Serious Sam: Siberian Mayhem Review - A New King?
There was a button you could press, forgive me for forgetting which, that in Duke Nukem that would have good ol Duke yell out "hail to the king baby" though over the last few months I have begun to think he has passed his title onto non other than Sam "Serious" Stone. Sam is back in an all new stand alone DLC Serious Sam: Siberian Mayhem. Once again developed by Croteam and published by Devolver Digital Siberian Mayhem kicks off after the events of Serious Sam 4. Sam has landed on the frozen shores of Siberia and must hunt down General Howard brand before he hands off the Holy Grail and unleashes a whole heap of nope on planet Earth.
Sam is back in the thick of it taking on horde wave after horde wave of enemies for you to turn into red goo. Once again the meta here is to keep moving. Fast moving enemies and plenty of them demand your respect and you'll learn after a few deaths just how much tactics play into you moving through the levels.
The landscape for Siberian Mayhem is eerily bleak and lifeless with a few industrial buildings scattered throughout the tundra. It looks like once General Howard moved in the locals moved out. The eerie back drop is highlighted well with the somber tone set by the soundtrack until that familiar metal riff begins playing, headless soldiers start screaming and running at you and the adrenaline kicks in. Enemy encounters are fast, plentiful and completely over the top as they were in SS4.
If you are looking for something new here, look elsewhere. Serious Sam is anything but serious and it doesn't try and re-invent what it does well. Simple 90's style first person shooter gameplay. Plenty of quips and jokes from Sam to have you chuckling along and you fill the air with sweat red mist. Serious Sam knows what it is, knows what it needs to do and does it well.
Playing on a modest PC with a RTX2070Super 3600XT and 16GB Ram everything was running at Ultra settings in 1080p floating around the 120FPS mark. Graphically the game has a really cool look about it. Character models are done well and look decently crisp. I was impressed again with the amount of shear carnage that can happen on screen without any real noticeable drops in the performance.
At around 5 hours long Serious Sam: Siberian Mayhem is a good size to get your teeth into and see what has helped keep the Serious Sam series alive and well for the last 20 years. If you're a lover of the series, you're going to want to jump back in for just a little more.
Serious Sam: Siberian Mayhem is available on everything now!!
Keep an eye on our socials for some streams coming up and coverage on our show!!
Pat Clifford