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Serious Sam 4

Unkillable Cat

LEST WE FORGET
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We can start by comparing the appearances of the two games, SS2 is clearly following in TNE's footsteps in that department, regardless of there being different developers. Compare that to the realistic appearance of SS3.

The addition of vehicles in SS2 (and their absence in SS3) sounds like an attempt to reach the Halo (2)-crowd, which is mostly console-based.

Level design is probably where it's at, though. One of the key points of Serious Sam's large levels was the absence of artificial barriers. (You want to go run out into the desert? OK, call me back in 10 minutes.) When barriers are in place they're natural, like scorching heat killing the player from sunstroke, bottomless pits, plain normal walls etc. SS2 has invisible walls to make sure the player doesn't run off somewhere. SS1 and SS3 also reward players who go out exploring, while SS2 rarely does so (or its idea of 'exploring' is checking 'round back of that shed you'll be passing close by anyway).

I'm unsure whether the weapons being as imbalanced as they are in SS2 is due to console-based reasons, but the imbalance is there. A shotgun having high accuracy and low spread up to long distances? A minigun that nibbles on its ammo instead of chewing through it? These things clearly favor the player by lowering the skill ceiling of the weapons.
 

Bad Sector

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Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
We can start by comparing the appearances of the two games, SS2 is clearly following in TNE's footsteps in that department, regardless of there being different developers. Compare that to the realistic appearance of SS3.

What does the visual style have to do with consoles? Croteam saw people liking the less "serious" tone in the earlier games and doubled down on it with Serious Sam 2 to a level that many people ended up disliking (though personally i liked it), this has absolutely nothing to do with consoles.

The addition of vehicles in SS2 (and their absence in SS3) sounds like an attempt to reach the Halo (2)-crowd, which is mostly console-based.

Again, this has absolutely nothing to do with consoles, adding vehicles in the game was just Croteam following a trend that was everywhere at the time - e.g. remember that Half-Life 2 had vehicles too and i haven't heard anyone ever claiming that Half-Life 2 was designed with consoles in mind. Yes, chances are that trend was popularized by Halo, but that doesn't mean every game that follows a trend introduced by a game designed with some particular platform in mind is also itself designed with that particular platform in mind.

(also FWIW Serious Sam 2 is the first and one of the very very few FPS games with vehicles i enjoyed using - in general in FPS games i really dislike vehicles and avoid them if possible)

Level design is probably where it's at, though. One of the key points of Serious Sam's large levels was the absence of artificial barriers. (You want to go run out into the desert? OK, call me back in 10 minutes.) When barriers are in place they're natural, like scorching heat killing the player from sunstroke, bottomless pits, plain normal walls etc. SS2 has invisible walls to make sure the player doesn't run off somewhere. SS1 and SS3 also reward players who go out exploring, while SS2 rarely does so (or its idea of 'exploring' is checking 'round back of that shed you'll be passing close by anyway).

This had more to do with their redesigned graphics engine that unlike SS1's brush-based system largely used meshes and their hardware occlusion queries based approach for checking which parts of the levels are that required rendering simplified meshes for everything in the world - this system allows for more precise visibility checks but depending on how it is done it can limit the size of your maps. Serious Sam 2 maps had much more detail and arbitrary meshes than Serious Sam 1 maps and they wanted to render a larger number of enemies too (with more polygons in them) so it makes sense that they had to limit their mesh count. BTW this is something that other engines had at the time, e.g. earlier versions of Unreal Engine 3 had the same issue.

Note however that both splitting the maps in parts and the hidden walls weren't something they were "forced" to do by consoles. If you find and play the Serious Sam 1 alpha, you'll notice that most of the levels in it are also split in parts and they tend to have hidden walls - it is possible that Croteam didn't saw much of an issue in doing so if it meant they'd get to have more detail in their maps.

I'm unsure whether the weapons being as imbalanced as they are in SS2 is due to console-based reasons, but the imbalance is there. A shotgun having high accuracy and low spread up to long distances? A minigun that nibbles on its ammo instead of chewing through it? These things clearly favor the player by lowering the skill ceiling of the weapons.

The game might be easier (though as i wrote previously i do not remember it being very different in terms of difficulty compared to the previous games) but being a bit easier doesn't make something "made with consoles in mind" (there is one exception to this and it is developers not being familiar with playing with a controller, so making their game easier because of their own unfamiliarity, so yeah, perhaps the game being a bit easier can be attributed to Croteam developers not knowing how to use a controller).

Honestly, it all sounds to me that people dislike Serious Sam 2, notice that it was also released on console at the same time and make some sort of connection in their minds that the reason for them disliking Serious Sam 2 is because of that console release and not because Croteam made some design decisions in the sequel that they'd do regardless of platforms.

None of the things you mentioned have anything to do with consoles - consoles can have hard games, can render large worlds, do not need to use invisible walls and -especially- do not force any particular visual style on the games. Similarly, PCs can have easy games with small maps (hello Half-Life 2, again), have a ton of games with invisible walls and also a ton of games with different visual styles.
 

Unkillable Cat

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You're right - none of the things I mentioned have anything to do with the consoles themselves.

They have to do with the people using them.

The peasants.

All of the factors I mentioned (plus one I missed - Netrisca talking so that she can more easily guide Sam along, because reading is boring) are things you do when designing a game to appeal to a broader audience - which inevitably means a dumber audience.

Yes, consoles can have hard games, can render large worlds, don't need to use invisible walls and don't require a particular visual style - but at the same time these things are not the norm for console games. The opposites are the norm because they sell better. The opposites are the norm because broader/dumber audiences prefer them.

One final aspect to keep in mind is the time period of SSam2's release - 2005. Back then there was virtually no Indie scene to allow for any variety, or deviating from the de facto-norms of the gaming industry. Serious Sam was a success because it was Serious Sam, it took a tried-and-established concept and stuck to the classical aspects of it that the market had long abandoned, while still retaining a unique identity. As a result it was well received (I should know, I reviewed the game back then and kept close tabs on what other reviewers were saying. I gave it 8/10 BTW). For Ssam2 Croteam took a risk and tried to dip their hand into the honey pot of normalcy to score some cash. The fact that they haven't tried that since should tell you something. The fact that they found another solution (hawking off Serious Sam in numerous spin-off titles*, of which some have found their ways to consoles IIRC) tells me that Croteam are learning animals of the highest order.

Serious Sam 2 was so bad that it taught me the harsh lesson to never buy a game upon release, that it's always better to hang back for a few days and hear the word on the street. I followed that rule strictly from 2005 until 2014 when I bought Alien: Isolation at full price. While that game was good it was not worth 'full retail price'. If I buy a game immediately upon release nowadays it's only to support the developer.

I will be watching Serious Sam 4 closely, precisely because of the blunder that is Serious Sam 2. I'm hoping they get it right again, instead of repeating their mistake.

*By far the best SSam-guest appearance must be in "Oh Sir!...The Insult Simulator"
 

Bad Sector

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Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
You're right - none of the things I mentioned have anything to do with the consoles themselves.

They have to do with the people using them.

The peasants.

All of the factors I mentioned (plus one I missed - Netrisca talking so that she can more easily guide Sam along, because reading is boring) are things you do when designing a game to appeal to a broader audience - which inevitably means a dumber audience.

Right, sorry, i thought you were trying to have a serious discussion. My mistake, let me correct it: PC Master Race FTW, keyboard and mouse for life, controllers are for peasant consoletards, 144Hz monitors are the base minimum, *opens /r/pcmasterrace* "RGB lights huehuehue" *nah that was not a good idea*, etc.
 

Curratum

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Serious Sam 2 is the best game in this entire sad, jaded franchise, you bozos.

It didn't have level design, as usual, but at least it looked pretty and had varied environments and locations to gawk at as you mow down stuff.
 

Curratum

Guest
Furthermore, Serious Sam 4's gunplay looks about as tasteless, incoherent and randomly thrown together because it looked cool to someone as early builds of Brutal Doom.
 

JDR13

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Serious Sam 2 was so bad that it taught me the harsh lesson to never buy a game upon release, that it's always better to hang back for a few days and hear the word on the street. I followed that rule strictly from 2005 until 2014 when I bought Alien: Isolation at full price. While that game was good it was not worth 'full retail price'. If I buy a game immediately upon release nowadays it's only to support the developer.

You can't have been gaming very long if SS2 was the first game to do that to you.

Personally, I still had fun with it. It's the worst game in the series for sure, and the enemy design is ridiculously dumb, but it still has decent action and lots of secrets.

Oh, and Alien: Isolation not worth full price? I think I could have paid double for that one and still easily got my money's worth.
 

Curratum

Guest


First 20 minutes of gameplay.
This is the most hilariously ugly game I've seen in ages. Every single thing about this is embarrassing and looks like an amateur mod.

I'm not exaggerating, I can't believe they're selling this as a 40-eur game. :prosper:

Edit: Welp, video is private now.
 
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Codex Year of the Donut
may be the kind of jank we need

Objective Markers
:what:

4e2d01d1a3.png
 

Wunderbar

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Nov 15, 2015
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Healthbars, damage numbers, objective markers, weapon wheel, constrained environments, horribly written banter, reloading animations, aiming down sights...

Looks like they haven't learned a thing from SS3. Is it so hard to just make The Second Encounter but new?
 

Suicidal

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Apr 29, 2007
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Watched a guy on Twitch stream it yesterday and he managed to jump over a fence that was apparently a level border and then he ran around for about 30 minutes through semi-textured fields and endless forests that kept popping out with no enemies or anything else happening :lol:

Game also looks incredibly dated graphically, but the gameplay seemed fun at least, very Serious Sam with the big arenas and lots of enemies constantly running at you. Person that was playing it is a very jaded "old games = good, new games = bad" kinda guy and he said that he liked it a lot more than the new Dooms.
 

udm

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Make the Codex Great Again!
Healthbars, damage numbers, objective markers, weapon wheel, constrained environments, horribly written banter, reloading animations, aiming down sights...

Looks like they haven't learned a thing from SS3. Is it so hard to just make The Second Encounter but new?
You forgot skill tree, sam has upgrades now! :happytrollboy: Though I haven't seen a lot of gameplay, maybe it was just a one time joke, but I doubt it.

I'm just really hoping this is similar to what they did for SS3 with the earlier levels as a "gotcha" thing to parody games of that era.
 

Bad Sector

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Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Watched a guy on Twitch stream it yesterday and he managed to jump over a fence that was apparently a level border and then he ran around for about 30 minutes through semi-textured fields and endless forests that kept popping out with no enemies or anything else happening :lol:

So like SS3 then? :-P It is very easy to break the level collision (...and of course they also have some secrets that pretty much require you to do exactly that). You can even get stuck in level geometry that the engine at some point realizes and teleports you somewhere nearby with a message "there, don't do that again" (or something like that, it has been a while since i played it). Though sadly sometimes it doesn't figure it out and you have to restart the game.

Anyway, TBH i do not care about the graphics much - outside of SS2, visuals were never Croteam's strong point - especially humans (notice how Sam's arms stretch in the SS3 intro as he falls from the helicopter) - and even in SS2 the game had a ton of glitches like obvious clipping through bodies in animations (and a lot of reused animations). They're a very small team, i think there was a photo of them somewhere and IIRC it wasn't even 20 people.

Though some time ago i found and played the alpha version of Serious Sam 1 which had different(ish) levels and 90% different models (3D modelling was clearly never their strong point :-P) and i found it interesting how the series has changed since then. TBH i liked those levels more than even the final SS1 levels (with the only exception that they are big and mostly empty) since there wasn't a bullshit spawn almost every time you picked up something and the gameplay felt closer to what you'd see in other 90s FPS games than what SS1 ended up with (which TBH i was never a big fan of). It'd be nice if they made some game like that at some point.
 

Wunderbar

Arcane
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Nov 15, 2015
Messages
8,809
Healthbars, damage numbers, objective markers, weapon wheel, constrained environments, horribly written banter, reloading animations, aiming down sights...

Looks like they haven't learned a thing from SS3. Is it so hard to just make The Second Encounter but new?
You forgot skill tree, sam has upgrades now! :happytrollboy: Though I haven't seen a lot of gameplay, maybe it was just a one time joke, but I doubt it.

I'm just really hoping this is similar to what they did for SS3 with the earlier levels as a "gotcha" thing to parody games of that era.
a lot of people dropped that game because of horrible early levels. "i was only pretending to be retarded" is not an excuse.
 

UserNamer

Cipher
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Nov 6, 2010
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692
I liked bfe at the time as in the end it played differently from everything else and it was fun unlike modern shooters of the time. Sprint was never an issue at all (base speed is the same as old ss games plus you get infinite sprint so I never got the problem). Reloading was me but it never impacted the bulk of your arsenal or rocket launcher, coach gun, gattling gun. Tonally it was my favourite game in the series because everything was serious except for Sam and I liked that sort of restrained humor, what I have seen from some ss4 videos it seems it is trying too hard to be wacky

Anyway I will play this later this evening hopefully it will be good
 

Durandal

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My team has the sexiest and deadliest waifus you can recruit.
IIRC, BFE sprinting was mostly useless in combat because you could only sprint moving forwards and couldn't fire while sprinting, and most enemies could still outrun your sprinting speed anyways. Sprinting was there mostly to let you move faster through the non-combat sections of the game without compromising the enemy balance by buffing your default movement speed. I'm replaying TFE right now, and there are a lot of moments in the levels where there are no enemies around and all I'm doing is holding W for half a minute while moving to the next arena because the levels are just way too large, where I often wished for a way to move faster.
 

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