[Serious Sam 4: Planet Badass Torrent Download [FULL]
Amancio Mccrae
For a few years now, Croteam's upcoming Serious Sam 4 had included the subtitle "Planet Badass" for maximum awesomeness. While many thought it was kind of tacky, the name was eventually dropped in favor of going with something more straightforward. Was there some kind of backlash that led to that decision, or did Croteam think it wasn't very badass of them to have it?
As it turns out, the answer is a little more mundane. Speaking with Kotaku yesterday, Croteam's Daniel Lucic (communications manager) explained, "During the discussions with the [localization] teams, we concluded that translating 'Planet Badass' while keeping the original idea behind it intact is nearly impossible. I guess it's the same with any pun, it's only a good pun if it's delivered in the original form."
That's not exactly an epic -or badass- story, but it makes sense. When bringing games over to different countries, names get changed around a bit and those retitles can change the perception around a title. Planet Badass is a distinctly American sounding subtitle that likely doesn't make sense to someone in Asia, for instance.
The name wasn't solely meant to make Serious Sam 4 sound cooler, though. The story in this latest installment is that protagonist Sam "Serious" Stone is fighting against aliens during the early days of an invasion on Earth. Most of humanity has been imprisoned, but a select few badasses are taking a stand and fighting back. In essence, Earth had become a planet of badasses.
"While we always make an effort to listen to what fans have to say," Lucic said, "in this particular instance, the change happened due to practicality." Honestly, I'm all for the change. It certainly had story implications tied to it, but I can't help but feel like it was trying way too hard to evoke some kind of '90s attitude. Going with the much simpler numbered name is better.
At least Serious Sam 4 is still bringing a ton of badassery with it. In the latest trailer, we learned that Sam will have access to a giant mech called "The Popemobile" and that you'll be taking on thousands of enemies at once. That's sure to get the blood pumping.
Serious Sam 4: Planet Badass is going to be badass. How do I know that Serious Sam 4: Planet Badass is going to be badass? Because Serious Sam 4: Planet Badass has badass right in its name. And not just any badass, but planet badass.
That's a lot of enemies. That's the amount of enemies you see in Total War custom match videos where 999,990 peasants of the Pontus Empire take on 10 Greek Spartans. The best part though is that you can kill them all in over-the-top Serious Sam fashion.
Serious Sam 4: Planet Badass is in development for PC. In addition to no word of console versions, there is no word of a release date. In the meanwhile, you can check out its announcement trailer here, and its first-ever screenshots, here.
Developed by true shooter veterans in Croteam, Serious Sam 4: Planet Badass reignites the classic series by improving on the old-school formula. Enjoy the high-adrenaline action combat with an unbelievably destructible arsenal and experience Sam's iconic enemy-annihilating circle-strafing and backpedaling dance-routine on an even bigger scale.
Bigger, badder, better
Fight and explore your way through huge environments populated with optional objectives, secrets and deadly ambushes. But, fear not! Serious Sam 4: Planet Badass is still a focused, linear experience you have come to love, and NOT an open-world game.
Wroom, wroom
Traversing big environments is no easy task. So get your driving skills ready and jump on a motorcycle, a combine or even a bulletproof popemobile and drive your way through unfortunate enemy pedestrians.
This time, Sam's bringing friends
Companions no longer appear only in cut-scenes, but are taking part in the action. Rodriguez, Jones, Hellfire and the rest of the crew are joining Sam in this epic journey through Planet Badass.
It's been nearly nine years since gamers last stepped into the stressed jeans of one Sam Stone, the titular Serious badass of the series. Set in the idyllic backdrop of Western Europe, from Rome to France and beyond, it's up to one member of the Earth Defense Force to save their mother Earth from a massive alien attack in Serious Sam 4.
Serious Sam 4 opens in the midst of an alien invasion on planet Earth, dropping thousands of enemies in a definitive assault meant to squash out any human resistance in one fell swoop. This introductory mission gives players a feel for the action right away without having to wade through story exposition, found notes, audiologs, or any of that modern FPS nonsense. No, you're just given a big gun and told to start blasting as your first introduction to Serious Sam 4. After that opening act, the game rewinds time and sends the clock back less than a week to explore the events leading up to that climactic battle. As Sam Stone, you're given a knife, a pistol with an unlimited ammo supply, and sent on your way to go fulfill the most standard checklist of FPS tasks to propel the story along. In Serious Sam's typical fashion, it's about killing as much as you can and spitting out cocky one-liners at just the right time.
As first-person shooter heroes evolved, most dropped the one-liners and quips to instead take up the mantle of something regarding a serious story. That's certainly not how things work for Sam Stone and his hodgepodge Earth Defense Force. With a new rookie named Kenny that's eager to join the fight, Sam's posse tries to teach the new guy the ropes about the proper etiquette of the How, When and Why to drop one lined zingers after defeating an enemy. It's a cute moment in the midst of gunning down legions of enemies and Serious Sam 4 finds ways to keep layering in dumb referential jokes and stale one-liners at just the right time that I was willing to give them a pass for at least trying to lighten up the mood. Of course, when you die and die and restart your save a few times, you start hearing those quips at the same time every time and that ruins the magic. That being said, at least Sam has some charm to him and he isn't just some mute protagonist with a big gun or two.
Serious Sam 4's key new feature is in the inclusion of something the developers have dubbed the 'Legion System'. This gives the overworld maps the ability to spawn in hundreds (they claim thousands but aside from the climactic opener, no other level has come close to matching the body count) of enemies at a time. When the enemy count rises and you've got enough ammo in your pair of miniguns to handle the incoming wave, that's when Serious Sam 4 really shines. It takes the mundane style of combat and ramps it up to absurd levels as you have to fend off hundreds of braindead AI enemies that are all out for blood. There's just something about the mass combat in Serious Sam 4 that satisfies that same part of my brain that's tickled whenever a new Dynasty Warriors game drops.
In order to handle so many enemies on screen, there has to be some concession to the AI, which is true for the most part. Unfortunately, the enemy AI is just as stupid when there are only one or two on-screen as well. Most grunts will do nothing but run directly at the player, which is certainly nothing new for the series. Just take a look at the Beheaded Kamikaze, a headless guy that's taken up playing Edward Bombhands with his chums and has been a series staple from the beginning. His only motivation is to run directly at Sam and blow up, all the while screaming nonstop to announce his arrival. Hell, Croteam is probably still using the same audio clip of the Kamikaze scream for the past decade.
When you're fending off hundreds of enemies, having a predictable AI can lend to the fun of approaching Serious Sam 4 as a shooting gallery. When you have the firepower, the skills, the open space to back away or find a vantage point, that's when Serious Sam 4 is at its best. I started off the adventure on Hard mode, as I do with most shooters, and the scores of enemy foes were just too much to juggle. The mindless grunts and smaller enemies were fine to deal with and the new enemy types, such as the Belcher, added in a few other attacks to dodge but it wasn't much of a challenge overall. However, once you start getting hit from enemies off to the side or from a charging bull that somehow spawned behind you, that's when the action doesn't hold up. The Kleer Skeletons are perhaps the worst offender on higher difficulties, what with their incessant lust for charging directly at the player or lobbing awkward bolas that deal an absurd amount of damage. No, I'd say swallow your pride, drop the game down to Easy mode (or Tourist if you simply just want to enjoy the story and near-limitless firepower) and get to work.
Serious Sam 4 is no doubt the best looking game in the series, with Croteam taking the past few years to explore interesting rendering and design techniques to make the Western European countryside look its best. They spent all of this time developing sprawling open world maps for the second half of Sam Stone's story but in all honesty, did Croteam really have to? The first half of Sam's story takes place in the typical corridor level design of labyrinthian cityscapes that have abnormally wide roadways and alleyways to traverse. These give plenty of funnel chokepoints to bring the enemies together under the aim of Sam's double-barreled shotgun. When you take away those walls and venture into the open countryside, that smart level design is stripped away and you're left with a mostly barren landscape filled with enemies to shoot but without real points of interest.
The first time I hopped onto Sam's motorcycle and rode around to the objective of the mission, I barely found any reason to explore or see the sights of this multiple square kilometer map. When I finally came across a turning point that could lead me to an ambushed convoy and unique consumable gadget, there were signposts explicitly guiding me to this point of interest, not something that I should've stumbled upon organically at my own pace. Sandbox levels should give players a reason to turn off the beaten path and explore around for a moment or two, but I never got that desire for exploration in Serious Sam 4. Instead, I just saw a wide open field to kill a few dozen alien invaders.
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