Serious Sam 4 Xbox Series X Review

"Seriously Alright"

Campaign

December 20, 2021 at 9:16pm
By Jason Stettner

This was certainly an interesting sort of experience. This is the fourth main entry in the Serious Sam series. It presents a world that has been under full siege from Mental’s hordes. You’re trying to fend off the invasion and do so with a bit of a misfit crew that has been compiled.

The campaign will take you to a few European areas to complete various tasks and prepare for a mighty final confrontation. A situation of which you see briefly at the start of the game. Like with the Stadia version I played a year prior, the long loading segments are present but it does seem a bit more streamlined during regular play.

The game now features more than just a campaign, with some coop level options and a bit of a survival mode as well. These both felt a bit minimal, yet at the same time it was nice to have something else to play within this one to expand the content. I did however have troubles connecting when trying the multiplayer aspect of these out and wasn’t able to connect to any of them.

The campaign does feature a decent selection of levels and a lengthy enough play time. There are also side objectives in each mission that you can work towards, among secrets too. That adds extra value if you’re after those types of things. The side quests aren’t super in-depth, but do offer something a little different to play. If you want a good challenge there are a number of difficulty options and a scoring system in place as well to see how you’re doing.

Gameplay

This is a fairly aged feeling shooter. It’s definitely something of a different time that’s continued to be brought forward. It does feature some really great carnage and ever so many visceral scenes. The enemies pop into little bits that fly all about, so in general the gore factor is quite high within this game. There’s a decent variety of foes present, but alas they do somewhat get repetitive after awhile. That’s a lot of this one, just being tired at facing the same enemies in the same scenarios multiple times over.

It can just be boring somewhat in that regard, with so many overwhelming points throughout. Still, the sense of scale at times is really awesome. It’s less impressive the second time through, but still really cool to witness. There’s a particularly insane battle sequence at the end that felt almost like overkill, but was still rather cool to see. You will get a variety of weapons to use here. There’s everything from handheld cannons that shoot literal cannon balls to a type of weapon that basically eviscerates anything it hits.

Everything from human standard weapons, to out of the box options and of course alien type guns as well. It’s one of those older style shooters, so you’ll collect health, armor and ammo off the ground which is fine. There are extra things to gather too, some will grant skill points to use for minor character improvements. More customization options are present with this version such as changing the character, altering FOV and even picking the perspective.

When playing on Xbox Series X you do get two options when it comes to how the game plays. Both are targeting 60fps and to a degree aim for a 4k resolution. Both have some serious performance issues with the quality mode taking more of a hit than performance. Neither are perfect, even with VRR aiming to add an assist in. The texture differences can be noticeable when going to performance.

You will get to use some vehicles in this which were fun and are located more towards the end. A harvester, some mechs and the like. I should also mention the cutscenes which were a bit cringe-like in nature, but did set the stage I suppose. That’s another area of the game that I thought was weak, the areas you visit were sort of bland and uninspired. The levels all felt about the same setup wise, it really didn’t do anything too unique with them which fed into the whole repetitive aspect a ton.

The Conclusion

Serious Sam 4 is alright, it doesn’t have the best of performance and while it has more content than it did when it originally launched I do feel that it could have been chunkier. It was really cool charging within what felt like thousands of enemies and allies at once. With that, it would have been nice to have the multiplayer work or just a few more options when it came to the survival mode area.

The performance definitely took a hit there and overall it wasn’t the best looking of experiences. It had some issues to it, and it felt very repetitive throughout. I originally had some complaints about this one when it came to modes and they did add some more here but it still feels minimal. It’s nice that secrets and side objectives are present, but those are also quite minimal in terms of content.

It was a fine game, but nothing too special and quite forgettable. I thought it did have some wild moments to it, yet overall it’s just nothing too incredible. It’s alright, repetitive and at times bland in terms of what it presents. It definitely has some satisfying carnage though, if you’re not being too overwhelmed.

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Serious Sam 4 Xbox Series X Review on Xbox Series X
Review Code Provided by Tinsley PR

Rating Overall: 5.9