Serious Sam Collection Review (PS4)

Once upon a time the FPS genre used to be fun and offered relatively free rampages through levels with a more or less intricate design. Instead of heavily scripted scenarios, where you are punished if you stray from the road envisioned by the developers, you were encouraged to explore every hidden nook and cranny and slaughter all the monsters you encountered. If you miss those simpler times and you want to relive them on the current generation of consoles, Serious Sam Collection is just the game for you.

Mindless or not, these shooters, although simple in scope, offered tremendous fun and freedom to players. The Serious Sam Collection reunites in one package some of the best titles that require you to have good reflexes, instead of a strategical approach: Serious Sam HD The First Encounter, Serious Sam HD The Second Encounter, The Legend of the Beast DLC, Serious Sam 3: BFE and Serious Sam 3: Jewel of The Nile DLC. As you might have guessed all of them focus on the struggles of Sam “Serious” Stone, a war veteran best described as an extremely simple guy, copied after the image and tastes of Duke Nukem, but with even less personality than Masterchief himself.

Serious Sam 4 is missing, so it is not exactly an omnibus type of collection, but it is the most complete package for consoles up to date. As such you will have the chance to see how the story develops around Serious Sam, who loves his guns and has and seems to find himself on the stairs of an ancient pyramid no matter where he lands. The first game, launched by Croteam in 2001 tasks you to stop the alien Mental invasion by sending you back to Ancient Egypt.

The second game picks things up right where the first encounter ends, and you find yourself back in the Mayan temples hidden in the jungle. The third part can be considered a prequel and starts on the destroyed streets of Cairo, searching for the professor who can unlock the secrets of the infamous Time-Lock. In summary, the solution to all of mankind’s problems seems to be sending back Sam and let him destroy everything.

The story is just an excuse to kill every alien you encounter, Sam’s forte being not the narrative, but the fast-paced and challenging action. You know what is in store for you when you enter the large open or indoor spaces, the rhythm of the music becomes frantic, the door closes behind you and you can’t advance until you are the only one left breathing. You barely have time to catch your breath between the waves of enemies growing more and more powerful and dangerous up until the point where there are no more enemies left and you are free to search your surroundings for health or armor replenishments, or even secrets. It is a simple recipe, some would even say outdated, but fun and immersive.

More important than the story are the weapons, and there is no shortage of bullet spitting death tools since Sam can carry an entire arsenal hidden in the pockets of his jeans. Each new piece is more powerful than the last one, and the levels are full of ammo so you don’t really have to waste time managing your resources. Still, the best approach is to use the weapons as they were meant to. For example, the grenade launcher does its best when pointed towards groups of enemies, while the sniper rifle can help you take out unaware enemies from a safe distance. Nonetheless, it is mindless fun, and you are free to use the weapons you like most and do not release the firing trigger until things move around you. Point the guns towards enemies, fire at them until the clip empties, reload, rinse and repeat.

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The enemies are just as simple as well and do not require a different approach based on their type. On harder difficulty levels they remain just as simple, but their number and resilience to bullets are increased. Their design is out of this world and they are bizarre, but what else to expect from aliens and mythical beasts?! The boss encounters were once spectacular, today they tend to be more hilarious, but the basic recipe still works and it lots of fun: try to avoid the attacks of the oversized creatures and bring down their HP to zero as soon as possible.

Graphics-wise, the game did not age very well. Despite being named HD, the first two parts have textures that will make Pepperidge Farm remember the good old times. They are not ugly per se, but are very, very far behind the current visual standards. Serious Sam 3: BFE is a clear leap in visual performance, but you still need to curb your graphical expectations and focus on the fun offered by the gameplay, because it looks outdated. The same can be said about the audio design, the weapons have an adequate sound, the rhythm of the music intensifies as the action on the screen becomes more violent, but otherwise, it is flat and completely forgettable.

The multiplayer was a hit part of the game back in the day, and although it shows its age as well, it does not disappoint. Next to the 4 player coop that lets you tackle the maps in a competition frenzy of who slaughters more enemies, there are also the traditional game modes as Versus, Deathmatch Classic, or Capture the Flag in which you can measure your skills against human opponents. The eight-player matches keep the framerate steady, but there can be long wait times in the online lobby for the vs matches than the coop ones.

The Good

The Bad

Conclusion