“I will give Serious Sam 4 this much, though: the sheer variety of monsters you fight is insane in more ways than one. Every once in a while a decent gag lands, but just as often the script will inexplicably turn completely serious with no punchlines to it and it feels bizarrely out of place. I love a good pun more than most, and this wore thin pretty quickly.

We get a series of stiffly animated cutscenes in which Sam Stone and his military buddies fight to overthrow an alien overlord in Europe by… finding the Holy Grail, because why not? Sam’s voice sounds like he’s gargling liquid Duke Nukem as he and his allies rattle off an endless barrage of barely funny one-liners, constantly workshopping their comedy out loud. It’s just kind of strafing to the side.For whatever reason, there’s a story that attempts to justify all the weird carnage you’ll cause, and it’s just as much of a jumble as the battles. It layers on a few new ideas like dual wielding and a skill tree, at least, but while Doom has reinvented itself for modern times, Serious Sam seems to revel in neither moving forward nor backward. Sure, 2011’s Serious Sam 3 felt like a goofy throwback to a simpler time, but in 2020 Serious Sam 4’s brand of non-stop run-and-gun shooting feels downright archaic. Serious Sam, I think you have a problem and need an intervention.

And like all drugs, it can be dangerous to become reliant on it.

Best serious sam game