But if you felt even vaguely like fist-pumping upon hearing the tagline 'No cover. The return of Serious Sam's most familiar weapons and enemies, at the expense of much new content, will just as likely leave you exhausted as elated. It's left to some swanky new particle effects to impress us. There's little beauty in the visuals though, somehow greyer and less expansive than 2005's second Sam.
There are a few moments of beautiful design: the occasional genius placement of a surprise onslaught of kamikaze soldiers, the triggering of a shrewd mousetrap. A heavily templated and mazelike series of levels into which the meatpaste of Serious Sam's sublime and pure death arcade has been pumped. Survival mode is a distillation of the form, pitting you and (if you like) co-op buddies against waves of increasingly tough enemies in one of two arenas.ĭespite introducing a Duke Nukemlite plot as shlocky as it is charmless, the singleplayer campaign feels like a lingering, grudging concession.
