PC Gamer - March 2012

srsly?
SERIOUS SAM 3: BFE flips a giant middle-finger
to all modern, cover-based FPSes by Steve Hogarty
Need to know

What is it?

FPS prequel to 2001’s Serious Sam: The First Encounter that finally, finally fills in those plot holes you’ve been wondering about.

Influenced by

Some of those pretty demos in 3DMark’s benchmarking software and half a dozen of the best Quake mods Play it on Intel i5 CPU, 4GB ram, GeForce GTX 460 or Radeon HD 4890 Alternatively Bulletstorm, 80% Copy protection One-time activation, or Steam

No cover. All man. So reads Serious Sam 3: BFE ’s macho tagline. Those other shooters you’ve been playing?

The ones that let you hide your character behind things? You’re playing as a coward. If you could have looked down to peer through your digital trousers you’d have seen a pile of ghastly formless voxels where your bump-mapped man-genitals should have been. Serious Sam despises you and your contemporary FPS standards, in a fun way that’s sometimes difficult to appreciate as intentionally ironic.

As with his previous games in the
series, Serious Sam 3: BFE is a first-
person shooter that prides itself on
bedlam and ultra-violent, large-scale
carnage versus tens of thousands of
streaming, screaming monsters. It’s
defiantly old-school-PC in tone,
confidently jabbing a retro elbow
into the sides of modern shooter
conventions. Even Sam’s fleet of
foot motions feel weirdly out-
landish as he scoots in all direc-
tions like a hyperactive ghost, all
nimble, lightweight and carefree.
And this is despite him carrying a
dozen different weapons, from
sledgehammer to shotguns, mini-
guns, rocket launchers and an
electro-leash obviously (and hilari-
ously) inspired by Bulletstorm.

So it’s awesome that the game’s campaign is playable up to 16-player co-op, and although the population of enemies is adjusted to account for the number of challengers, proceedings are decidedly more relaxed this way. You respawn on death, for example, rather than having to restart from your last save.

Put up your Duke Enemies spawn in their droves, from crowds of cyclopic fanged gorillas and skeletal chain-chucking horses, to giant scorpions with chainguns for arms and headless, sprinting, bomb-fisted kamikaze soldiers. Each enemy has its own distinct movement, attack patterns, and weaknesses, and it’s in prioritizing the most dangerous of them—picking them out of a clattering bunch of 50 or 60 enemies— that the challenge lies.

Spot the deference
Bulletstorm: doing it first and doing it better

SeriousSam3:BFE Bulletstorm

WInnER

1. Kicking things Sam can only kick certain enemy types. Bulletstorm, on the other hand, has a dedicated kicking button.

2. Cannons Bulletstorm’s Bouncer gun fires a cannonball-like projectile. Serious Sam 3’s cannon fires an actual cannonball.

3. Electric leash Sam can explode enemies with a glowing leash. Bulletstorm’s leash lets you fling them around the map first.

WInnER!

WInnER

Serious Same

Survival mode is a distillation of the form, pitting you and (if you like) co-op buddies against waves of increasingly tough enemies in one of two arenas. Elsewhere, despite introducing a Duke Nukem-like plot as schlocky as it is charmless, the campaign feels like a lingering, grudging concession. A heavily templated and mazelike series of levels into which the meat-paste of Serious Sam’s sublime and pure death arcade has been pumped. There are a few moments of beautiful design: the occasional genius placement of a surprise onslaught of kamikaze soldiers or in the triggering of a shrewd mousetrap. The visuals, however, are somehow greyer and less expansive than 2005’s second Sam, it’s left to some swanky new particle effects to impress players.

The return of most of Serious Sam’s most familiar weapons and enemies, at the expense of much new content, will just as likely leave you exhausted as elated. But if you felt even vaguely like fist-pumping upon hearing the tagline “No cover. All man,” give Serious Sam 3: BFE a shot.

◆ Price $40 ◆ Release Out now ◆ Publisher Devolver Digital ◆ Developer Croteam ◆ Multiplayer up to 16 ◆ Link www.serioussam.com ◆ ESRB M