![]() ![]() This didn't happen to this extent in earlier games. I died many a time because an enemy (or even a group of enemies) spawned like three paces away from me after veering to close to the edge of the arena during a fight. This includes kamikazes, which just sucks. Many times, enemies will attack you from all sides and spawn right near you. Those orange guys make very little sound and are often just suddenly there, attacking you from behind. You can hear the kleers, kamikazes and bulls comming from a mile away. The Enemies: normally, enemies that charge you make a very kleer sound (see what I did there?). The looks were clearly more important than the actual playabilty of the maps. I fired so many cannonballs at enemies standing right in front of me, just to launch them in the air because of a small bump in the terrain I couldn't see. I died quite a few times because I suddenly came up to a chunk of wall or a ditch that was placed there only to fill up the scenery. In SS4 the terrain is nearly never flat and filled with debris, ruined walls and boxes that can make running backwards (which is like 80% of the game) feel like an obstacle course. Many areas where just big squares but it worked, since most of the space could actually be used while playing. The Levels themselves: The original Sam games where all about the wide, open spaces where you could see the hordes of enemies comming at you from a distance, so you could plan and attack accordingly. All these things do is make the game more difficult and unclear, they have no plus. The abundant trees are even worse, they do the same thing, even during boss battles. ![]() I took quite a few rockets to the face during my playthrough, just because I couldn't see larger enemies that are farther away through the cloud of dust. And the dust, one of the least liked features of SS3 makes a return. It kinda reminded me of Black Mesa where they decided to put crates everywhere just to fill up the scenery, to the point it started impeding the gameplay. It really feels like a early acces or fan made game. Castle ruins are apparently filled with random boxes and concrete blocks. I mean, Rome apparently has like three statues they put everywhere on pedestals that have the same text on all sides. Here, many levels feel like they just slapped some assets on a map, many recycled from past titles, and called it a day. Enemies, enviroments, objects and so on all seemed to fit together pretty well. After finishing the game, I played through the first two levelsd of SS3 again, and what really jumps out is that that game had a (kinda bland and grey admittedly) overal atmosphere. The overal Design: Here's where I really think the game is just a step back. The lighting seems worse even, especially in those bland indoor areas. Unless you count the legion system, which is used for like 10 minutes in the whole game. Sure, assets are higher res but thats pretty much it. The Engine: No serious uplift in visual quality over SS3 or the Talos Principle. I was actually glad those bastards killed Kenny (pun intended). You would figure 9 years would have been enough to implement half decent facial animations and eyes, since Doom 3 already had those 16 friggin years ago, but no. I now understand why nearly all characters in SS3 had glasses on. Now they have him talking at length with shitty, empty side characters trying to explain a plot that doesn't matter in cutscenes so amateurish they take the tone of the whole game down (Serious Sam 2 anyone?). He had a comically gruff voice suited only to spewing one-liners. Old Sam was a cartoon, a caricature just like Duke Nukem, Lo Wang and Caleb from the Build era. You want a story? Here's some text you can read but absolutely don't need to to enjoy the game.' And now, after for some reason feeling like they needed to follow the general trends, we got this bland mess. Serious Sam was a game that said 'no need for that, we have guns, tons of enemies and one liners. A story just as an excuse to start shooting like in Doom or Duke Nukem was no longer enough. After the release of Half-Life all games suddenly needed a story, tons of scripted events and fleshed out characters. The beauty of the original Serious sam games was that they were so simple and all about the gameplay. ![]() I finished the game yesterday, and I'm seriously underwhelmed. ![]()
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