Party of One: Serious Jeff Plays Some Serious Sam 4

Hoo boy can’t wait to hear what Jeff has to say about SS4.

"Oh look, an angry steak!"

I noticed the following:

The Grigori ripoff (from Half-Life 2 - "Another one" killed me, though)

The bible quoting sniper (from Saving Private Ryan)

The one enemy that looks like a Mancubus (Doom)

Father Mikhail talking in tonques

I'm a big Serious Sam from way back, was excited for months/years to play SS4, but I just refunded it. I'll wait to see if Croteam can fix this mess, or at least get it on sale.

I appreciate Jeff playing SS4. I think what was awkward was that he was playing the 'tutorial' beginning of the game. But still...

And the rest is my opinion of what I saw. Blah blah blah. As far as I am concerned, this was an informative QL. But I do have an old love for the franchise. It could have transcended the times. Could of..

What I was not inclined a whole lot for was Hades. But I am changing my perspective.

LEEEHTTS GEEHTT SERIAAUUS!!!!!

All things considered, "No literary merit" is a good line.

Father Mikhail is having some issues lol

I could feel Vinny, somewhere, shrugging, when he shot that fire extinguisher.

God, SS4 is so strange from what I've played so far (about as much as Jeff did). When you're circle strafing and making vertical things go horizontal, it's good times. Everything else feels like they doubled down on SS3's faults (why?) and heightened the jank.

It's like Croteam can't quite figure out why the first two games were so unique and fun. First, they went too crazy with Serious Sam 2 (I do like that game, but man...), then they went "brown and realistic military whatever" and toned down the arcadey bits too much, and now it's "brown and realistic military whatever but we played a lot of Borderlands and Doom '16 and took the weirdest, least essential lessons from both".

I'm not going to judge SS4 just yet, like I said, I only played as much as Jeff did and maybe the game picks up as it goes, but the first impression is pretty sour. What happened to pumpkin headed chainsaw guys, bizarre secrets, and powerups that a disembodied voice sings about when you pick them up? Why are they trying for moments of actual seriousness? Why military shit? Why are the ragdolls still using the same strange physics and burn-away effects as the re-releases of First and Second Encounter?

I dunno, I just always find myself wondering what Croteam thinks fans want from this franchise.

Edit: Holy shit, I just watched Gmanlives' review... it's SO much worse than I thought. They really shat this one out, it seems.

PROJECT ROCK AND ROLL!!!!

That's just a Mancubus

The story for SS4 is like a bad facsimile of a late night Syfy z-movie... Which in itself is already a bad facsimile of something else

Man, could've really played a nice brainless fast paces shooter, but kinda seems that this is not it, chief

I know Serious Sam 2 is "the odd one out" but this really makes me want a Serious Sam 2 remake. That game at least went all silly with dumb weapons and jokes. Sam also was a complete doofus in that game and not a "cool guy action man" which fit the style of game way more.

This just looks like Serious Sam 3 again.

I think his silence during a lot of it spoke more then a thousand words.

I was kind of upset when Serious Sam 4 was a Stadia exclusive on console because I'd hoped to play it on Xbox or PS4.

This stream has made me no longer upset about that. Woof. Everything about this game looks bad. It's the cringiest game writing I can remember in the last 10 or so years. It's like 2007-2008 level terrible writing, and even bad for that time period, which had some pretty great writing in games like Mass Effect and even COD4.

So, umm, thanks Jeff for making me feel better?

It's so weird - Croteam is capable of some really great writing, as seen in The Talos Principle.

The purposefully cheesy writing schtick is old. It's not funny anymore. It's lazy. Every time a character talks in SS4, my reaction is "..k".

I feel like we're going to look back at this time in gaming history when RGB headsets were a thing, and roll our eyes so hard that they end up staring at us from the floor across the room.

I can tell you that the load times for SS4 on Stadia compared to Jeff's PC were about a third of that, maybe even quicker. I really hope Devolver lets Croteam work to make the game at least bug-free. I'd prefer old Serious Sam compared to 3/4, but at least 3 wasn't a mess when it launched.

EDIT: lol I got to the part where Jeff said the game is installed to a SSD. Really shows the power of Stadia!

It feels like the dev team are stuck in some time loop and they don't notice they're working on modern hardware, they just keep cranking out the same type of game with higher res assets as if it's 2001. I understand the whole angle of nostalgia and keeping it simple but there are so many modern solutions they could implement to this classic formula that would help elevate the gameplay. This is stagnant in the worst kind of way.

Also I can't even tell if ripping off the character designs is intentional and meant to be a joke or not.

I dunno, I'm not taking SS4 too seriously and I'm having a good time with it. I get people being underwhelmed with it, though.

@julmajuuhan: Might wanna have a look at Post Void:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1285670/Post_Void/

Post Void is a VERY fast-paced FPS rogue-like with a Hotline Miami aesthetic. It's short, frantic and a blast to play. Not much weapon or enemy variety, but I had a hell of a good time for the 2.50€ it costs.

I paused and rewound a few times, did Sam really say 'killed a q***r with a nail clipper'?

It's 2020 even with this 'Ironically' out of touch character that is just lame...

@theresonlyone: I heard it too, but he's saying "Kleer". https://serioussam.fandom.com/wiki/Kleer_Skeleton

They probably should have chosen... just about any other enemy name for that joke.

Those ruins in SS4 look a lot like the ruins in The Talos Principle... That was a cool game even though it did get pretty frustrating near the end, at least for me personally.

Glad to see people still playing Xonotic, I think I will reinstall it!

it's weird to see Tom Segura in SS4

Rambo Knife.

@jmm: I was thinking the same thing! I have to imagine they just recycled as much as they could.

Oh look, its an angry steak!

I too like Phillip K Dick and this game makes me feel bad about that fact.

I thought the guy in SS4 had a Giant Bomb shirt on

"IS YOUR PRIEST SENSE TINGLING?!?!" This game is... awful...

@riv3nt: I think they INTENTIONALLY chose that enemy name.

After about a half hour of getting anxious because he keeps missing the health pickups, I realized Jeff is colorblind and probably doesn't see the blinking red outlines on them. D'oh.

Oh look, it's an angry steak!

At this point Jeff might as well have the video of the game as a tiny tile, it will give him even more space for pointless crap on the screen making it even harder to see wtf is going on.

@dantronlesotho: Bad cow, bad cow. Jeff's right those planes overhead were f'n obnoxious.

@devitiffany: and the angry steak is just a Pinky basically.

This tells me they don't really know what even made those first games enjoyable to begin with. Wow, that dialogue is so bad!

Oh look, it's an angry steak.

It feels like they wanted to modernise Serious Sam, but they modernised it to the standard of 2009.

@theresonlyone: yes, because it's a skeleton. and a nail clipper. not because it sounds like that other word.

@riv3ntThank you so much for clearing that up for me, because I don't really know Serious Sam and I definitely heard something like "qu**r" and really couldn't parse out what it was supposed to be (just desperately hoping it wasn't what I thought I heard). Happy to know this game is just bad, not wierdly homophobic.