Serious Sam 3 Bfe Review

Dec 8, 2011 - Crisp visuals and legions of enemies struggle to invigorate the lackluster Serious Sam 3: BFE.

• Serious Sam 3 Enemies
• Serious Sam 3 Bfe Secrets

But in the middle, it's a roller-coaster ride of supreme proportions – chunks of utter, pure mania followed by swatches of nothingness. The game's admirably large indoor/outdoor world is clearly built for much more activity than the 'Normal' level offers (and, I would argue, a more consistent pacing from start to finish), yet the big melee/big gap/big melee routine continues throughout and will inevitably come off to many as one long, repetitive grind. Hey, old school shoot-'em-ups are just fine, but give us a bit more encounter diversity along the way. Thankfully, there are warnings aplenty when a herd of space demons is ready to descend upon you.

First, the game stutters for a moment as it creates an automatic save point. Second, the music kicks up a few notches. Finally, moments before battle, the serenade begins – the seriously pissed off groans and growls of the beasts waiting around the verynextcorner. And then it's on, baby.

How you conduct yourself in battle depends very much on the type of murderous maniacs you face. Galloping skeleton beasts are fast and lethal even when they're not launching massive cannonballs attached to chains.

Fortunately, both the creature and its weapon can quite easily be dodged. Even better, one good knock from a sledgehammer busts them into a pile of bones.

The headless, screaming dudes running at you while carrying a bomb in each hand? Back up and keep backing up as they chase you, and they'll inevitably group together. One shot into the midst of the flock and boom goes the dynamite. There are more monsters of course, and guest appearances from even bigger and badder bosses. Granted, there isn't much here that we haven't already seen in other, earlier installments of the Serious Sam franchise, but we give longtime developer Crotean credit for coming up with such loveable deviants in the first place. The point is this: likes to put forth horrifically populated scenarios from which escape, at first, seems impossible. And this is where you either love or hate the thing.

Serious Sam 3 Enemies

It's all about the melee and the saves and the multiple attempts. Ultimate success demands perseverance and oodles and oodles of opportunistic saves. And then suddenly, you're sitting there wondering how it looked so difficult in the first place. But are you up for the repetition? From a purely visual perspective, the game should satisfy most.

Save point stutters aside, I'm hard-pressed to remember any time I encountered a frame rate hiccup – far from faint praise when you consider the sheer number of characters on screen during the game's busiest moments. And it looks good too – not cutting-edge amazing and there is certain deja vu when you walk into a dungeon or a temple courtyard only to have seen something remarkably similar several times earlier. Moreover, Sam is no stranger to clipping, often just when you can least deal with its hassles. Yet the game remains convincing enough throughout its many indoor and outdoor settings that you usually feel comfortably ensconced in the environment and the mood it's trying to portray. The violence and the aftereffects of that violence are deliciously nauseating. Bodies detonate wonderfully into wee little chunklets, blood flows more freely than flood water through a trailer park, and the raw carnage is authentic enough that moms and dads will be suitably angered and/or nauseous. Sadly, one of the best effects – explosion smoke – inevitably becomes an annoyance.

It simply obscures too much of what you need to see. We guarantee you'll die many deaths because you have no idea that behind that cloud of smoke is a whole whack of crazed creatures running straight at you. Gameplay options include single-player 'Campaign' and 'Survival' modes (the latter being just that – timed survival), two-player split-screen, and a secondary launch alternative that fires up a fully modifiable version of the game. And if early exploration is any indication, the mods will be flying fast and furious on this one. Let's just say there have been a whole ton of rather, erinteresting clothing and weaponry concoctions already. Multiplayer devastation is offered in a number of flavors, arguably the most compelling of which is cooperative play – if just for the chance to temporarily break free from the 'you against the world' concept of the single-player game. Imagine sixteen Sams running around, playing as a team, trying to lodge themselves on the network leaderboard.

That the online game seems to run relatively smoothly only adds to the experience and would seem to ensure increased Serious Sam longevity. The Verdict In an age where first-person shooters have become first-person thinkers, a game that takes us back to the raw, gory roots of the genre and reminds us why we went all gaga over the concept in the first place is bound to succeed. And it does succeed, despite several rather notable blemishes. Will ultimately exhaust its players by virtue of its screen-filling mega-confrontations, its non-stop repetition and the sense that you are almost always mercilessly outgunned. Sam 3 is good but could have been better.

Hopefully others will take up the torch and run with it. 8 Presentation The menus are accessible, the opportunities beyond the single player game are impressive, and the game runs smoothly throughout. 8 Graphics There's a sense of environmental deja-vu and less high-end beauty than in many of today's top shooters. But for monsters and monstrous levels of death and destruction, Sam 3 is where it's at. Dil movie songs download.

Serious Sam 3 Bfe Secrets

9 Sound Great swells of industrial metal music, crazily verbal enemies, bombastic bombs, and audible gore galore. What's not to like?. 7 Gameplay Serious Sam is a wave-based, run-backwards-while-shooting, roller-coaster of doom from start to finish.

Variety is not its strong suit, but more weapon/ammo availability should be. 7 Lasting Appeal The basic premise is founded heavily in repetition. Yet it's a big game in solo mode, bigger still when you venture online, and even more compelling if you enjoy community mods.