/v/ - HAPPY E3 EVERYONE

yes

>>14943103

>If the level design of Serious Sam is inherently shit

It isn't cockmongler. It's perfect for what the game is trying to achieve since it's inception.

Mass massacre of quadrillions of enemies with nice themed background textures to look at and shitty jokes to laugh at.

>what could be improved

Make it even more open. The originals had the problem of computer power..

Run with the humor and do some parodies on RPG/battle royal/romantic/zombies mechanics that are popular now. The point of the series was shitting on other titles ala scary movie.

>Should the levels be more like Doom?

No, you'll just make it into a doom clone. Something that originals avoided by shitting on it and pump the gameplay with steroids.

>>14943103

Serious Sam 2 is the only good Serious Sam game. They fully embraced the silliness of the series and went fucking nuts on creative and varied level design. Every other SS game is boring as fuck.

>>14943203

>They fully embraced the silliness of the series and went fucking nuts on creative and varied level design

Do you mean that from a gameplay or presentation standpoint?

>Every other SS game is boring as fuck

In what way?

>>14943210

>gameplay or presentation

Both.

>In what way?

The environments all look and feel the same in FE, SE and 3.

serious sam doesn't have level design. It barely has game play.

>>14943220

>Both.

In what way?

>The environments all look and feel the same in FE, SE and 3.

I don't care much for visuals. Is there a problem inherent to the enemy encounter design that makes them feel boring, or is it only just the visuals?

>>14943236

>In what way?

Go play an hour or so of FE/SE or 3, and then go play an hour of 2.

>I don't care much for visuals

Highly varied background visuals keep things feeling fresh. This is doubly important in horde shooters to keep the player from getting burned out.

>>14943203

>The slowest and easiest game in the series is the best one.

I'll give you the weapon and vehicle designs were good, but the humor was meme-tier and the alien races that were your allies made me want to do their planets what Mental did to planet Kleer. Combine that with slower gameplay, the Kamikazes looking and sounding bad and some enemies being fucking retarded (the clowns are just kamikazes with more health and less noise which just makes them annoying). All the enemies that charge towards you are slower and you can't shoot red mech rockets mid-air as a defensive strategy anymore. It's a consolized version of Serious Sam, it was a chore to go through, it wasn't challenging on Serious, the only fun parts were the vehicle segments because at least then things died fast.

>>14943328

>but the humor was meme-tier

>AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA yourself!

>I'm a lumberjack, and I'm okay!

>Now I'm seriously serious!

>Hehehe! Shiny.. and deadly!

>We can do this the hard way, or my way… They're basically the same thing.

lets not pretend serious sam ever had good humor.

What bothered me is that, especially in the later levels, you basically move from one giant plaza to the next. You kill on wave of enemies, move ahead, and then you can already say "Oh boy, here come the next forty Kleer skeletons" or whatnot as soon as you enter the next big, open space.

>>14943308

>Go play an hour or so of FE/SE or 3, and then go play an hour of 2.

I don't have much to go on here. Can't you put your thoughts into words?

>This is doubly important in horde shooters to keep the player from getting burned out.

Yes, but you're talking about the game as a experience here, whereas I'm trying to discuss the merits of the level design from a mechanical standpoint.

It's just a huge open area with enemies that chase you wherever you go. There are a few areas with barricades that you can block hitscan fire, but that's about it.

You can't really change the level design to become overly complex because the AI would probably overwhelm you and lock you into a wall or completely encircle you and that would mean lots of insta-death moments.

The problem of Serious Sam isn't the level design, but mostly the weapon design with some minor issues regarding the enemies. The weapons were mostly made for a Doom-like game, where you can choose and prioritize your targets. The exceptions being the chaingun, laser-gun, rocket launcher and the cannon that can go through multiple enemies at once. As for the enemies, hitscan enemies are ridiculously tanky and especially on Second Encounter they love to put those in high towers that narrows the amount of places you can hide from their fire and forces you to use the sniper rifle.

tl;dr Serious Sam doesn't need to change level design, just make hitscan enemies weaker and add more weapons with area of effect damage that hurts multiple units at once. A freeze gun like the one in DN3D, but with a faster fire rate would also be a good idea to stop melee attacks.

>>14943513

/thread

>>14943479

>homosexual persuasion

Leave

>>14943500

>The weapons were mostly made for a Doom-like game, where you can choose and prioritize your targets

Proper weapon selection is something I'd say is the core of Serious Sam. Does your problem lie with a lot of weapons feeling redundant? I thought that save for the combat shotgun, SS3 had some of the best weapon balance in the series. People like to shit on the reloading because muh realism, but it does act as a measure of balance for some weapons such as the Devastator and Assault Rifle which would just be inferior/superior clones of other weapons. Like, why would you ever use the tommygun over the minigun in TFE/TSE? In BFE the assault rifle now has its separate ammo stock, so the AR is more suitable for lighter encounters whereas the minigun is more suitable for heavier encounters, further evidenced by minigun ammo being more rare. But to make the lighter encounters with the AR more interesting, reloading was added for you to keep track of. Reloading would get more in the way if you were to fight a continuous stream of enemies.

If all weapons could be equally useful for crowd control, then there'd be no point to switching between them.

>hitscan enemies are ridiculously tanky and especially on Second Encounter they love to put those in high towers that narrows the amount of places you can hide from their fire and forces you to use the sniper rifle

Yeah, nobody really likes them.

>>14943513

What were your problems with it?

Serious Sam's levels are often flat and open, but that fits the kind of game it's trying to be.

It's funny Serious Sam gets so much flak for it when games like Doom 2 do the same shit but worse.

>>14943653

>instead of being a boring slog like SS.

What about it?

>>14943678

That's awfully vague. Can't you be more specific?

I always like to think of serious sam more as a 3d bullet hell that you'd normally play in third person rather than just a normal fps. They're great games but I only recently began liking the idea of endless waves of monsters charging at you from all sides. They're not perfect games jesus christ the humor in BFE was atrocious but its very enjoyable to play once you just accept the game for what it is.

>>14943896

He can't because he's either baiting, or genuinely retarded like the rest of the cuckchanners that the summer brought here.

>>14944047

Oh, so reddit, in that case.

>>14943564

>Like, why would you ever use the tommygun over the minigun in TFE/TSE?

You're kidding, right? Pretty much every weapon has a specific purpose. For example, the Tommygun has a slower rate of fire, sure, but that translates into it being more cost effective to use it against enemies like those fucking toad enemies. A minigun would be wasting ammo while you swung to the next toad, and the split second you were still firing at that dead toad before you swung to another toad.

Another example is Combat Shotgun vs Supershotgun. Ever try using the combat shotgun against kleer? It performs like dogshit even at close range. But its more accurate than the supershotgun. The supershotgun 1shots a kleer at close range every time. Combat is more accurate at the cost of less damage. Better for use against something like the Gnarr, especially considering the reload time of the supershotgun.

They (mostly) all have their uses. Some weapons are objectively better, but that doesn't mean you stop using the tommygun when you pick up the minigun.

>>14944162

>can elaborate

>doesn't

You're just proving my point.

>>14944110

The only weapons that I rarely used were the melee, pistols & maybe combat shotgun which felt a little weak compared to the alternatives. I do agree though they all pretty much have a use, the tommygun is extremely valuable for precise kills in smaller battles that a minigun can't compete with. Even with the new additions from TSE all of the weapons had a great deal of uses depending on the situation. Flamethrower wiped out armies of kleers with ease, sniper basically being the same damage as a rocket except instant speed, grenade lancher having insane damage output at close range. I find it really fun swapping back and forth between your entire arsenal to efficiently deal with the advancing army of monsters.

>>14944047

>>14944162

You're on an imageboard, not a debate hall. I'm not sure why you're expecting extremely well reasoned arguments over a video game.

>>14943351

Didn't say it had, but at least it wasn't taken to such an extreme where the game was a complete joke.

>>14944262

> find it really fun swapping back and forth between your entire arsenal to efficiently deal with the advancing army of monsters.

This is exactly why I love the series, it becomes a game of movement and aiming skills combined with weapon switching in order to most efficiently dispatch hordes of enemies. It's why I find single player more fun than multi player because I can control the enemies better since I'm the only target.

>>14943203

>worst Sam

>only good one

SS2 isn't terrible, but it has way too many issues. Taking the humor so far was a flaw. What was good, about the previous games' humor, was the juxtaposition of the game's inherent silliness against the "realistic" environments and threatening aliens. SS2 took it way too far. Everything was silly, so nothing stood out. It was just a generic cartoon shooter, at that point. It wouldn't be that bad, if the humor improved from previous games, but it didn't. So, instead of some sparse, silly jokes that aren't that great, you're assaulted with bad joke after bad joke. Netricsa became a lame Cortana clone, too.

Then there's the gameplay. First and foremost, the game is much slower. Second, levels were much smaller than in the previous games, and they weren't all that more complex, to make up for it. Vehicles were glorified moving turrets with infinite ammo, basically eliminating two mechanics of the gameplay strategy (weapon choice and ammo management). The game only started to rival the scale of its predecessors in the last few levels. And, utterly disappointingly, the final boss is a vehicle section against a big pyramid.

The only thing that stood out as great, about the game, was the soundtrack. The guitar track for the first level of planet Sirius reminded me of some of my favorite works of Tommy Tallarico. Another good thing about it was the variety of environments (I especially liked planet Kleer), but, again, most of them were way too silly and cartoony. The game was a mess of consolization and publisher-meddling, and it shows.