Serious Sam 4

I've spent enough hours with old-school shooters to know when a game is genuinely committed to the bit and when it's just coasting on nostalgia. Serious Sam 4 is, fascinatingly, both of those things at the same time, and sorting out which one wins depends almost entirely on what you bring to it. The core loop is unapologetically unchanged from the series' Croatian roots: you back-pedal, you circle-strafe, and you throw every firearm in a generous fifteen-weapon arsenal at waves of increasingly unhinged alien creatures. The shotgun punishes headshots at close range, the minigun chews through midfield chaos, and the chainsaw launcher - with its delirious homing functionality - becomes your best friend when Werebulls, Beheaded Rocketeers, and Scrapjacks close in from every angle simultaneously. Weapon selection genuinely matters here. Pick wrong and you're dead; pick right and you feel like a conductor of controlled carnage. Eight gadgets sit alongside that arsenal, adding a light tactical layer that mostly works in the heat of things. The much-hyped Legion System, which promised battlefields swarming with thousands of enemies at once, does deliver some jaw-dropping opening spectacle - though community feedback after launch was pointed about how rarely those massive-scale moments actually appear across the 16 levels and roughly ten-hour campaign. When it fires, it fires. When it doesn't, you're doing fairly standard arena-clearing across France and Italy with the occasional vehicular detour, including a mech sequence that earns its place in the back half of the game. Four-player online co-op is present and genuinely loosens up the experience. There's no revive system - downed players respawn automatically - so it's less about coordinated teamwork and more about shared mayhem, which honestly suits the tone perfectly. Playing alone on higher difficulties is where the game reveals its teeth; the difficulty curve is gradual but it builds honestly, and by the final levels the screen is a wall of aggression that demands real spatial awareness. The friction points are real and worth naming plainly. Animation quality is stiff, textures pop in at noticeable distances, and battle music cuts dead the instant the last enemy drops, which creates a whiplash that reviewers and players alike flagged consistently at launch. Level design across the middle stretch leans repetitive - the side missions especially feel like filler rather than exploration. The Metacritic score of 68 reflects critics who measured it against the ambition of the marketing and found the gap too wide. The Steam player base, sitting at 83% positive across a substantial review pool, reflects people who knew exactly what they were buying and got it. For series veterans or anyone whose formative shooter memories predate regenerating health, there is real, uncomplicated pleasure in what Croteam built here. For players arriving from DOOM Eternal expecting mechanical depth or tight level architecture, the gap in craft will be visible. Serious Sam 4 is a game that knows its audience with almost aggressive precision - the question is whether you're in that audience or adjacent to it.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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