Serious Sam: Shatterverse

I have played a lot of Serious Sam over the years, and there is something very specific I expect when I see that name on a box. I expect to become an absolute psychopath with a ridiculous arsenal while hundreds of screaming monsters come charging across an enormous battlefield trying to turn me into a red smear. I expect to be laughing while backpedaling, rockets flying, cannonballs exploding, Kleers jumping over my head, and some enormous bastard in the distance deciding that my continued existence is unacceptable. That is Serious Sam. So when Shatterverse showed up promising hordes, ridiculous weapons, and nonstop arcade FPS chaos, I thought we were in for another stupid, glorious Sam adventure.

Instead, I spent a lot of time wondering when the Serious Sam part was going to start.

Shatterverse is built around a roguelite structure with runs, upgrades, modifiers, different versions of Sam, co-op, and progressively stronger builds. On paper, that isn't a bad idea at all. In fact, I think a Serious Sam roguelite could have been fantastic if the developers had taken the core formula and simply turned the insanity up until the wheels fell off. The problem is that the early portions of the game feel strangely restrained. You don't immediately get those massive waves that made the original games special, and the smaller encounters can feel like a completely different philosophy of FPS design. Other reviewers have noticed exactly the same thing, with TheSixthAxis pointing out that the runs begin with only a handful of enemies and don't initially feel like Serious Sam, even though later areas can eventually produce more familiar hordes.

That is a serious problem, because the horde is not some optional seasoning you sprinkle on top of Serious Sam. The horde is the damn meal. The original games made you feel powerful because the game was willing to throw an absurd number of enemies at you and then give you the tools to deal with them. Shatterverse instead spends too much time making me feel like I'm carefully clearing small encounters and waiting for my build to become powerful enough to finally start having fun. There are moments when the weapons begin to click and the upgrades start stacking, but by then I'm already thinking about how much more entertaining this would be if the game had simply started me at full insanity.

The roguelite progression doesn't completely save it either. Unlocking weapons and building up your character between runs sounds good until you realize that some of the classic Serious Sam arsenal is gated behind progression. That means the game takes one of the best parts of the franchise — getting ridiculous weapons and immediately using them to commit industrial-scale violence — and makes you earn the privilege of having the fun toys. One review specifically criticized the slow progression and weapon unlock system, and I agree with the sentiment: I bought Serious Sam because I wanted to shoot things with Serious Sam weapons, not grind for the privilege of shooting things with Serious Sam weapons.

Then there is the technical side of things, and this is where Sensei starts rubbing his temples. Shatterverse has some rough performance problems, with players reporting stuttering, shader compilation, lag, crashes, falling through floors, and other technical nonsense. The constant shader loading is especially irritating because it can repeatedly interrupt the experience and make the game feel like it's doing homework instead of actually running the damn game. Some players have also reported multiplayer desyncs and crashes, which is particularly painful in a game that is heavily advertising five-player co-op.

And yes, playing with friends can make it more enjoyable. That's probably the strongest argument Shatterverse has going for it. There is something inherently entertaining about several Sams running around together with ridiculous weapons, and the game's co-op foundation is a good fit for the franchise. But a multiplayer game being more fun when you're laughing with friends isn't exactly a revolutionary discovery. I could make four people sit in a room and play competitive rock-paper-scissors and we'd probably have a good time. The game still needs to be good on its own.

What bothers me most is that I can see the better game hiding inside Shatterverse. The idea of taking Serious Sam's absurd combat and combining it with roguelite progression is not stupid. It is actually pretty damn good. The developers clearly understand some of the ingredients, and when the game finally throws enough enemies at you and the weapons, upgrades, and chaos start working together, you can glimpse what this could have been. Unfortunately, too much of the experience feels like a modern roguelite FPS wearing Serious Sam's clothes rather than a Serious Sam game that happens to have roguelite mechanics.

That is why I'm not going to pretend this is just a case of an old Sensei refusing to accept change. I don't need Serious Sam to stay exactly the same forever. Give me new mechanics. Give me new enemies. Give me a roguelite. Give me alternate Sams. Give me five-player co-op. Hell, give me a talking toaster if you want. But whatever you add, you had better preserve the one thing that made Serious Sam special: the feeling that you are an absurdly powerful gun-toting maniac standing between an army and the complete destruction of the universe.

Shatterverse doesn't consistently deliver that feeling, and that is why I have such a hard time recommending it. It isn't that every part of the game is terrible. It isn't. There are good weapons, entertaining moments, some interesting build possibilities, and the foundation for a genuinely fun co-op experience. But the technical problems, sluggish progression, smaller early encounters, and general lack of that classic overwhelming Sam chaos leave me asking the worst possible question for a Serious Sam game:

“Is this it?” For now, unfortunately, the answer is yes.

Shatterverse has a genuinely interesting idea buried underneath a rough launch, questionable progression, technical problems, and a combat structure that often doesn't feel like Serious Sam.

The roguelite concept could have worked beautifully, but the developers seem to have forgotten that the entire reason people came to this franchise was to become an overpowered lunatic and murder an unreasonable number of enemies with increasingly irresponsible firearms.

There is a good game hiding in here.

Sensei simply isn't convinced it found its way out of the Shatterverse.