Serious Sam 4

[Nash]

These kinds of games are only fun in multiplayer, with people you actually know.

On another note, they've talked about "putting 100,000 enemies on screen" - I am interested from a technical POV.

[Redneckerz]

The style of gameplay looks very much like the original.

Unfortunately, that means I'm not that interested. The endless scripted arenas and enemy waves became utterly tedious to me. I have always wanted to like Serious Sam, I really have. It has so much potential - but that awful (IMO) arena and scripted battle style (rinse and repeat ad nauseam for the whole game) is just a massive turn off.

They don't show it off at all, but Sam 4 is supposed to be one seamless free world where you roam from area to area (Hence the motorcycle). Serious Sam 2 had something similar, but on a far smaller scale.

The huge number of enemies looks interesting and impressive but I wonder how playable that will actually be? Will it even really matter? Will you just be mindlessly circle-strafing around the horde slowly wearing down their numbers until the next wave?

They originally thought the Legion system would use up to 10k enemies. They are at 100k now.

From the trailers, it seems they want to include some bullet-hell style gameplay by strafing left and right, a bit like Tower of Guns and Mothergunship.

That said, The Black Masses also uses 100k enemies using a custom crowd generation system. I can see Legion run well on PC's (Being that Sam is more of a household name than Black Masses, i can see the game being used as a benchmark because of it) and Stadia, but for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One? I have a hard time seeing that run well, unless crowd density is reduced. Because no matter if that system is CPU or GPU based, simulating 100k enemies is a tedious task no matter how you slice that, lol.

These kinds of games are only fun in multiplayer, with people you actually know.

On another note, they've talked about "putting 100,000 enemies on screen" - I am interested from a technical POV.

I thought singleplayer Sam was really enjoyable.

For Legion,there was a paper out and there is this video i believe:

[Kinsie]

The problem with having 100 thousand enemies in battle at once is, well, in first-person you can only really see the front of the wave of bodies. It's a tech trick better suited to a third-person game. Something like Dynasty Warriors, where you're constantly running back and forth around a large open map, through a tidal wave of flesh and swords, completing objectives as they pop up.

There are two things about the videos they've put out so far that concern me. The first is that they seem reluctant to show more than a couple of seconds of gameplay at a time, which seems like a bad sign. The second is that through what few seconds of gameplay they show, if you look closely you can see that reloading is back from SS3, and that mechanic really doesn't fit this style of shooter...

[Jeimuzu73]

I concur, 100 thousand enemies on screen at once is definitely overkill for an FPS; it's much more suited towards strategy games like Totally Accurate Battle Simulator. Still, I reckon that with set pieces like that, Sam will eventually become one of gaming's biggest one-man armies in terms of sheer body count.
On the other hand, the weapon upgrades look like they took a page from Wolfenstein and Doom: didn't expect Sam to dual-wield auto shotguns like BJ.

[Apeirogon]

Will you just be mindlessly circle-strafing around the horde slowly wearing down their numbers until the next wave?

Not entirely true. Circle strafing is legit tactic for the entire game, but it become tedious too quickly, around level 4, or on what level you obtain not secret thompson for the first time?
SS not like Doom, where you can blaze through entire game using only double barrelled shotgun*. Classic SS more about battle situations which can be resolved in minimum time using right weapon in the right time. Technically you can beat entire game using starting pistols, since there are no enemies immune to them and they have infinite ammo. But it takes a lot of time and transform it from "run and gun" into "I hate it".

* Why English still dont have one word for this weapon? For example in russian its "двустволка", one word instead of long phrase "double barrelled shotgun".

[leileilol]

SS not like Doom, where you can blaze through entire game using only double barrelled shotgun

well, that's not like doom either. In fact some prefer Doom over Doom 2 because it can't be cheesed like that

[Enjay]

* Why English still dont have one word for this weapon? For example in russian its "двустволка", one word instead of long phrase "double barrelled shotgun".

Abbreviate it to SSG (Super Shotgun) and pretty much everyone around here will know what you mean.

[NeuralStunner]

Serious Samgun

There's a sweet spot between following formula and doing something new, and it looks like this is too far into the former. Massive amounts of enemies onscreen would be more impressive if the game's focus were more on pitched battles - Left 4 Dead style cooperative gameplay, for example.

To start with, combat arenas don't have to be so... arena-like. Doom 4 uses some massive, detailed spaces where you can actually dodge, jump, and flank your opponents. Circle-strafing battles are basically reserved for the bosses (though even they are more interesting than that). There are also plenty of spaces between with smaller fights, so it doesn't feel like such stop-go-stop-go action. Exploration areas break it up even further.

[PlayerLin]

The style of Serious Sam was why I recently just lost interest on this series because...well, I just tried with "deal shitload of monsters with legal ways -- aka not cheating", even lower difficulty won't help much.
The fun is "its core gameplay", but if I feel it's already boring then nothing can help, not even the "100K monsters" Legion system can help too, to me it just take more time to deal with and I would starting to feel boring...still it would be fun by looking at that...of course that would be other story when actually play the game.

[Dancso]

Fresh gameplay trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09tfTlNIvH0
Where are the hordes of enemies?

[SamVision]

For whatever reason earlier trailers were on low settings.

[BunnyWithBeans]

SS not like Doom, where you can blaze through entire game using only double barrelled shotgun

well, that's not like doom either. In fact some prefer Doom over Doom 2 because it can't be cheesed like that

I never felt this throughout any of my playthroughs of Doom 2. I still prefer Doom 1 for the better level design, but I still found myself using a variety of weapons in both games, even if the shotguns are supposed to be the workhorses. You won't be killing much if you try to main the super shotgun. If you don't believe me on that one; try to do the big fight in Tricks n' Traps or Suburbs with just the super shotgun. You'll die/run out of shells.

Anyways, getting back on-topic; I was never a huge fan of Serious Sam games besides Serious Sam 2, mostly because 2 contains actual level design and doesn't feel like it's pushing you back with every drove of monsters. 100,000 monsters is interesting from a technical perspective if you can even begin to optimize something like that, but I'd rather Croteam focus on making the game playable first.

[xenoxols]

I really doubt huge numbers of enemies will be used for anything other than a set piece a few times in the game. I could be wrong, but all the gameplay we've seen looks manageable.

[Dancso]

Well, it's out.
People are flooding the reviews with complaints already. Poor performance, hit and miss gameplay, legions underdelivered as we suspected. Hell, some people are complaining that the graphics look dated. One has to wonder if they've got it maxed out, but it's still cause for concern when the store page recommends a GTX 1080, and minimum requirements listed (a gtx 970 for example) is to hit 720p at 30fps.
Maybe Nvidia has manipulated the game to further increase demand for the new 3000 series cards (I'm joking)

I guess I'm already just looking forward to picking it up at a discount in a couple years, hopefully with optimizations in place by then.

[Enjay]

A modern heavily hyped game not living up to expectations?



Seriously [ahem] though, if the criticisms are valid, it's a real shame. While Serious Sam's gameplay has never quite hit the spot for me, there was something quite admirable about the balls-out, uncompromising attitude that Croteam had to the implementation of their games.