The standalone add-on Siberian Mayhem for Serious Sam delivers straightforward shooter fun for fans of the old school. Only the technology has a few kinks to work out.
Serious Sam: Siberian Mayhem doesn’t talk your head off, doesn’t have a long intro and no frills. Instead, you’ll find a shotgun in the first minute of the game, and then you’ll get hit in the face. It starts right away, all around you heaps of enemies appear, there is non-stop shooting, just as fans are used to from the series.
Right from the start, the game has a better, faster flow than Serious Sam 4 and entertains fans of the series for about four hours, if they can get the game to work properly. You don’t need the base game for the expansion, but you can get the standalone expansion 25 per cent cheaper if you own Serious Sam 4. If you’ve always found Sam too dull, Siberian Mayhem won’t be a hit with you either.
Just what you’d expect
Siberian Mayhem plays out, for the most part, exactly as you’ve come to expect from Serious Sam: countless headless screamers charge at you from all directions to blow you up, while giant aliens, four-armed lizardmen and undead bovine beasts bombard you with missiles, plasma balls and bolas.
A hundred or more enemies on screen at the same time are not uncommon, which is why Sam has a correspondingly powerful arsenal and shoots everything to pieces with rocket launchers, miniguns and double-barreled shotguns. To keep the tried-and-true gameplay from getting too stale, there are a few fun new additions, like a super-lethal railgun crossbow, an AK-74MX assault rifle and an overpowered ray gun.
You’ll also be back in the mech for a while, this time equipped with a chainsaw, plus you’ll squash enemy armies in a rocket-powered tank and float on a hoverboard, complete with turrets. As well as familiar gadgets like black holes and mini-nukes, you can also call in artillery fire. You’ll also face some new enemies, such as heavily armoured legionnaires who beat you to a pulp with shields and maces, or the draconian Burner, who goes into battle in style, wearing striped track pants. You are in Russia, after all!
These new features all add variety and fun to the game. Only the stupid skill tree from Serious Sam 4 could have been left out this time. Once again, you have to unlock the ability to wield two weapons akimbo or to sprint and reload at the same time.
Discoveries are worthwhile
Siberian Mayhem is not a long adventure with its five levels, but if you take the time to explore the maps thoroughly, you will come across additional skill points, upgrades and many gags and Easter Eggs. If you don’t just shoot the enemy guards directly, you will notice, for example, that the comrades like to talk about serial hero Sam and exaggerate more and more.
According to the descriptions of his opponents, Sam has at least four arms, is as tall as a skyscraper and shoots laser beams and missiles with his eyes at the same time. A security officer leaves tapes everywhere with countless complaints, in which he complains, among other things, that body parts are lying around everywhere.
If you look closely, you’ll stumble across some distracted security guards looking quite enthusiastically at pictures of cats at a terminal. A few of these baddies are almost endearing. Here and there you’ll solve a simple switch puzzle or move a few cargo containers out of the way with a crane. Most of the puzzles are optional, the compulsory puzzles are solved in a few moments, so they never take the pace out of the game for too long.
The Russian modding team Timelock Studio, which worked on Siberian Mayhem under Croteam, knows its craft and knows what Serious Sam fans like. All in all, the expansion is an all-round fun package that could be recommended to fans without reservation, if it weren’t for those annoying problems with the technology.
Jerks of horror
Siberian Mayhem has some really picturesque countryside. Dilapidated churches and old windmills stand lonely and abandoned in vast landscapes that are overrun by hundreds of enemies a short time later. You make some really huge areas unsafe on vehicles. But the game also includes dreary, boring warehouses, many mud textures and weak (facial) animations in cutscenes.
This is not a disaster in a game in which you mainly flatten huge numbers of enemies. However, it also does not justify the absolutely lousy performance in the game. On the Ryzen 7 5800X with 32GB RAM and an RX 6800 XT used for the test, Siberian Mayhem regularly freezes for several seconds under Vulkan in 4K and is completely unplayable.
After switching to DX11, the game ran halfway, but the frame rate fluctuated extremely non-stop, from 75 FPS to 150 and back, with sometimes massive drops to as low as 30 FPS in the mech section. Also in the (Steam) forums, many players complain about the poor performance. The developers have announced a patch that should solve the problem.
Yes, Serious Sam 4 also had some technical flaws, but none of them affected the gaming experience there as seriously as they do here. If you prefer to play Serious Sam in multiplayer, you should also note that this mode is limited to a maximum of four players, just like in Serious Sam 4. In addition, you should always have a few friends at hand so that you don’t have to rely on random sessions. At the moment, the game barely reaches 1,000 players at the same time per day.
Editor’s conclusion
This is exactly how I like Serious Sam! Non-stop action, brutal battles, completely hammered vehicles and enough ammunition to win the third world war. The fact that the graphics are mediocre at best doesn’t bother me at all with this kind of game. The setting is great, the gags are funnier than in Serious Sam 4, even if I am unfortunately not familiar enough with Russian culture to understand all the allusions and Easter Eggs.
Nevertheless, I don’t understand the sense and existence of the skill points, especially since the game only has a few hours to play anyway. I don’t want to unlock anything or work towards anything, I just want to let off steam. But basically that doesn’t bother me at all. The only really bad thing is the absolutely shitty performance. I hate to devalue it, but such massive jerks are simply unforgivable in a shooter. Hopefully they’ll get to grips with it quickly!
