[epmode]

Tain'll be glad to hear that the end-of-level point total is affected by your savegame count. Maybe the earlier games did that already though!

[BobsRevenge]

Why is steam so busy? I can't download this thing.

[Tain]

Tain'll be glad to hear that the end-of-level point total is affected by your savegame count. Maybe the earlier games did that already though!

Yeah, I think the remakes did this.

I'm happy with the auto-saves so far, at least.

And I'm already ready to retract the melee complaints.

[epmode]

Why is steam so busy? I can't download this thing.

Batman? 18 gig download, no preload.

And I'm already ready to retract the melee complaints.

I think I am too.

One thing I definitely dislike is how the mouse sensitivity is out of control. I have to lower my DPI to have a reasonable turning speed. I had the same issue with the HD ports. Maybe it gets that way at high resolutions?

Whatever, game is pretty rad so far.

[Xander51]

All this talk of lighting and shadows interacting with volumetric smoke suddenly has me pumped to play this. I remember Giant Bomb did a video a few months back and it looked a little rough, but looking at it now this game looks amazing. Glad to see the positive comments here, might have overlooked this otherwise.

[Mupod]

One thing I definitely dislike is how the mouse sensitivity is out of control. I have to lower my DPI to have a reasonable turning speed. I had the same issue with the HD ports. Maybe it gets that way at high resolutions?

Cranking it all the way down to minimum seems to be perfect for me. It still felt too high at first but then I remembered what game I was playing and being able to turn fast is pretty essential. I got used to it quick. But yeah if it really bugged me I'd mess with my mouse software.

[The_Player]

Any conclusions GAF? Should I go and buy this game immediately? Loved every minute of original SS.

[epmode]

Any conclusions GAF? Should I go and buy this game immediately? Loved every minute of original SS.

If you liked the first, you're almost certain to like this one.

[nextgeneration]

Any conclusions GAF? Should I go and buy this game immediately? Loved every minute of original SS.

I haven't played the game yet myself (still at work), but in reading the comments here, on the Steam forum, and a PC centric games forum, the vast majority of the feedback so far is glowingly positive at this point.

[Garrus Vakarian]

Wow those recommended specs crushed my hope of running it well on my 6870. Will buy for the epic mayhem in co-op though!

[MrTroubleMaker]

running great all maxed out on my pc :D

Jesus Christ! This game is fucking HARD. Even on Normal.

yeah it is

[Ionic]

I have no qualms saying that the Survival mode in this game is one of the best things to happen to FPS gaming this year, and that it creates the feeling of a last stand better than any survival gametype I have ever played. It is intense.

[nextgeneration]

Wow those recommended specs crushed my hope of running it well on my 6870. Will buy for the epic mayhem in co-op though!

You should be fine. Those recommended specs are only for people who want to put everything at ultra or something.

[georaldc]

running great all maxed out on my pc :D yeah it is

What's your setup? Hopefully a 4.5 2500k and 6970 is enough to pump all those config settings to max (lol I know it won't, but near max should be achievable right?)

[nextgeneration]

For people who are scared off by the high system requirements, take a look at this. From Croteam on the Steam forum:

Guys, don't be scared off by our "recommended" system... Serious Engine can scale ~10x! Meaning, it can run fine on low-end CPUs and GPUs, and at the same time, it can really step on high-end systems. So, no you don't need ATI 5870 or NV 580 GTX to play this game fine. These are for ULTRA quality settings. And the game looks and plays really nice on MEDIUM settings. My take would be that LOWEST setting is for casual players that doesn't even know how slow rig they have. Game will work fine, but I wouldn't recommend it for graphics festival. Generally, you should be fine with NV 9800 GTX or ATI 4870 class GPUs. That's medium. Lowest setting is for HW like NV 9400/9500 and ATI 2400/3400. LOW setting is for NV 8600 and ATI 3670. And believe me, low quality looks much(!) nicer than lowest. As for HIGH settings, you should be fine with NV 280/460 or ATI 6850. And no, we do not support ("officially") Intel's integrated GPUs. I don't even know whether the game will run at all. Mostly because of drivers. And of course, performance is other issue. Sorry. CPUs? ~2 GHz dual-core is for LOW. ~2.4 GHz is medium. ~2.8 quad-core is for high quality and 3.2+ quads are ultra.

[poisonelf]

Damn Steam, I vowed never to buy a game there after the fiasco of endless 'verify integrities' with the Witcher. Couldn't wait because I love Serious Sam, played 18 minutes just to see it, got inhumanly hyped, and now it won't load.

Stuck at 'preparing to launch', verify will just re-download something, re-install direct-X components without asking me (had the latest anyway), and still won't run. Deleted and downloading whole game now.

Game looks to be divine.

[epmode]

So the music is goddamned awesome.

[The_Player]

Okay then, I definitely buying it. Thanks for feedback!

[Sysgen]

What's your setup? Hopefully a 4.5 2500k and 6970 is enough to pump all those config settings to max (lol I know it won't, but near max should be achievable right?)

You have the same card as me and a better cpu then me (I7-920) and I'm running everything @ Ultra. You will have no issues.

[The M.O.B]

Any reviews? or videos of 16 player coop mayhem?

[Chiggs]

The wave of bomb guys in the long courtyard in Cairo is a pain in the ass.

[Why would you do that?]

Yay according to the above post, my 9800 GTX+ can run it fine on medium at least. Normally I'd sacrifice frame rate for graphics, but since this is frantic Serious Sam, I can't exactly do that. :p

Nice to see some great impressions here.

[leng jai]

Alright early impressions here on a 4GHz 2500k/570GTX @ 580 speeds:

- Runs pretty well on Ultra with shadows on high. 40-60fps in general.
- Feels exactly like Serious Sam, very old school. No regenerating health, objective marker.
- Soundtrack is pure awesome.
- Second level is atrocious.

[JaseC]

The wave of bomb guys in the long courtyard in Cairo is a serious pain in the ass.

Fixed for maximum seriousness.

I'd be playing this right now if my router hadn't decided to bugger itself overnight.

[Teknoman]

How well does the auto-detect work here?

[bhlaab]

Played the first 4 levels I gotta say it's both pretty different from the previous Serious Sams but I also really like it.

Like there are still square arenas where a bunch of dudes spawn but most of the game so far has been like a weird mix between Doom and FEAR with its circular multi-room arenas with all sorts of corners and nooks and crannies.

Ironsights work very well actually-- they allow you to alternate between playing wildman and conservatively. There are quite a few hitscan enemies so far and humanoids tend to run for cover a lot more than I expected. The pistol feels really nice, although I wish it could take out kamikazees in one shot. The running and gunning in this game is the best I've felt in years, probably since the first Painkiller.

The melee takedowns don't work nearly as well. They're kind of iffy as to whether they trigger and when they do it is disorienting. The animations and physics on it are purely canned so it will actually tend to rotate you quite a bit and even the mighty boot one will teleport you a bit and lock you on so doing the melee attacks is a good way to end up facing the wrong direction.

Reloading is in as well and while it doesnt detract nearly as much as one would expect it has killed me a couple times already.

Graphics are ookay. I think the two HD remakes looked wayy better. This one has a lot of low-res console textures and UE3-style muddiness that affects gameplay a bit-- for example, the whole second level is spent fighting red and grey spiders in a building made out of cement and bricks. The cutscene character models are weird looking, with weird puffy lips that don't really sync with the things theyre saying very well.

Tonally the game is... kind of weird? It takes itself more seriously than the first two games (especially the second one) but it might be a parody... but it might not?? Imagine if Black Hawk Down was also the sequel to Army of Darkness. Sam will say things like "the LZ is hot!" one moment and then "So THAT'S what it sounds like when doves cry!" after he kills a bird monster. Parts of his VO really raspy for some reason like theyre trying to do a Christopher Nolan thing with the character. I think this heavy juxtaposition might be a joke but im not sure i just i dont know man. It kind of works?? It definitely doesn't seem awkwardly mashed together like, say, Duke Nukem Forever.

My main criticism so far is OK great no health regen I'm really glad but can I have a healthpack that isn't +1 once and a while please??

How well does the auto-detect work here?

Pretty well. It will detect your CPU, GPU, and VRAM seperately and seemed pretty accurate for me. Then you can go into each one and adjust the individual settings (which is nice because you go into it knowing which settings are CPU-heavy and which are GPU-heavy)

[The M.O.B]

I see lots of people mentioning the harsh difficulty, is it unfair or just plain tough but beatable?

[bhlaab]

I see lots of people mentioning the harsh difficulty, is it unfair or just plain tough but beatable?

For the most part the latter but there are some jerk moves they could have ironed out.

[red731]

This might be my first purchase on steam.
I can enter my CC info there and take it down after buying the game or should I not be concerned?

[Xander51]

This might be my first purchase on steam. I can enter my CC info there and take it down after buying the game or should I not be concerned?

You can elect to have it not even save your info at all. Don't be concerned though, the saving of info is purely for your convenience and not something nefarious in this case.

I'm going to pick this game up tomorrow. Looking forward to it.

[Sciz]

Yeah, not really sure what the point of melee kills was. The sledgehammer does the same job and gives you options to boot.

Not that I've used either since I ran across the Sirian Mutilator. So awesome.

I see lots of people mentioning the harsh difficulty, is it unfair or just plain tough but beatable?

Coming off of playing SS1 on Serious almost exclusively, SS3's normal difficulty hasn't been bad so far. Two or three deaths seven levels in. The game actually isn't pulling nearly as many cheap shots as I expected it to with regards to monsters spawning in or lurking around a corner. You get a good amount of warning for most of them. It's a bit stingy with rockets and I still haven't run across the minigun (though I did find some secret ammo, so it's tucked away somewhere), so the most serious challenges have been fighting the really big things with just the shotguns and assault rifle.

[glaurung]

Grabbed this late last night, kept playing Bejeweled 3 and their stupid profile reset system.

The game is awesome, but there are a few technical issues for me. The game autodetects my system as ULTRA-HIGH-HIGH under the performance settings, but in that state, outdoor campaign levels (the first and the third so far) are utterly unplayable. The engine renders the scope of the level and LoD that is directly in front of you and this brings about unbearable stuttering here and there. When enemies are loaded in, it gets even worse.

The indoor levels run like butter even when I turn the settings to all ULTRA. So there seems to be an issue with the auto-detection scripts being overly generous.

The game is awesome. I like the music, the story seems hilarious and Sam's one-liners are properly well done. This is the game that DNF should have been.

[Teknoman]

This really is the game Duke Nukem 4 should've been. Also everyone should set color options to vivid. This on Serious mode is probably insane in co-op...which we should really get going on that sometime this week/weekend.

Shadows seem kinda odd on trees and same for grass/detail pop in, but other than that its nice. This plus Bulletstorm and Hard Reset ftw.



The game looks good, and I really like the new enemy models/gore effects, but count me in the camp that so far the first and second encounter HD look better...but thats probably because of the fact that I/we havent hit any non-realistic/modern environments yet.

Still, gotta love over the top gory action with rock music kicking in at the best times. The normal ambient/action music is great as always (really liked the music in the first encounter).

[tci]

That's not the highest settings, is it? Seem like med/high..

[R1CHO]

Sadly, one of my favorite features, the splitscreen, destroys my framerate.

I can understand it, of course its more demanding, but the drop seems too high.

Somebody else tried it?

[JaseC]

This seems to run acceptably well on my system (E6420 @ 3.2GHz, 4GB DDR2-800, GTX 570) at Ultra, albeit with 8x AF, 4x MSAA, and 4x AA applied to shadows.

The colour filters are a nice touch. I settled on Vivid, as it makes the colours pop more and gives the pallet that classic Serious Sam feel. Similarly, the various gore options are fantastic - "Hippie" sees enemies explode into flowers, with gibs littering the nearby ground as pumpkins and carrots, while "Kids" translates blood to confetti and guts to lollies.

I've only progressed a fair way into the second level, playing on Hard and opting for an Old School run, so for the moment I have nothing more to add than I love how brutally awesome the sledgehammer is and the heavy metal music that kicks in when shit gets serious is a very nice touch.

[TyrantGuardian]

Yeah, I also really like Vivid, but you can set the sliders manually to whatever you want. They're not "filters" per se, just standard combinations of settings.

[pslayer666]

I'm so all over this when it comes out on PS3!!!! So all over this!!!!


I wish I had a decent gaming pc at home, just for this. God dammit!!!

[JaseC]

Yeah, I also really like Vivid, but you can set the sliders manually to whatever you want. They're not "filters" per se, just standard combinations of settings.

Semantics. :p

I'm so all over this when it comes out on PS3!!!! So all over this!!!! I wish I had a decent gaming pc at home, just for this. God dammit!!!

Every time I smash a Gnarr to a bloody pulp with my trusty sledgehammer, I'll think of you.

[Spectacular Dr Dawg]

Nice to see all the positive impressions. I'll have to buy this game after I finish the games I'm currently playing,

[.nimrod]

This game gets a lot better once you get out of the streets and fight that spaceship in front of the pyramid, so good.

And wtf is wrong with pc gaf? Is nobody playing this?

[Volcynika]

I was gone from home allllllllllll day yesterday. Still haven't fully downloaded the game off Steam yet. But tonight!

.....hopefully I can get some time for it.

[JaseC]

This game gets a lot better once you get out of the streets and fight that spaceship in front of the pyramid, so good. And wtf is wrong with pc gaf? Is nobody playing this?

The allure of Skyrim and Arkham City is too great for most, I assume.

[TyrantGuardian]

I'm going to be waiting a while in order to play this game in co-op with my go to co-op friend. Loved the game thus far but yeah, it'll be even greater to have the first experience in co-op for me.

[darkpaladinmfc]

This game gets a lot better once you get out of the streets and fight that spaceship in front of the pyramid, so good. And wtf is wrong with pc gaf? Is nobody playing this?

Zelda and Batman :( Also it'll probably get bad reviews for being too old-fashioned.

[derFeef]

Yeah, the release is so silent it hurts the game alone, but this week is a bad idea too.
Have to get this according to impressions!

[JaseC]

Zelda and Batman :( Also it'll probably get bad reviews for being too old-fashioned.

Which would be ironic considering the old school nature of the game is a breath of fresh air in our post-Modern Warfare video game industry.

Also, something tells me that PC-GAF, by and large, aren't interested in a Wii game. :p

[derFeef]

Which would be ironic considering the old school nature of the game is a breath of fresh air in our post-Modern Warfare video game industry. Also, something tells me that PC-GAF, by and large, aren't interested in a Wii game. :p

Bulletstorm. :( Such a great and refreshing shooter.

Your avatars are killing me, positively

[robin2]

Anyone who is able to "contact" Croteam and ask them to insert an option for setting the FOV?
A simple command for the .ini/.cfg file involved would be enaugh.

[TyrantGuardian]

We're already posted how to change the FOV several times in this thread. Unless you mean setting it permanently.