Hands-On E3 2011: Serious Sam 3: BFE doing what Duke don’t, serious fun
Serious Sam 3: BFE isn’t a serious game at all. That’s probably why it will be so fun. Publisher Devolver Digital sannounced SS3BFE on the heels of Duke Nukem Forever, holding on to the theme of the old school first person shooter. Now that forever is out and the impressions and reviews are in, I think it’s time to get serious again. Seriously. Oh, and there’s 16 player co-op, again.
With PC as the lead platform, Croatian developer Croteam knew what hardcore Serious Sam fans wanted. From what I played so far, they’ve stayed true to what the series is all about. Arcade shoot em up fun. They took the Serious Engine 3 used in the HD release and cranked things up a notch. The engine they’re working with now is more of a Serious Engine 3.5 with several updates for today’s standards. This means levels are larger, more enemies can spawn, lighting is better, and etc. The alpha build of the game was running DX 10; however, most of the graphics and animations were still too early to pass judgment on.
Headless Kamikazes, Werebulls, Scrapjacks return along with many new ridiculous enemies, some revealed in trailers. There’s also a bunch posted in the SeriousZone forums. A new addition which might cause an uproar is the first iteration of iron sights to the series. I for one enjoy iron sights as opposed to shooting from the hip just for those enemies approaching between sniping and close quarter distances when enemies are dot sized.
Also, new to BFE is the destruction system. An example of this was when a werebull slammed through a building where I was replenishing my guns ammo cache. I admit, I screamed. From that moment on, it was all man, no cover.
The demo took place in what is left of Cairo, Egypt after the invasion of Lord Mental. When asked if we would be finally fighting Mental in an epic showdown, I was left with the answer of wait and see as this was the most requested piece so far from message boards and fan mail. New to the series are the brutal melee animations. It was said that there are melee finishers for almost every creature in the game, with one of them being Sam ripping out the eye of poor sap show in a teaser trailer.
The size of the game is definitely serious. Returning are even wider more open areas great for running backwards and circle strafing around hordes of enemies. One of the early levels is 3 times the size of First Encounter. Also, there’s a bit of scripted sequences that go on in the background that increased the production value leaving it a bit more mint. These are not cut scenes per say, but add more to the context of the seriousness of where Sam is and what he’s gotta do.
I long forget when sound played a large part of the gameplay when I stopped playing Counter-Strike a few years back. Just as it’s important to hear footsteps in CS, it’s as important to hear where the hell those Headless Kamikaze’s are coming from. They still freaked out one of the Devolver Digital demo representatives with him mumbling “oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.” It was hilarious. That’s what’s great about Serious Sam, it’s self aware and made to break down the fourth wall.
When asked for a proper date, all that was said was that fans won’t go past September without playing it. Nearly everything they’ve said feels like a nice improvement and if that’s all that Croteam does it’s fine. Best to not fix what isn’t broken.
We’ll be shooting things up later this summer first on the PC and consoles at a later date.
