Title – Serious Sam: Siberian Mayhem
Platforms – PC
Release Date – January 25th, 2022
Developer – Croteam
Publisher – Devolver Digital
MSRP – $19.99
ESRB – M for Mature
Disclaimer – This product is being reviewed on the PC. A review copy was provided by Devolver Digital for the purpose of this review. This review may also contain spoilers for certain gameplay and story elements. Watch at your own risk, you have been warned. Gaming Instincts is an Amazon Affiliate and does gain financial benefits if you choose to purchase this product on this page.
Serious Sam Siberian Mayhem is what Croteam would call a midquel, or in other words, a continuation of Serious Sam 4, which was released in 2020 for PC and 2021 for consoles. The first playthrough of Siberian Mayhem is quite short and offers five decently sized levels for $19.99. As the name implies, the game takes place in Siberia. In the past, Serious Sam games did feature some levels with snow, but there was never a full-on game or an expansion dedicated to just snowy areas. The Serious Sam franchise is quite popular among the Russian community, so this will be a fantastic nod to those individuals.
The game contains a ton of goofy one-liners that are absolutely horrible but in a good way. Traditionally, Serious Sam games feature dumb dialogue and stupid jokes, and that’s also true of Serious Sam: Siberian Mayhem, which I find to be a positive in my book. Serious Sam titles are notorious for not-so-good technical optimizations and are known to be demanding on PCs due to the sheer amount of enemies on the screen and all the particle effects that come with it. So how does Sam’s latest adventure fare this time around, and do the Serious Sam games still have a place in this world with its old-school gameplay and cringy storytelling? The answer is complicated, so let’s dive in.
History of Serious Sam Stone
Before we dive into Serious Sam: Siberian Mayhem in greater detail, I first would like to give a bit of a background story about myself. I will never forget seeing a boxed PC game cover with a guy in a white t-shirt firing a massive minigun at a bunch of aliens when I was around 11 or 12. It grabbed my attention, and I asked my dad if he could buy it for me. Thankfully, my father was also into first-person shooter games. Titles such as Hexen and Heretic were fantastic, not to go off-topic here, but now that Microsoft owns Activision Blizzard, there is a slight shimmer of hope that Hexen and the Heretic IPs will be returning thanks to Raven Software. Anyways, back to Serious Sam. Playing the very first title back in the early 2000s was fantastic. I’ll never forget the horde of monsters, beautiful Egyptian environments, the insane guns, and, of course, the screaming headless kamikaze. I’ve played every single game the franchise has had to offer since then. Those were the good old days. Games were a lot simpler back then. Now games need a serious and intense narrative or out-of-this-world gameplay mechanics. In those days, video games were mostly dumb fun, an era that the Serious Sam series excelled in
As time went on and the games grew in popularity, sequels such as Serious Sam: The Second Encounter and Serious Sam 2 started popping up. The games eventually came to consoles such as the original Xbox and were introduced to even a larger audience. It was a great time for the fans and for Croteam themselves. With every iteration, that hard-working team at Crotia tried to find ways to make every game better looking and more advanced in both technical and gameplay prowess. Additionally, user mods kept the franchise alive for many years and gave developers a reason to keep making new titles and improving the Serious Engine.
Fast forward to 2011, Serious Sam 3 came out, which received mixed results due to its technical issues and other problems, such as the bland color palette across the entirety of the game and some bad pacing at the beginning. After that, Serious Sam 4 was released in 2020, which has a more varied color palette, new enemy designs, a wide variety of levels, and even the ability to ride vehicles across vast planes of a massive battlefield. Serious Sam 4 was not released in a perfect state and had quite a few bugs and optimization problems at launch. Fast forward to today and we now have Serious Sam: Siberian Mayhem, which is the latest entry in the franchise and is hopefully a bridge between Serious Sam 4 and a Serious Sam 5 if there will ever be one in the future.
The Fun, Frustrating and Poor Paced Mayhem
The current FPS market is extremely competitive. Just last Holiday, three massive FPS titles were released, including Halo Infinite, Battlefield 2042, and Call of Duty: Vanguard, and they all managed to co-exist for numerous reasons. Some are too big to fail (Call of Duty: Vanguard), while others scratch a certain itch for gameplay that no one else offers, like Battlefield 2042 despite its horrendous launch and undelivered promises. And you can’t speak about FPS games without talking about Halo Infinite, a long-awaited sequel to the Halo franchise that offers fantastic multiplayer gameplay and has a solid foundation in the campaign department. So where do Serious Sam games fall into place here? Sadly, that franchise survives on a gameplay style that has disappeared from first-person shooters, the old-school, classical gameplay of shooting monsters in the face without caring about anything else.
The only exception would be DOOM 2016 and DOOM Eternal, but Id Software has much more resources and money to work with than Crotia. To be clear, this is not me bashing Croteam; it’s just an honest description of how the industry works. Croteam should be commended for keeping the franchise going for so long amid these difficult times, and thanks to Timelock Studios, we have another game in the series.
In the newest installment, players will find more of what the last title offered, such as bigger levels, deeper exploration, tons of new secrets, and new enemies, locations, and weapons. Serious Sam titles survive and exist for the fans. Serious Sam: Siberian Mayhem plays a much larger emphasis on exploration this time around. In the previous Serious Sam games, the player would walk into a room or a narrow corridor and shoot a bunch of monsters. After that, they would enter a somewhat large arena and fight even more monsters for several minutes, wave after wave. Then they would walk into a temple and pick up a relic or a quest item to gain entry to the next area. Picking up that item would cause enemies to spawn. This was the basic gameplay loop of the entire franchise for the past two decades. However, Siberian Mayhem decided to go in a direction I’m not sure I like, both as a fan of the franchise and in general.
The biggest change in Serious Sam: Siberian Mayhem is how massive some of the levels are. You can still play a linear path, but there is a lot more exploration for the tiny secrets and the 1 item that will most likely troll you by spawning a wave of mobs. However, bigger levels don’t necessarily mean it’s better for the franchise. I understood what Croteam and Timelock tried to do here; they wanted to offer more enemies on the screen for you to kill and show off the Legion system. The problem is that when there are so many mobs on the screen, your game turns into a slideshow. Serious Sam games have always been fast-paced, and the newer ones are even faster thanks to the ability to sprint around the environments and the addition of drivable vehicles. If your game is fast-paced and your framerate drops into the 20s, that’s not good.
Another problem is that the large areas force you to use vehicles to reach objectives, and that started to take away from the traditional Serious Sam experience. I always much preferred going into a room, a narrow hallway, or a somewhat larger outdoor area to fight a bunch of mobs. In Siberian Mayhem, you can control a tank and drive around the battlefield and kill a bunch of waves on the way to your next objective. The weird part is that you don’t even need to kill them, not a single one. Providing your PC doesn’t crash from the particle effects, you can drive around and avoid all the bullets and fire. Once you reach the objective and go inside the next area, the enemies disappear. Another level had you control a mech with guns and a chainsaw, so you had both ranged and melee weaponry. I understand that Timelock is trying new design ideas to freshen up the gameplay and make it more interesting. For some reason, though, driving a tank or a mech around overly large areas does not scream Serious Sam to me. To be clear, I don’t think large areas are bad for Serious Sam games. The classic titles also had those, but it’s the vehicles that break the game’s pace and feel unnecessary. If I wanted to drive vehicles in an FPS and kill a bunch of people, I’ll go do it in Battlefield 2042 or some other titles that revolve around vehicle mechanics, maybe even Halo.
Last, but not least, the art style of the last two titles, which include Serious Sam 3 and 4, is questionable. There was something special about the original games and its art style. Maybe it is just nostalgia glasses, but the realistic look of these games makes them look rather bland, especially in the snowy areas of Serious Sam: Siberian Mayhem. The older games had a ton more color. Serious Sam 4 was more colorful than three and had a better color palette, but it still geared towards realism, which just doesn’t fit the aesthetic of Serious Sam games.
Now, what does Serious Sam: Siberian Mayhem bring to the table that is fun and good? That would be the brand new weapons such as the laser beam that fires until you let go of the button or it runs out of ammo. It’s a ton of fun to fry a bunch of oncoming Gnaars while holding a button. It wouldn’t be a game based in Russia without an AK47. The AK47 throws me back into the Tommy gun days from Serious Sam: The First and Serious Sam: The Second Encounter, and it feels amazing to shoot. Furthermore, there is a crossbow that acts as a sniper. It’s fun to headshot enemies and kill them in line. Speaking of enemies, there are a few new ones, such as the crazy leaping frog-looking things and the flying fat dudes that love to beam you down with lasers. It’s great to see new enemies and weapons in the franchise because it adds to the core mechanic, which is shooting endless waves of monsters.
After beating all five levels, I came to realize that the Serious Sam franchise is having an identity crisis. In one area of the level, the game does what Sam fans always loved, but then in the next area, it becomes some weird open region vehicle driving game that just doesn’t fit. Timelock specifically said that they wanted to take the best parts of the classic titles and mix them with the great parts of the modern age entries. I appreciate that idea and think that’s a good way of thinking.
However, the vehicles are unnecessary. The level design in Serious Sam: Siberian Mayhem is as awkward as Serious Sam HD Collection on my Xbox Series X, and there was nothing reminiscent of the older games in this brand new standalone expansion. The previous games had more puzzles, quest items to collect, and areas to fight in. Meanwhile, Serious Sam: Siberian Mayhem uses all the space for sections that break up the pacing. The awful art style doesn’t help it either. Honestly, after about four or so levels, I started getting bored, but I had to finish the expansion. Thankfully the shooting is still good, and the enemies were fun to kill thanks to the new weapons and gadgets.
Final Verdict
I commend Timelock Studios for trying to make things right for the Serious Sam franchise, but sadly this standalone expansion isn’t what I was hoping for. The continuation of the awful art-style, unnecessary vehicles, and the strange level pacing outweigh the addition of the three new weapons and gadgets. As cool as it is to control a tank and a mech, it just ends up breaking the game’s pacing. The level design is also questionable and doesn’t feel like the classics. As a member of the press and a fan of the Serious Sam franchise, it pains me to say these things, but I have to be honest with Croteam, Timelock, and the fans of the series.
If there is another Serious Sam, please try to build around the core mechanic, which has always been shooting monsters in the face with insane weapons. Previous titles such as Serious Sam: The First Encounter and Serious Sam: The Second Encounter had fantastic level designs. Every level felt amazing, and it was fun from start to finish. The most recently released games do not feel that way, and please get rid of the strange art style where the game is trying to be more realistic than ever before. Realistic-looking art style tends to age much much worse in the later years. The original Serious Sam games still look lovely to this day, especially the HD ones. Sure, they are a bit dated in polygon count, animations, and all that, but at least they are more enjoyable to look at because of the vivid colors and somewhat exaggerated cartoony look.
With that being said, Serious Sam: Siberian Mayhem will receive a 6.5 out of 10.
