Bosses show up every few levels, which is a nice touch, except that they’re either meatier versions of regular foes or gimmicks you have to run and hide from in frustrating sequences before getting the weapon you need to quickly bring them down. Even by the time the game started throwing long murder corridors of foes at me, it only served to contrast how sad all the lead-up to the big battles was. Battles are not nearly as mixed or dynamic as before, usually pitting you against one or two enemy types in scaled-down quantities. Hitscan enemies are far, far more prevalent now, cutting into a lot of the running and gunning that made Serious Sam so frenetic.
But so much of the old Serious Sam formula is forgotten or transformed here, you can hardly go from the classics to this without severe whiplash. Plenty of the old cast are here as mentioned, up to and including werebulls and scorpion warriors. The action suffers in much the same way, sadly. It feels like a huge step down from the opulent halls of Babylon or even the wild-ass planets of Serious Sam 2, to trudge through the same war-torn Middle Eastern city that every military shooter of the time was coughing up. The only thing that reminds you you’re not playing a Call of Duty here are the charging Gnaars and Kleers mixed in with the all-too-human looking zombie soldiers. Serious Sam 3 feels like a victim of the times it was conceived in, a muddy brown shooter that drags you through endless ruined streets and alleyways. All the others had majestic setpieces to battle around, whether they be looming pyramids or flying fantasy castles. It’s not much of a sight-seeing tour, however, and that’s the first place where this fails to feel like a proper Serious Sam game. There are a few thousand of Mental’s baddies in the way, of course, and the only way through is with bombs, bullets, and snappy one-liners.
A scientist in occupied Cairo has made a discovery that… look, it’s the Timelock, and Sam’s taking a roundabout, blood-soaked path to reach it. Prior to The First Encounter, the Earth is under siege from Mental’s forces, and Sam “Serious” Stone is on a mission to change the course of the war. Have you ever wondered what Sam was up to before he hopped in the Timelock and warped back to ancient Egypt? Of course not, no one cares about the story here, but it does offer an excuse for more Serious action in a new setting. This is barely a Serious Sam game, and the parts that really try to capture that magic are almost worse for how hard they fall on their face. But nearly two hours in, fighting the same boring enemies in the same boring environments with no levity or novelty or end in sight, I just can’t do it anymore. I’ve tried with Serious Sam 3, I really have. I had hoped that Legend of the Beast, that benighted DLC for TSE, would be the absolute nadir of the series.
But man, when it’s bad, it’s just the saddest thing. And even when it’s middling, like in Serious Sam 2, it’s still entertaining enough to carve out a worthy place among other FPSes. When it’s good, like in the First and Second Encounters, it’s an absolute blast.
SERIOUS SAM 3 BFE LEVELS SERIES
I’ve built a whole new appreciation for the Serious Sam series as I’ve run them all back. I really have, you have to understand that.
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