i'd give the game like a 55/100 i guess
i don't really recommend this game frankly, but steam requires me to say yay or nay,
and i do like this game more than i dislike it, so it's a thumbs up i guess
the only reason i got the game is because I've played serious sam since i was a kid
and serious sam 4 left a really bad taste in my mouth so i wanted to see what this was about
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anyway, this game has some serious flaws, pun intended
first of all it's very repetitive, there's only 6 "worlds" let's call them
each world is divided into bite sized areas
and your run is split into 2 areas, first boss; 2 areas, second boss; 2 areas, third boss (and a 10th area with the final boss in act 3)
the areas themselves are pretty basic, it's usually just a hallway into a fight into a hallway into a fight and so on
if you've played the game a bunch, then you'll just be replaying the same bunch of sequences over and over
also right off the bat that's a problem, serious sam relies on carefully crafted map design for its signature gameplay
but how are you going to do that when the maps are randomly chosen?
each area seems to also have the same enemies no matter when you encounter it,
so sometimes you'll get one early on that was clearly meant to be done once you have more of your arsenal
another key element of serious sam's gameplay is the "combat puzzle" thing going on with the weapons and enemies
ie. certain weapons are more effective at dealing with certain types of enemies and the game mixes and matches the different enemy types in each fight
the player has to figure out which gun is most effective against which enemy type
and when a big fight happens they have to decide which enemy type they want to deal with first
this game kind of has that? but only once you've unlocked everything and only if you're actually getting the guns you need in your run
when you start playing the game, you only have 3 weapons available - the pistol, single shotgun and tommy gun
so you have no weapon capable of dealing splash damage,
no weapon capable of one shotting anything bigger than a purple gnaar,
no weapon capable in long ranges (well besides the pistol, but a low rarity one is too weak for this)
now act 1 is laughably easy, so you can still win even with nothing unlocked,
but this leaves a pretty bad first impression of the game since people just assume it's mindless shooting with no rhyme or reason
why not just make more weapons available from the start and make the game harder to compensate?
or maybe make it so you can get all weapons from the start, but you can only get the "common" variety at first and if you want the rarer types then you need to go spend your banjo Kazooie jiggies on them in the shop
the game also doesn't have difficulty settings, so unless you've never played a first person shooter before,
you're probably gonna find the early game to be rather boring
(i guess the acts can be viewed as difficult settings, but i'd view them more as meta progression)
(there's an icon near the timer that turns from "easy" to "normal" to "hard", maybe this is the difficulty?)
(but i have absolutely no idea what this means or what it does and the game doesn't seem to ever bother explaining it, so i ignore it)
as mentioned earlier, there's 3 acts
act 1 is way too easy and thus too boring
act 2 is when the game actually starts, there appears to be more enemies now and they're a "higher level" which makes them stronger
there's also an optional mutator that you can vote for, which makes the game harder in exchange for shop currency
act 3 is rather tough, the enemies are even stronger now,
you're now forced to pick a mutator and you have to fight the final boss in area 10
the difficulty is all over the place in the final act, because when you start the run you don't have many weapons yet so if the dungeon randomizer decides to give you a part of a map that you can't properly deal with, then you're kinda screwed
like for example that big hallway the spams kleers/biomechs/bulls at you, good luck doing that with only a pistol and a shotgun/tommy gun/revolver/etc.
if that doesn't happen then act 3 also isn't that bad
except for the final boss who forces you to fight him while the game spawns kamikazes and gnaars non stop,
not sure what you're meant to do about that besides just damage racing him...
although do note that I've only played this in singleplayer,
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if you fail, well you'll get some Disney bucks to go spend on the shop between runs
this is where you unlock your new weapons, your new traits that you can choose when you level up
and the game will get progressively easier as you unlock more things
in terms of the roguelite elements, well they do exist in the game, but they're a bit light
there's different rarities and traits for the weapons, you'll have to make some choices in that regard
there's also trinkets which are passive items
the trinkets are divided into groups and if you have enough from the same group it'll give you a set bonus
so there is some variety in terms of builds and stuff, but it certainly feels a bit shallow for a roguelite
(then again i think it'd be difficult to keep the game feeling like serious sam without leaning too heavily into the roguelite elements)
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there's some other strange gameplay choices too, like for example the only way to heal (at first) is to perform executions on enemies
which i don't think was necessary, all it does is make the game feel like a cheap knockoff of the new doom games
there's a grappling hook, but it's not really used in combat at all, it's just for navigating the maps between fights
also it's running in the unreal engine, so you'd better have a good pc
although admittedly i think serious sam should be running on unreal,
maintaining an inhouse engine these days is very time consuming and expensive,
i'd suspect that's why sam 4 spent 9 years in development, good portion of that was probably optimizing the engine
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i don't have anything to say about the plot,
i grew up with games that didn't care about stroytelling (old doom, old quake, etc.)
and it shaped me into judging games by their gameplay/design aspects rather than their stories
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there are some things i liked, or at least i liked them from a conceptual standpoint:
i like the art style, it has a distinct stylized look instead of just going for "google earth but with serious sam enemies" like sam 3/4 does
they went with the classic enemy types instead of removing/replacing them for no reason
(although some of them don't really behave as they should, like the lava golems)
the actual shooting things part of the game is fine (when you have all weapons at least)
the weak point system from sam 4 is here, it's a neat idea and it does compliment the weapon traits
the aforementioned mutators are pretty creative
there's elite enemies now, sometimes an enemy can spawn as a tougher elite variant, a nice idea
only problem is the elites are the exact same as the regular enemies, they just have more health, so they're just bullet sponges
(and also it seems like elites all have the exact same health, regardless of the enemy type, )
(so an elite biomech major is only slightly tougher than usual, meanwhile an elite kamikaze/marsh hopper gets like 500x more health than usual)
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for context i'd rank the mainline serious sam games like this:
(tie between sam tfe & sam tse) > sam 3/dlc >>> Siberian mayhem > sam 4 >>> sam 2
this game would be somewhere in the same spot as Siberian mayhem
or maybe slightly below, I haven't played it enough to decide yet
(and yeah i know this game is a spinoff, but i haven't really played the other serious sam spinoffs, so i'm ranking it relative to the mainline ones)
