History YMMV / SeriousSam4

** [[spoiler:[[ItsAllAboutMe General Howard Brand]] secretly [[LesCollaborateurs allies with the forces of Mental]] to help them invade Earth. Sacrificing any troops and allies of Sam's he needs to supposedly for the greater good, Brand soon enough reveals his treachery as he [[ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice impales]] Sam's friend Mikhail then orders the rest of his partners be devoured. Brand ultimately plans to pave the way for Mental's forces to wipe out all life on Earth, hoping to [[MadeASlave hand Sam over to serve as a slave]] while Brand gets [[TheQuisling promoted]] and helps bring about "the end of history". Brand is downright cheerful at his self-proclaimed status as the "Beast of the Apocalypse and The Last Human."]]

* SurprisinglyImprovedSequel / EvenBetterSequel: While this game is by no means perfect, it does at-least fix most of the issues the [[VideoGame/SeriousSam3BFE third game]] had (See AuthorsSavingThrow).
** Siberian Mayhem, the stand-alone ExpansionPack to ''Serious Sam 4'', has been released and received far better than ''4'' itself.

See also:
* [[AwesomeMusic/SeriousSam The series-wide Awesome Music page]]
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* ContestedSequel: Much like ''VideoGame/SeriousSam2'' and ''VideoGame/SeriousSam3BFE,'' ''Serious Sam 4'' has been quite a [[BrokenBase base-breaker]] for many fans. One half of the fandom feel the game fixes all the problems the third game suffered from, and that it has the best gunplay in the entire franchise, while the other half of the fandom consider the game a massive letdown for its outdated grapics, bugs and glitches, and that it looks too much like ''Serious Sam 3.''

* AuthorsSavingThrow: A lot of the problems that ''VideoGame/SeriousSam3BFE'' had were all fixed in this game.
** Many people criticized the third game for starting off slow and not becoming fast paced until midway into the game. Here in Serious Sam 4, however, the game is fast paced from the very beginning.
** The Witch Bride of Achriman was criticized in ''Serious Sam 3'' for using her powers to freeze the player and causing other enemies to kill the player while stuck, resulting in FakeDifficulty. In this game, however, that is changed where the Witch bride now has a different way of attacking the player by instead hurling objects with telekinesis.
** A lot of the underground cave levels from the third game caused a lot of frustration for players, largely because everything was so dark, making the levels confusing. Thankfully in this game, there are no levels like that here.
** The presence of weapon reloading, while not ''entirely'' removed, is downplayed heavily; the standard shotgun doesn't reload at all, the Super Shotgun is ''much'' faster (lacking the frames in which Sam seemed to handle the recoil poorly for a few seconds before actually breaking it open), and an unlockable perk further speeds up all reloads.
** The melee kills in ''BFE'', criticised for being pointless due to: A.) leaving you open to attack while performing them and B.) not restoring your own health or giving some similar buff (a la Glory Kills in ''VideoGame/Doom2016'' or even ''VideoGame/DukeNukemForever'', for that matter), are now improved as well. They occur much faster, give you invulnerability frames while doing them, and one of the first perks you can unlock makes it so they ''do'' heal you like in Doom.
** The amount of {{hitscan}} enemies is drastically reduced, to a level far closer to that of ''VideoGame/SeriousSam2'', while of course lacking that game's own divisive wacky tone/style. For example, the Technopolip Helicopters now just fire rockets instead of bullets, and the new Octanian Soldiers carry laser rifles, as opposed to their Cloned Soldier counterparts from the third game, who all carried conventional weapons that fired hit-scan bullets at the player.
** In spite of how borderline necessary it was, the Sniper Rifle was only a rare hidden weapon in ''BFE'', which could be missed entirely. Here in ''4'', it's acquired as part of the natural course of the game, and fairly early at that.
** The fixed ammo crates that could infinitely resupply the player's ammo while making resource management trivial (themselves a somewhat disliked cliche of mid-2000s shooters) are now gone entirely in favour of either drops from enemies (which can be increased with a perk) or good old fashioned secret caches.
** Many people also complained about the fact that in ''Serious Sam 3'', if the player takes damage, the screen goes all blurry and difficult to see, which made the game frustrating a lot of the time. In this game, however, the screen no longer turns blurry when the player takes enemy damage.

* GeniusBonus: The secret for [[spoiler:Big Rocket Man Pyrone]] involves collecting health items. The number of these items follow the Fibonacci sequence (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8...).

** Scattered throughout the entire game are several radios that broadcast messages from [[VoiceOfTheResistance Radio Free Earth]]. Bill Corwin, Radio Free Earth's host, encourages people from all across the world to keep up hope, help out their fellow man and remember what life before the war used to be like so we don't forget what makes us human in the first place. His speeches manage to be a powerful antithesis to [[HopeCrusher Lord Achriman]]'s propaganda, to the point that ''Siberian Mayhem'' reveals Achriman even put Corwin on [[TheMostWanted number one]] in his list of " Most Wanted Earth Propagandists".

** [[spoiler:[[ItsAllAboutMe General Howard Brand]] secretly [[LesCollaborateurs allies with the forces of Mental]] to help them invade Earth. Sacrificing any troops and allies of Sam's he needs to supposedly for the greater good, Brand soon enough reveals his treachery as he [[ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice impales]] Sam's friend Mikhail then orders the rest of his partners be devoured. Brand ultimately plans to pave the way for Mental's forces to wipe out all life on Earth, hoping to [[MadeASlave hand Sam over to serve as a slave]] while Brand gets [[TheQuisling promoted]] and helps bring about "the end of history", Brand downright cheerful at his self-proclaimed status as the "Beast of the Apocalypse and last human."]]

* SugarWiki/HeartwarmingMoments: One of the first side-missions you get is to help out the Italian Resistance, after the battle a soldier named Paolo thanks you but is heartbroken to find out that the leader Massimo Murena had died in the attack and despairs over how it does not seem like a fitting end for an impressive figure like him, to which Sam tells Paolo that HE is Massimo and that the guy who died is named Paolo, thus convincing Paolo to keep the legend of Massimo alive to help inspire others.

* MoralEventHorizon: Lord Achriman crosses this when he [[spoiler:[[KickTheDog murders]] [[NiceGuy Kenny]] in cold-blood for no reason [[ForTheEvulz other than to spite Sam]]]].

** [[spoiler:Kenny's death at the hands of Lord Achriman. Sam, who usually manages to keep his cool, sounds on the verge of tears.]]
** Later in the game, [[spoiler:a defeated but DefiantToTheEnd Achriman asks Sam for some last quip as he expects from him. With little hesitation, Sam says "I lost my shoe", paying homage to Kenny and leaving Achriman perplexed before blowing his head off.]]

** The Swamp Hive is an absolute nightmare to fight against. Not only does it spawn dozens of Zubenhakrabian spiders at you, but its hits are a one-hit kill, resulting in a borderline NintendoHard boss fight. It does die surprisingly quickly if you pop a Rage Serum, but that presumes you have one in reserve.

** And for those that were disappointed by [[spoiler: Brand relegated to CutsceneBoss in the main game, getting to fight him as the FinalBoss of ''Siberian Mayhem'' finally gives the satisfaction of unloading your entire arsenal in the traitor's face. The [[BoomHeadshot headshot]] Sam delivers to him in the final cutscene only adds to the catharsis.]]

** And for those that were disappointed by [[spoiler: Brand relegated to CutsceneBoss in the main game, getting to fight him as the FinalBoss of ''Siberian Mayhem'' finally gives the satisfaction of unloading your entire arsenal in the traitor's face.]]

** A special mention also goes to [[SmugSnake General]] [[BigBadWannabe Brand]]. He reveals himself to be a treacherous scumbag by not only betraying humanity by joining forces with Mental and his army in order to become "the last human", but he also murders [[spoiler:Father Mikhail]] just for the sake of being evil, so when Brand gets tied to a rocket and fired into a portal at the end, one can't help but get satisfaction from his fate after all the crap he pulled.