Serious Sam has been a game series that has been with me since the very first title. While no game in the franchise has ever been completely perfect, I have always thoroughly enjoyed blowing away the various crazy and unique monsters, listening to the classic one-liners, and diving into the delightfully absurd storylines. For me, it has always been the perfect way to tap out of reality and just have fun. Taking the franchise and molding it into a co-op roguelike seemed like a match made in heaven, but sadly, Serious Sam: Shatterverse doesn’t quite live up to everything it could have been, even if I have still managed to have some fun with it along the way.
A Marathon Instead of a Sprint
When diving into a roguelike, pacing is everything, and this is where Shatterverse stumbles a bit out of the gate. Runs tend to be on the longer side, reaching up to 60 minutes most of the time. If you are playing with other people, that is a massive time commitment. This style of frantic, hectic gameplay would have been a much better fit for punchy 15-minute runs, a format I would have enjoyed a lot more.
The structure of these runs follows a repetitive pattern: two areas, followed by a boss, then another two areas and a boss, and so forth. While having a clear structure is nice, having a staggering 9 areas and bosses packed into a single run is way too much. This game would have been paced to perfection with just two areas and a climactic boss fight to cap it off.
Unlocking the Chaos
Fortunately, once you actually get into the combat, the core mechanics deliver. The gunplay is really good, and all weapons play a bit differently, giving players plenty of variety. However, the time it takes to gather the currency needed to buy new guns feels a bit too long. Especially in the beginning, it would have been much better to receive that currency faster so that the game constantly feeds you new toys to stay excited about.
The progression system itself is neat: when unlocking weapons, you start with a baseline firearm, which then gives you the opportunity to unlock a new, more powerful version further down the line if you have saved up enough currencies. Once you finally unlock them, the guns are an absolute blast to use against the hordes.
Bosses and the Difficulty Wall
The bosses in Serious Sam: Shatterverse are massive and look very cool. They come equipped with some nice gameplay features that make encounters feel fresh and fun, at least the first few times you experience them.
However, I can easily see the game’s difficulty curve becoming a major problem for many players. The first act is pretty easy, and I don’t see anyone having a problem getting through that if they are somewhat used to the genre. But the second act really ramps up the difficulty significantly. To survive, you suddenly need to rely heavily on trinkets (passive items found during a run that grant boosting effects to your guns or character) and have already unlocked some of the better weapons. Act 3 is even harder still. I genuinely hope this gets re-balanced with time, because as it stands right now, the steep difficulty spike is going to scare people away from the game.
Multiplayer, Bugs, and Handheld Play
While Serious Sam: Shatterverse works fine in solo play, it is definitively at its most fun when you play with other people. It actually works surprisingly well to play with randoms online, since the core gameplay loop is mostly just mindlessly killing a bunch of enemies together. That said, I did encounter some connection issues while playing online, making the process of jumping into public games a bit of a hassle at times, something I hope gets patched out soon.
On the technical side, I have encountered a few bugs during my time with the game. Getting stuck at various locations and falling entirely through the map have been the big, recurring ones. Aside from those specific traversal glitches, the game runs pretty well overall. As a plus for portable gamers, Serious Sam: Shatterverse comes complete with a pre-configured setup for the Steam Deck, making it a breeze to play in handheld mode. It runs and plays surprisingly well on Valve’s portable hardware.
Conclusion
Serious Sam: Shatterverse is a game with an incredible amount of untapped potential. When you are busy mowing down monsters and taking down massive bosses with a group of friends, the game truly shines. Unfortunately, there are a lot of frustrating design choices and technical hurdles in between that make it hard to wholeheartedly recommend right now. But if the developers listen to feedback, make the runs shorter, make currencies easier to come by, and iron out the bugs and connection issues, this could easily turn into a good game in the future.
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