Both the larger foes and your own arsenal become capable of trashing big huge chunks of ancient architecture.

The on-screen enemy count grows and grows until it reaches preposterous numbers - then adds a few dozen more for good measure. While he's always got a destination - always a door - he has several football fields' worth of space to pick his route across. Freed from the dim little streets and let loose in giant, golden desert ruins, the looming great pyramids a constant and monumental backdrop, Sam finds his groove. Too long is spent with the pistol and the shotgun, and while the enemies are familiar from earlier Sams and his take-no-shit quipping sets him up as the Duke Nukem we wanted rather than the one we got earlier this year, it doesn't feel like Serious Sam.Īnd then they take the roof off. It seems so familiar - except it's occupied by remote-controlled zombie slaves and alien monsters instead of the current crop of military shooters' tendency towards faceless jingoism. Corridors and grim-grey Middle-Eastern desert towns filled with collapsed towerblocks. Or, at least, so it had me suspecting for its vaguely miserable first few hours. If the original Serious Sam was the values of Doom II transplanted into the aesthetics and technology of early 2000s first-person shooters, Serious Sam 3 is the values of Doom II transplanted into the aesthetics and technology of early 2010s first-person shooters. There's no way it can top this.' But it does. Each new weapon marks a leap upwards in the scale of its increasingly absurd onslaught of enemies and crumbling scenery, and each time you'll think 'good grief, this is ridiculous. Serious Sam 3 is a constant prelude to itself, an ode to destruction forever building to greater crescendos, an orgy of cartoon violence that keeps on inviting new participants instead of slowing down and catching its breath. Budda-budda-budda-budda-budda-budda-budda-wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. No, no, no the game doesn't start until you get the minigun. The game doesn't start until you get the Devastator. The game doesn't start until you get the rocket launcher. The game doesn't start until you get the double-barrelled shotgun. The game doesn't start until you get the assault rifle.

Though, If I was allowed, I would make each and every one of the following 1000-odd words 'blam.' I've been blasting my way through the singleplayer campaign of Croteam's latest, and I'm ready to tell you what I made of it. Is Sam Stone a one-trick pony? Well, yes.

The only honest first-person shooter is back.

Serious sam minigun