''AAAHHHH yourself!'' - Serious Sam 4 coming in September 2020

[Amph]

it's like 3 which i like dunno all the hate, people like to hate on everything regardless

[Spectre01]

36 minutes ago, Amph said:

it's like 3 which i like dunno all the hate, people like to hate on everything regardless

As a big fan of SS3, I can think of a couple reasons for the hate:

• They played the original SS3 and not the updated Fusion version. SS3 is the game which got the most updates when the 3 main games were ported to Fusion. There were a lot of major improvements made to the core game, including increased ammo clip sizes for weapons, reloading while sprinting, and redone enemy placement for more variety, and various other balance changes. All of this made the game faster and more fun and fluid to play compared to the stand-alone version of SS3. Of course, this all happened quite recently post-2017. And with Fusion being poorly advertised, new players are more likely to end up playing the stand-alone releases, all of which are less polished.
• They prefer the more fantasy-like atmosphere of TFE/TSE as opposed to the bleak apocalyptic realism in SS3. Aside from Sam's one-liners and easter eggs, SS3 is played straight compared to the more whimsical feel of the originals.

[Amph]

there is a  x2 double barell shotgun 

[cambreaKer]

the game has just released!

[THEBaratusII]

Serious Sam 4 is now live!

https://store.steampowered.com/newshub/app/257420/view/2889578330854982817

 

EDIT : Oof, @cambreaKer beat me to it hehe. :P

[Amph]

lol you can dual wield almost every weapons even minigun

[taufan99]

Just watched some campaign vids of SS4. Definitely a big improvement over BFE and storytelling is pretty fleshed-up. Glad to see the series get a new treatment after a long time, and nice to see it get released at the same year with DOOM Eternal. 2020 is a returning year for big FPS baddies!

[snapshot]

Things aren't looking too good for SS4 at the moment, might pick it up on winter sale or something, hopefully the technical issues will get patched at least.

 

 

 

 

Edited September 24, 2020 by sluggard

[M_W]

I have never been a fan of Serious Sam. I've only played the first and second encounters, but I absolutely despise the level design.

 

Actually, I kind of hate the monster design and how they're used, too.

Edited September 24, 2020 by M_W

[[McD] James]

42 minutes ago, M_W said:

I have never been a fan of Serious Sam. I've only played the first and second encounters, but I absolutely despise the level design.

 

Actually, I kind of hate the monster design and how they're used, too.

 

Agreed. The weapons are very bland as well.

[D4NUK1]

This youtuber it's a hardcore fan of Serious Sam, and sounds kinda sad about how the stuff get released.
 

 

[frag enabler]

It's even worse than I thought it would be.

[Master O]

51 minutes ago, Ajora said:

 

Agreed. The weapons are very bland as well.

 

What about the Cannon?!  That one was cool!!!

[[McD] James]

15 minutes ago, Master O said:

 

What about the Cannon?!  That one was cool!!!

 

Yeah, it was. It was the only weapon in the entire game I liked. 

[Slipgate Tourist]

25 minutes ago, SuperchargedEuthanasiaDiv said:

It's even worse than I thought it would be.

Needs more WD40

[Amph]

the laser cannon is cool too

[Sergeant_Mark_IV]

Oh God why?
They had the time. They had the experience. They had the technology. Why?
What the fuck happened? Where the fortune they made with Talos Principle went? Did they just blow the entire budget snorting coke out of hooker asses?

And the Legion System... they had put so much emphasis on it during the marketing, and it literally shows up only in the intro and final level, and it still looks like shit. I can forgive them if something unfortunate happened during development for the game to come out this buggy, but I can't forgive that fucking bullshit false advertisement.  I never imagined they would pull something scummy like this.

It's just shocking. This is something you would expect from Activision, Bethesda, not them. Croteam has a long story of being a reputable developer and games released under Devolver flag are aways expected to be of high quality. Their communities trusts them. Why would they literally lie like this? SS3 was a rough game, they were looking for a new identity, but it was released as a finished and polished product. SS4's state is not even close to finished!

Edited September 24, 2020 by Sergeant_Mark_IV

[Vic Vos]

>perks
>horribly animated melee kills
>bugs up the ass
>jesus fuck that story
>overall feel like a SS3 DLC
>all this after 9 years

Should've just pirated it.

[Redneckerz]

Seems like Serious Sam 4 at the moment is more like a Serious Dud, all due to pre-patch issues, it seems. Which is a damn shame given how long this has been in the oven. Post-patches will obviously improve the deal (And Croteam surely will go into it) but sadly this is a tale seen too often: Release anyway, knowing the issues at hand. Ghost Recon: Breakpoint had this, AC Unity had this and Serious Sam 4 apparently suffers the same ordeal.

 

I get it. Croteam is not the biggest team in the world. The Serious Engine's homegrown technology obviously has to support the things it has been known for. But just looking at one playthrough of TheRadBrad, one thing immediately spurs into your face - The absolute terrible LoD system. The whole floor is just a solid color until Sam is 2 metres in front of the ground. I reckon this is done due to the Legion system, but it is shocking to see this kind of thing in the here and now. Visually, there are improvements, like a PBR pipeline, but its very reminiscent of Serious Sam 3 - Which was a beautiful game in 2011, but in 2020, Serious Sam 4 visually feels like 4 years out of date. Mind you, it still has its moments visually, but you can obviously find more encapsulating games. Again, i place this at the limits of the team and the homegrown nature of their tech.

 

45 minutes ago, Sergeant_Mark_IV said:

Oh God why?
They had the time. They had the experience. They had the technology. Why?
What the fuck happened? Where the fortune they made with Talos Principle went? Did they just blow the entire budget snorting coke out of hooker asses?

Talos was/is such a different thing compared to Sam. Talos presented a range of philosophical thoughts, whereas Sam only knows shoot to kill. Its quite something how the Sam devs could deliver Talos after Sam 3, but that they also could deliver Sam 4 after Talos.

Its strange.

 

Quote

It's just shocking. This is something you would expect from Activision, Bethesda, not them. Croteam has a long story of being a reputable developer and games released under Devolver flag are aways expected to be of high quality. Their communities trusts them. Why would they literally lie like this? SS3 was a rough game, they were looking for a new identity, but it was released as a finished and polished product. SS4's state is not even close to finished!

Croteam does have some legacy of making promises but not delivering on them. The Sam 3 console ports were released late in the console gen life (Especially the PS3) and didn't perform aswell (Again, PS3 on top) and looked substantially worse. However, i have played Sam 3 on X360 and felt it was alright enough for the moment. The PC version was a benchmark when ran on highest settings.

But they also demonstrated Sam 3 on Android when Tegra K1 launched, and that never went anywhere either. They announced these console versions + Android and kept on reiterating on it, but ultimately delivered a lot later. Like the above, i feel its due to Croteam's limited staff that they simply do not have the capacity for these things. Hence why they promise large, but deliver little in that regard.

Serious Sam 4 seems to continue that train of thought: Announced with big fanfare, in development for a long time, but when released, clearly highlighting it needs work to be very memorable. Unfortunately for them, the consumer's first impression is often the most important.

 

Few games are actually given a second chance to shine, one particular example being No Man's Sky. Like Sam, it didn't deliver on what it promised, but developer Hello Games went on and massively improved the game post-release, with new DLC, fixes, features..... alll for free of charge. Hello Games actually made a name as a developer willing to stick their necks out for the consumer by doing these things, and as such No Man's Sky has seen a lot more positivity because of it.

Whether Croteam is given the same opportunity is something that can't be said. Given their trackrecord of promising large, it does not sound hopeful. But Croteam will put in the work if the game really does underdeliver - Serious Sam 3 eventually became better through post-release patches and the Jewel of the Nile DLC aswell. Its a fine game today (But too military oriented), not great, but good. Hopefully, Sam 4 follows the same ordeal. Atleast the Legion system needs to be better employed.

8 minutes ago, Vic Vos said:

>perks
>horribly animated melee kills
>bugs up the ass
>jesus fuck that story
>overall feel like a SS3 DLC
>all this after 9 years

Should've just pirated it.

Nah that's BS, because you can then apply that for every too early released game out there.

The bigger issue is that we consumers continue to accept this errornous practice, combined with the fact that developers feel the need to deliver in time by their managers. As is countlessly proven by now: Releasing prematurely does not work.

What Croteam should have done, is release a alpha or beta playtest version, and collect feedback given by the users there. Rarely for this day, SS4 is released as-is without any of the sorts, in a release state of things, when the opposite impression is actually true.

[Sergeant_Mark_IV]

2 hours ago, Redneckerz said:

Talos was/is such a different thing compared to Sam.

I'm talking about budget. I can't confirm anything, but given the number of Steam reviews + XBone sales combined, I think it's safe to say Talos sold at least 2 million copies. They should (at least in theory) be swimming in money right now.
Now think of their most successful game, First Encounter. They had virtually no budget. No experience. Working on a brand new engine. And it's one of the greatest shooters of the 2000s. After launching so many successful titles and making so much money and gathering so much experience, why would they deliver such an inferior sequel?

With previous games sales + Devolver's financial support, I think it's safe to assume the budget of this game was no less than 2 or 3 million. And this looks worse than many $100k Unity indie games.
 

Quote

Croteam does have some legacy of making promises but not delivering on them.

Sorry I was not aware of this. I don't own consoles, and at least on PC, I have never seen Croteam doing this.

Edited September 24, 2020 by Sergeant_Mark_IV

[Redneckerz]

11 minutes ago, Sergeant_Mark_IV said:

I'm talking about budget. I can't confirm anything, but given the number of Steam reviews + XBone sales combined, I think it's safe to say Talos sold at least 2 million copies. They should (at least in theory) be swimming in money right now.

There is reason to believe this given they also host their own indie program for smaller games, so there is definitely some cashflow in there. However, i don't believe that Croteam took out the polish for Sam 4 compared to Talos. Perhaps this has to with the limited team capacity. Perhaps its the engine. Perhaps its a combination of things.

But it is something to be said that Sam 3 looks awfully similar, but texture wise actually looks more complex. Sam 4 has some shaders that are definitely current gen, but asset quality is still very much PS360 levels. And the Legion System, which is something that really does look the part, is completely underutilized.

The Black Masses pulls off legions better than Sam 4 does and that's a Unity game.

 

https://store.steampowered.com/app/992910/The_Black_Masses/

11 minutes ago, Sergeant_Mark_IV said:

Now think of their most successful game, First Encounter. They had virtually no budget. No experience. Working on a brand new engine. And it's one of the greatest shooters of the 2000s. After launching so many successful titles and making so much money and gathering so much experience, why would they deliver such an inferior sequel?

Lack of capacity and polish, i feel, first and formost. I am not sure how big the Sam 4 team was/is. But compared to Talos, which was done by a small team (and actually was polished) you would think Sam 4 was given more leeway.

 

However, it seems that a lot of years in dev time was also spent on porting Sam 3 over to last-gen consoles, and Talos Principle to iOS/Android/Switch/PS4/XBO on seperate occassions. Talos was a success, so that justified the seperate ports which costed time. Time that likely was not spent on Sam 4 by another team otherwise.

 

11 minutes ago, Sergeant_Mark_IV said:

Sorry I was not aware of this. I don't own consoles, and at least on PC, I have never seen Croteam doing this.

Yeah its more known through their statement if anything else. Statement wise they prop up a lot in advance but seldomly deliver on it. Sam 3 on last-gen is really swing and miss as the PS3 port is simply bad, likely due to lack of memory and the exotic architecture for Croteam (Croteam only started work on PS3 hardware in a time when the PS4 was already launched. They had more X360 experience through the SSHD re-releases than with the PS3, which never went to that platform).

 

All in all i think Sam 4 can be better, but the primary selling point, the Legion system, i am just not sure how they can give that a proper grace. The few levels that are suitable for it, just get a few enemies and not much more. So this remains to be seen as to how it will improve or not.

[Phobus]

I've played three and a half hours so far and I love it. It's a shame I have to sleep, and have work tomorrow, because I'd much rather just keep playing the game. As a big fan of TFE, TSE and 3, I feel like this is a blend of the three, with some nods towards modernisation of both the formula and the story telling. Really liking how it looks on my 4k PC (shame my GTX 1080 is only good for Medium GPU performance settings!)

 

The lighting model isn't working too well indoors, everybody's sunglasses are really opaque, Quinn has weirdly staring eyes (I'm assuming most of the other humans do too, but said opaque shades are hiding the worst of that) and I had to set vsync on and the frame rate cap above my monitor's maximum to stop screen tearing... But I'm having a fantastic time. Serious difficulty seems a bit easier so far than it did in my play through of Fusion 2017, but I guess I'm still pretty early on and have lots more enemies to introduce yet.

 

Also, I'm loving that the secrets can still be just as crazy as ever! If the vampires remain the most annoying enemy, then I'm going to have a blast with this all the way through. Being able to save the TSE style power ups for later is a great touch, too.

 

TL;DR: I'm a seriously happy customer.

Edited September 30, 2020 by Phobus

[Redneckerz]

Framerater did a post-patch re-review. One of the biggest changes for him? Put the graphics filter to Vivid. Yellow areas do look like Deus-Ex piss filter, but everything else massively improves in colour scheme and Sam 4 actually looks pretty decent given that.
 

 

[Amph]

they added cacodemons enemies now

[NoXion]

I've watched about twenty minutes of gameplay; by randoms on YouTube, as opposed to promotional material. What I saw didn't look that bad to me, considering my limited expectations. In fact I'm still interested in buying the game. I'll probably get it after I complete my first Doom Eternal Ultra-Violence run.

 

It's been ages since I played a new Serious Sam game, so I was almost considering pre-ordering this game, but it looks like Doom Eternal will remain the only game where I've ever done that. "Wait and see" remains the better choice for everything else.

[Spectre01]

The technical issues and lack of basic options, like custom weapon keybinds and HUD ammo totals, are disappointing. I certainly expected more polish with how long the game was in development. Hell, I wasn't even expecting it to be out this year, so some things may have been rushed. Fortunately, Croteam are very active on the Steam forums and various fixes and requested features are, allegedly, coming soon. I enjoyed the first 2 missions, but I'll hold off on playing the rest for now.

[frag enabler]

Yeah, after watching a bit more gameplay videos (most importantly with disabled dialogue and skipping all cutscenes) this game seems like a pile of diamonds buried beneath a fucking HUGE pile of execrable garbage

Some people from the "dev" team should just be fired outright, however

[Phobus]

I've played a good 12 hours or so, now, mostly because I've not had a decent chance to really knuckle down and play for most of a day yet. I'm really enjoying it, and am glad to report that the difficulty on Serious found another notch in the level after my last comment (after you trigger the volcanic eruption in Pompeii). They've improved the Witch-Brides in a big way, making them fit in with the overall game much better than they did in SS3 by changing their attack.

 

I am, however, having a bit of an issue now I'm in rural France. The lighting model seems to be really unhappy there, with pitch black shadows flickering in and out on buildings and walls. This wouldn't be an issue, but it also affects my view through the sniper rifle scope, blinding me to everything but health bars at quite a lot of angles (looking up seems fine). Next time I play it, I'll try swapping from the Vulkan renderer to one of the DirectX options. As the screen tearing issue was apparently a Vulkan implementation issue, I figure the lighting/shadows being funny might be that too.

 

Key takeaways so far:

• Gunplay is incredible
• Enemy variety is massive, with stuff still being introduced what must be over halfway through the game (the harpies are back!)
• Shadow bugs aside, I think the game looks great (no idea what this stuff about needing the "vivid" setting is about, there's loads of colour already)
• Music is awesome - particularly the battle track in Rome
• Vehicles are a lot of fun - even just riding around the countryside on the motorbike was satisfying, but getting to mulch enemies with the combine harvester is some seriously silly fun
• Kleers seem less threatening than before on Serious. Possible slower, definitely leaping further past and taking longer to turn back around
• Dual wielding is great
• The rocket-propelled flaming chainsaw launcher might be the best weapon I've ever used in any game, ever
• I feel like the inventory items are pretty essential to digging myself out of some of the fights at this difficulty, the crystallised black hole in particular is a big "I win" button
• Secrets are a real struggle for me - doubly so in the city levels. The circuitous routes to platform to some of them take some puzzling out, and when faced with acres of countryside, I can't help but wonder what's hidden out there
• Kind of surprised the Cucurbito (spelling? The pumpkin headed chainsaw guys) didn't make a return, as they'd fit right in alongside the mummies and vampires

No complaints with the story being a little more prominent than in older iterations. Having the odd invulnerable NPC doing minimal damage to the enemies isn't changing much, from my perspective.

 

I think the drone swarms are my "that one enemy" for this installment, picking up where the space monkeys and marsh hoppers left off. The fights with them follow a predictable pattern and seem to slow the pace of the game down a bit, as you can't really funnel them, outrun them or fight them in any way other than moving erratically and shooting upwards for as long as it takes.

[Wereknight]

I understand that Sam as an overall character\thing\Mental's actual fursona (DON'T ASK) is a bit outdated, I get it, they kinda showing that here and there...

 

But, Christ, who would to think such "dialogues" and cutscenes would not only make any sense but also be laughable? SERIOUSLY? For fuck sake, Croteam, you guys may be awesome but this is just a spit into fanbase face. The game overall, not dialogues alone.

 

This whole mess looks like somewhat cringe greenlight shit on unity engine just made with bit more effort. Still, nothing justifies the fact this game went even worse than SS3:BFE.

[Robot J]

Honestly I think the game is ok. Defo isnt in the best state but I’m pretty sure they can improve the game. In a month or so the game will probably be actually playable at minimum specs and etc