“It’s pretty badass,” concludes Ladavac.Ĭuriously, the story is being handled by Jonas and Verena Kyratzes. Rather than trying to draw a timeline out of all this, you just need to know that Earth is now a planet populated by remaining badasses. It gets complicated!” This conversation is starting to feel like Mulholland Drive. “When you put that together with time travel it’s very interesting because the third one is actually before the first one but it’s actually after the second one because he went back in time.

“We’re all for prequels of prequels,” says Ladavac. This time around you’re joining the remaining chunk of humanity in trying to resist series antagonist, Mental’s invasion of Earth, so it’s a prequel. Talking to Ladavac, Croteam had started to make that change from lone badass in Serious Sam 3, but lacked the resources to put many characters into the game. Rather than Sam blasting his way through these worlds as a lone badass, this time he is one badass amongst many. This change in scope is part of the ‘Planet Badass’ theme of the game. So we can have human armies clash with Mental’s troopers in huge battles.”

As Alen Ladavac, Croteam’s chief technology officer and the lead on Serious Sam 4, tells me: “Terrains are not just rocks and flora, but a stomping ground for the brand-new feature-Legion System-that can render hundreds of thousands of enemies in a single scene. Croteam says that the game will feature the biggest individual levels the franchise has ever had, and that this and a new terrain engine will support the epic battles which the demo hints at. This charge is where the demo ends, but the uptick in scale speaks to the scope of Serious Sam 4. My experience of Serious Sam is of this omnidirectional drip-feed of screaming jerks-this is more akin to a Total War battlefield.Ĭroteam says that the game will feature the biggest individual levels the franchise has ever had, and that this and a new terrain engine will support the epic battles which the demo hints at. But it’s the next (and final) sequence which I think will be the most tantalising-a full army of enemies appearing over the crest of a hill. It’s definitely emblematic of the franchise’s daft shooteryness. I figured that would be the centrepiece of the demo. It’s a little after this that we end up in that cornfield atop a combine harvester, listening to a jaunty banjo tune and mulching the heck out of orange jumpsuited folk. As the demo progresses we hear from other survivors, one of whom chucks a sniper rifle out of a church tower so Sam can lend a hand disposing of monsters.

Serious sam 1 demo