Review: Serious Sam 3: BFE

So, before playing Serious Sam 3: BFE I should note a couple fundamental thoughts I had. First off, I have really come to take for granted the flashing red screen when my health was low. And secondly, I forgot the importance of run and gun. I’m serious… pun intended.

The first thing to take note of and I’m pretty sure it is all intentional, Serious Sam is probably one the funniest cliché characters on the face of the gaming earth. If that is offensive towards the voice actor, or the developers, I’m sorry. They should have thought of that before they let me play. He practically spews exactly what you expect him to. Kind of like a Duke Nukem, without as much perversion – and in a much more ironic way. Regardless of Sam, the rest of the voices and audio really fit the theme of the game. Music crescendos subtly in high contact areas and settles right back into the stage’s normal track after a battle. Furthermore, without the sound, you would have no freaking clue that a suicide charger was going to kill you soon. So, count your blessing.

Because I made that Duke Nukem reference earlier, I’m going to use it as a great segue into the gameplay aspect. The entire time I played SS: BFE, I kept thinking, “This is how Duke Nukem Forever should have played like.” Now, first off, this is not a comparison of validity between the two games. Just a mere observation of how SS: BFE plays. The basic fundamentals of the game are “shoot the crap out of the aliens.” In the event that you aren’t being overwhelmed with one of the many hordes of aliens, you can melee them into defeat. For most interactions, you get a custom kill tactic or animation. Some enemies get their hearts ripped out, some get their eyes ripped out, some get their necks snapped, and some get stomped – awesome. Any way you look at it, they get messed up, and you’re safe. Each death, I just kept thinking – Sam is saving the old school PC shooter, not the glorious Duke. Again, mere observation, not a point of validity.

Continuing the point of gameplay, SS: BFE actually excels really well in other aspects, too. First of which, the assortment of weapons hails back to the age old question, “How in the hell can I carry two shotguns, a pistol, a sledgehammer, and a rocket launcher?” But, that really is the enjoyment of it. SS: BFE requires the use of the weapons according to the enemies. Some enemies only require a pistol, while others seriously need a rocket launcher because they are a pain. Secondly, I really enjoy the 1 vs 1 million trait within video games, which counts true for Serious Sam. Nearly every level has a horde section. There are loads of enemies attacking you at one time, which unfortunately leads into the pitfalls of our game.

Mainly, each level is a rinse and repeat of the previous level. You enter the area, you wander around for a while, and then inevitably encounter a monster you can’t kill, so you find a new weapon. This then leads you into a horde sequence with loads of armor, health, and ammo. It isn’t a terrible mechanic by any means, but it gets repetitive when every level has these elements. Secondly, and I’m not sure if this was my experience exclusively or a known problem, but I regularly came across technical issues while playing. It usually happened in between levels, for some reason, when I would complete a level the next one just wouldn’t load. It would simply end up crashing. Thankfully, the autosave completed before it froze or crashed.

Despite, the issues that Serious Same 3 has, I still loaded the game right back up and continued playing. I really couldn’t put it down. It was fun to play through each level. I had a blast killing millions of aliens, and *spoiler alert begins* I really loved blowing the hole in the sphinx. *spoiler alert ends*.