Pick off the right targets first, sidestep charging enemies so that they miss, jink around incoming projectiles, and never stop running backwards. Randomly shooting won’t get you anywhere on anything but the lowest of difficulties you have 20-odd weapons and you’ll need to use them. Most were familiar faces from the earlier titles, but those foes are where the core tactical brilliance shines through. Much as the first level has somewhat narrower areas and lower enemy counts, the other levels – taken from later in the game – feature gargantuan arenas (bigger, to my mind, than those from the earlier games) and hurled more enemies at me than I could comfortably count. There’s an instant of levity which is quickly snuffed out and replaced with abject panic when the kamikazes stream down the hill, and it’s a moment that sums up what Serious Sam is all about: light-hearted in tone, but most definitely not afraid to overwhelm you with numbers and do its damnedest to kill you. It’s a moment as perfect now as it was then, tempered only slightly by the fact that we’ve seen it before. This is followed by a moment straight out of the first Serious Sam game: a bomber charges down the hill towards our hero, who – after blasting it, as a solo bomber is rarely a threat – mocks it by mimicking its scream… right up until the mockery shifts to “Uh oh” when a chorus of those screams starts up and bombers starting charging down the hill by the dozens. Before long Sam finds a pistol, and the headless rocketeers and kamikaze bombers start turning up. Now that he’s armed they’re less of a threat, each falling to a single, gory splat of the hammer. Sam escapes onto the city streets with the aid of a sledgehammer, only to find more Gnaar. ![]() Against more human-sized enemies, Sam’s melee attack unleashes a swift kick that does little damage but knocks them on their arse for a few seconds, both buying precious time to shoot other things and guaranteeing that Peter is going to love the game. Against some foes, like the Gnaar and the aforementioned Kleer skeletons, this results in him ripping something off them which you can then hurl at other nearby foes – and it’s just as bloody as you’d expect. This time around Sam has context-sensitive melee attacks, initiated by tapping the Use key when up-close. Naturally, this doesn’t go according to plan: Sam doesn’t take three steps before being rushed by a green, muscle-bound cyclops that series fans will recognise as a female Gnaar. His immediate goals are to find some weapons and make his way to the crash site to render assistance. ![]() Sam starts unarmed on the roof of what appears to be a tall, dilapidated apartment block in Egypt, having seemingly leapt out of a crashing chopper. The first of those three levels is the least traditional of the lot. It takes refuge in audacity, with enemies ranging from headless (but screaming) suicide bombers, through galloping skeletons, right up to 300-foot rocket-launching demons.įrom this three-level preview code I’m pretty confident that Sam 3 will at the very least keep up that tradition, along with the frenetic blasting action the series is known for. The Serious Sam series has always been one based in excess, going far beyond even the old-school FPS games from which it takes its inspiration. Those emotions are sheer, boundless joy… and manic, blinding terror. Serious Sam 3: BFE evokes two of the rarest and most prized emotions, and alternates between them so fast I ended up suffering from the psychological version of whiplash. All entertainment does, really, whether good or bad: you might feel rage and frustration at cheap enemy placement and level design, or you might adore a particularly well-defined character.
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