK.Widgets.Post) { setTimeout(arguments.callee, 50);

return; }

$('.vk_post').each(function(i, elm) { var post = $(elm).data();

VK.Widgets.Post($(elm).attr('id'), post.userId, post.id, post.hash); }); }, !!window.VK ); })(); });

Related Posts:

• The Surge - run away, Sally!
• Darksiders: Warmastered Edition
• In Cyberpunk 2077, you can play as in GTA, but it is…
• Darksiders Genesis Review | Gamemag
• When a shooter starts playing by the new rules:…
• Bombshell