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Serious sam 4 ps5 release date12/4/2023 When you’re not attempting to survive the hoards of screaming demons, a character will be chatting it up with you for the sake of chatting rather than adding to the story. There is rarely a quiet moment in Serious Sam 4. I mentioned the cheesy dialogue at the start of this review, and it’s worth discussing in its own section: There is so freaking much. The side objectives give you some ammo, armor, health, and a tool or two that might prove to be useful on higher difficulties, but seeking these objectives on easier difficulties are just not worth the return on your time investment. I wasted just about all my shotgun and AR ammunition and received a paltry amount in return. What was my reward for beating him? Health, and hardly enough to replenish what I had lost while trying to defeat him while staying behind cover. On one level, I found a hidden boss that shot an endless stream of rockets at me. The few side objectives I’ve done have taken me well off the beaten path and to very distant sections of the map that offer little else than a unique arena or two. I appreciate how there are sidequests and optional objectives in Serious Sam 4, but they rarely (if ever) pay off. If the FPS genre is your preference, then…this game might not be for you. If you’re a generalist player in the sense that you’re not entirely familiar with FPS mechanics and gameplay, then you might relatively enjoy Serious Sam 4‘s gameplay. As you progress, each encounter involves more and more enemies (with the occasional boss battle) and forces you to fire at will rather than vary up your play patterns to overcome the demonic onslaught. One of my biggest critiques of Doom Eternal‘s DLC was that it amped up the waves of demons to 11 and threw all of them at you at once Serious Sam 4 follows this pattern. The demons themselves offer some variability, but each new demonic addition’s uniqueness quickly becomes a grindfest. There were several instances early on where I felt like I was forced to conserve ammunition because I was unsure if I would find ammo in the next area or if I would be SoL for the remainder of the level. Defeating enemies sometimes drops ammunition for the gun you’re using, and that ammunition is sometimes a quarter of what you ended up using to defeat the larger demons. Acquiring ammunition on the normal difficulty is inconsistent, as well. In some encounters, my shotguns were able to hit (and defeat, somehow) enemies that were quite far away. The guns of Serious Sam 4 feel inconsistent in the sense that the sniper rifle feels less accurate than either of the shotguns. I’m not using watered down lightly when I describe the gameplay of Serious Sam 4 when compared to Doom and Duke Nukem, as it incorporates the more annoying gameplay mechanics that make the game less strategic and more of a simplistic affair. While the premise itself is kosher and occupies a good niche in the FPS genre that’s overwhelmed by edgy military shooters like Call of Duty and Battlefield, Serious Sam 4‘s implementation feels watered down and emptier than what Doom and Duke Nukem manage to accomplish quite well. Once you get about a third of the way in, the dialogue will be washed out by the screams of demons (especially the bomb carrying ones who scream AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH until they’re slain). All this happens while cheesy dialogue (read: the driest of Dad jokes) occurs between the side characters and Serious Sam. You’re given a gun, a demonic enemy is introduced, you defeat a wave of that enemy, and then you move to a new area. Serious Sam 4 is best described as a Doom meets Duke Nukem FPS. Equipped for the next-gen? Absolutely not. After reviewing Doom Eternal on the Switch, I was excited for another opportunity to play a FPS demonfest on my PS5. “Why so serious, Sam?” was a question I repeatedly asked myself as I played Serious Sam 4 (PS5).
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