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)