Serious Sam 3 BFE

After the triumph of playing Serious Sam 2 I was looking forward to Serious Sam 3, although I may have been a little too amped up by 2. To be clear, this is not a bad game by any means, but it does fall a bit short of the mark set by the previous title.

It's a good looking and well built game, the aliens are well designed, and the weapons are nicely built and executed. The problem I had is that it comes too close to being another Call of Duty clone during the first 3 levels when grabbing the interest of the player is so important; if I had no Serious Sam history, I don't know if I would have bothered playing through them.

Surely a double barrelled shotgun is the best choice for suicide bombers.

When the game hits its stride, it does it very, very well; at that point the game has a great flow to it and the weapons meld into your form flawlessly. Once you have a few guns at your disposal the baddies start swarming and suddenly your back in that Serious Sam world where ammo flows and aliens die in heaps and piles, all the fun and frustration are there at your fingertips. I should also note that if your new to Serious Sam, frustration comes with the territory, be prepared to repeat swarm fights until you get it right, this game gives you everything you need to win, but that doesn't mean they make it easy.

I'm going to give this one 7/10  it's a good game but, at full price, it's not a cheap title, and it does lose marks for those first 3 levels. I think it boils down to this: If you're going to put a word like "serious" in your title, you can't expect people to take you serious, irony is the goal here, otherwise you should call yourself "Dude Who Shoots Aliens in Desert Settings with Bigger, and Bigger Guns!" which, to be fair, also sounds like an amazing game I would pick up in a heartbeat.