I’m something of a Serious Sam apologist; I generally enjoy holding ‘S’ and shooting comical levels of enemy hordes (I spent countless hours trying to get the Queen Hatshepsut achievement in BFE without the infinite ammo cheat), but this entry was a bit more mixed for me. It felt like the first two thirds of the game was “running around a deserted Italy and occasionally running into a handful of enemies” until about the last 3-4 levels, where the hordes cranked up considerably. Which, maybe my memory is just faulty and that’s how all the games are (I’ve been meaning to revisit First and Second Encounter to confirm) — especially considering The Guardian of Time has occupied a significant amount of space in my brain for how much more I’ve played it relative to the rest of the games, and that’s something of an outlier for how many enemies it has. Still, I spent long stretches of the early game thinking, “this sure doesn’t feel very much like a Serious Sam game…”. Either way, it’s a decent entry (the dual-wielding heavy weapons feature and the alt fire on the laser gun are particular highlights), but if the Sam series isn’t already your bag I’m not sure there’s a whole lot to recommend it. The story is largely irrelevant (not inherently a flaw), which combined with the unwelcome addition of a bunch of maudlin dialogue about the end of the world certainly doesn’t do it any favors. Still, I think it’s ultimately a step in the right direction — the gunplay might be the best in the series, and the Duke Nukem Clone vibe of Sam himself is about as polished as it’s ever been.