I haven’t written any game reviews in a loooong time so I thought I’d make an effort and write about one of my most anticipated shooters of the year… Serious Sam 3.
My writing might get a little rusty since I haven’t done a review in a while , my bottle of Mountain Dew is almost empty and I’m almost out of cigarettes … this is going to be hard, but at least I have some Rammstein to keep me going.
So … after playing N number of shooters that kept me going on the same narrow corridor but differently textured, it’s refreshing to play a game that gives you more freedom than the COD series.
I’m a big fan of Serious Sam , it’s one of my favorite franchises and one of the first shooters I ever played , the first one being Wolfenstein.
Serious Sam always knew how to make the player feel like a badass.
You take one character with a ton of one-liners , a crapload of guns , a couple of thousand bullets and you pit him against a few hundred aliens , simple as that.
Story
The story in Serious Sam 3 is a prequel to the original Serious Sam game , taking place in the 22’nd century when the earth is invaded by an alien race by the name of Mental.
Our hero is of course Sam the serious one , and he starts looking for clues that might guide the survivors of the human race to the key behind powering up the Time-Lock , an device from an ancient race but ungodly more advanced technologicly than the human race.
The narrative is spread pretty thin , that means that besides cutscenes and headset conversations with HQ there isn’t another way to progress the story.
This is a two way street , it’s good that it’s keeping the chatter to a minimum that we can proceed to cause some good old fashion mayhem , but some might find the story lacking because of it.
In the end it boils down to how you perceive the story , good or bad , sufficient or insufficient but in the end the story does it’s job.
Gameplay
The gameplay is where Serious Sam 3 shines , there’s no point in denying it.
Serious Sam has always followed the idea of a one man army that saves the world , and how could he do that any better without 10 different weapons , out of which a few have an alternate fire mode ,and hordes of bad guys to mow down.
Because the difficulty level across the game scales , you get the weapons one at a time and they will be more or less effective against a certain type of enemy.
For example you won’t use the pistol against a horde of bulls charging towards you … hell no … you’d use the minigun or the rocket launcher.
There is enough enemy diversity in the enemy ranks to make you think strategicly and prioritize which enemy has to be eviscerated first and what weapons to use to conserve ammo.
The eternal power-ups are there of course because life would be much harder if we’d have to drop 30 aliens with only 10 life left and no armor to even the odds.
There is also an melee system that offers instant kills to most of the weaker enemies , but you don’t have invulnerability while you’re performing a surgical eye removal with your fist but the bloody end result is worth it.
Design
Serious Sam 3 is a damn good looking game.
It bid the almost cartoony look from Serious Sam 2 goodbye and opted for an more realistic approach visual-wise.
The characters , environments , textures are all well done , the only things that would stand out as an inconvenience would be the lip sync and some shadows.
The environments you trample through are intricately well designed and some of the enemies had some remodeling.
The soundtrack … well it’s hit and near miss.
It’s both good and with a few kinks.
The good is the ungodly heart pounding heavy metal score as you disembowel the hordes of enemies that are running towards they’re fast and agonizing end , and the voice work that is top notch .
Although Sam is the one doing the most talking , the sidecaracters that drop like flies do they’re job just as well.
The bad … well I can’t call it bad , it’s more of an inconvenience , is that some songs play at a loop that get annoying after a while.
Great job all around though.
Verdict
Serious Sam 3 is a seriously serious game that seriously needs your attention and full seriousnes.
Story 8.5
Gameplay 10
Design 8.5
Impression 9.5
Total 9.1
