Serious Business

Behind the scenes with SERIOUS SAM 4: PLANET BADASS.

- Philippa Warr

So just how serious is Serious Sam 4? Well, given that I am watching one of its developers merrily crunching through a shrieking alien horde using a combine harvester while also picking off stragglers with shotgun bullets, I’d say it’s exactly as serious as you would desire from the series.

In fact, my whole visit to Croteam’s Croatian studio is peppered with moments exactly as serious as this, both in-game and IRL.

For example, there was the music studio, full of complicated doors and sound dampening. It isn’t used as it’s not quite ready (and hasn’t been quite ready for years), so the music is recorded in an office just opposite the not-quite-ready-studio.

While visiting this part, Croteam’s head of music, Damjan Mravunac, sang a sad song about not wanting to go to E3 with the communications team because of their merciless ribbing about said unfinished studio. Strumming along also helped him keep his guitar out of the comms team’s hands as its members threatened to cut the strings in the manner of siblings determined to get a rise out of an older brother. Serious stuff... Anyway, back to the hands-off time I had with the game:

The demo deposits Sam ‘Serious’ Stone in the middle of the French countryside. He’s about three kilometers away from his target; the town of Carcassonne. He heads to the road and procures a motorbike by blasting an alien who is busily munching the bike’s original owner. Moments later a charging werebull sends Sam flying.

Soon after dispatching the werebull I’m watching a horde ambush Sam from all sides, running towards him, flailing. If I had the controls this is probably the moment my muscle memory would kick in and send me jogging backwards in circles while lining up shots.