Serious Sam 3

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You’ll hear them before you see them.

The “AAAaaaaAAAaaa” of the Headless Kamikaze. The heavy “Thunk Thunk Thunk” of the Scrapjack. The distinctive sound of a horse galloping that marks the Kleer. Perhaps even the faint whispering of a Witch-Bride of Ahriman all create a frightening yet amazing cacophony of sound.

You expect to find five, maybe ten enemies at the most based on the sounds. Instead, you round the corner to find 50, maybe 100 enemies meeting your glaze. As they charge all at once, you have only seconds to decide on a course of action. However, there is only one correct answer: shoot everything that moves with the biggest gun possible.

When that gun runs out of ammo, you’ll frantically switch to the next one as you start carving a path through this murderous horde of alien forces. As your health and ammo deplete, there is a light at the end of the tunnel as the horde is growing noticeably smaller. Once the final Beheaded Rocketeer hits the ground, you’ll exhale the breath you didn’t even realize you were holding. With only four health remaining, it’s a miracle that you even survived. With a determined look on your face, you brace yourself to round the next corner and do it all again.

Welcome to Serious Sam 3.

The product of a four year development cycle, Serious Sam 3 is a radical departure from the majority of big budget first-person shooters released this year. Sam carries his whole arsenal on his back, enemies number in the double digits — sometimes even entering the triple digits — and there are no teammates to help you out. Gamers who remember and long for the days of Doom, Quake and Duke Nukem probably already know of Sam from the previous Serious Sam games, and it is safe to say Serious Sam 3 doesn’t disappoint, though it does feature a few missteps.

The game is a prequel to Serious Sam: The First Encounter; Sam is in the present day and must power the Time-Lock to travel to ancient Egypt. Let’s be honest: The story was never Serious Sam’s strong point, and this game just hammers that point home. Characters are stereotypical, a large majority of them only exist in Sam’s headset and are never seen, and the ones that are seen are largely forgettable, such as Hellfire. No cutscene is ever more than a minute in length and there aren’t many of them, so while the story isn’t that great, it never detracts from the game and I doubt anyone will find themselves attached to any of the cast.

This includes Sam “Serious” Stone, voiced by John J. Dick. The problem is not with the voice acting; John does well emulating the rough, gravelly tone that Jon St. John popularized almost two decades ago. The problem is that John just isn’t given good material to work with. Almost all of Sam’s one liners are stale and are more pun-oriented than what I remember from previous games. For example, Sam makes a “priceless” joke, emulating the old television MasterCard commercials. Sam also tells a guy to “Eat dust” after blowing him to pieces. Making the Duke Nukem connection again, Duke Nukem Forever had one liners that suffered from age but it had the excuse of being in development hell for ten years; even in 2007 Sam’s lines would have been considered horrible. Sam is also a notorious curser and, while I have no problem with my characters cursing, it feels extremely forced into Sam’s vocabulary.

However, much like the story, it really has no consequence on the game. Story scenes can be skipped, the one liners can be turned off and then the real focus is on the game itself, as it should be. Serious Sam 3 can be summed up by using a copy of the official guide I was given as part of the review copy: “Hold down the trigger. Run backwards. Repeat.” When Serious Sam 3 follows this mantra, it is an experience unlike any other, eclipsing even the previous games in the series. Oddly, and rather sadly, it doesn’t start this way.

For the first four levels, the game offers its take on the state of the first-person shooter. Linear hallways, scripted sequences and only two guns and a melee weapon to use. Admittedly, the joke is funny for the first level, because you expect the exact opposite to happen at any moment. Then the joke carries on to the museum, where you must fight hitscan enemies, enemies who can hit you instantly if you are in their sight, again with only two weapons. Here is where the joke starts to wane; by the third level, you are becoming quite sick of the limited weapon selection, the cramped quarters and the annoying Clone Soldiers. The assault rifle breaks up the weapon monotony but by the fourth level, where you are sneaking around minigun turrets, you’re probably ready to shelve the game completely.

However, by the fifth level, “Under the Iron Cloud,” things start to tick into place. The game world starts to open up and Sam is starting to develop quite an arsenal with the addition of a rocket launcher, C4 and the double barreled shotgun. Linear spaces give way to wide open spaces and you have a full arsenal with which you can use to dispatch the large variety of enemies. The annoying Clone Soldiers seen at the beginning of the game start to disappear, only reappearing in smaller numbers later, and by the seventh level, “Unearthing the Sun,” the kill counts start to exceed 1,000 kills. You’ll continue to build your arsenal over the next few levels, and with each gun you receive the enemies are more powerful, vicious and in greater numbers, leading to a final showdown in the last level which pits you against 1,750 of Mental’s best forces. The difficulty scales well and the game always leaves ample amounts of health, armor and ammo before any major battle.