Across the game’s 15 levels, you’ll travel to Italy, France, and finally Russia. Sam mercifully escapes the arid deserts of ancient Egypt, embarking instead on the world’s most violent gap year across Europe. The humour will make you laugh and roll your eyes in equal measure, but while it’s somewhat old-fashioned, it’s never sleazy or mean-spirited in the way some ‘classic’ nineties’ shooters are.īeyond the jokes, the most significant effect the story has on the moment-to-moment play is in location. A running joke is that Sam’s squad of equally ridiculous action stereotypes embark on a one-liner competition that lasts the duration of the game. The plot is entirely disposable, while the writing is chock-full of jokes delivered straight from the mouth of your dad. It’s a wilfully silly premise that encapsulates the whole game’s attitude toward storytelling. This time the cyclic carnage revolves around Sam hunting for the Holy Grail in order to destroy the alien menace plaguing Earth.

No matter where he is, what he’s doing, or why he’s there, that’s the Serious Sam experience, and SS4 doesn’t feel the need to change that much. He always exists in one temporal moment, namely stood in front of a horde of monsters while holding a massive gun. Sam’s personal timeline is as circular as his battle tactics. SS4 is technically another prequel to the first game, not that this matters in terms of your personal experience. On the downside, it often looks and feels like it should have come out nine years ago. On the upside, it feels like a proper new game rather than a fancier re-tread of the original. In many ways it’s the sequel Serious Sam 3 should have been, although I mean that in both positive and negative ways. More enemies, more guns, more locations, more features, more bad jokes, more good jokes, and definitely more gore.

Serious Sam 4 is more of the same, with the emphasis firmly on the word “more”.

Serious sam 4 minigun