Sam ‘Serious’ Stone is back in an all-new adventure branching off of the final levels of Serious Sam 4. Developed by Croteam, and published by Devolver Digital, Serious Sam: Siberian Mayhem is a standalone DLC. Sam lands on the frozen shores of Siberia as he hunts down the treacherous General Howard Brand, who has stolen the holy grail and plans to gift it to ‘Mental’ and become one of his lackeys. Fighting through the Hordes of Mental’s twisted and corrupted army, Sam has to save humankind and stop General Brand before he can fulfill his plans. Siberian Mayhem is set to release on PC on the 25th of January.

Coming from a generation of shooters like ‘Doom’ and ‘Duke Nukem’, Serious Sam: Siberian Mayhem delivered lots and lots and lots of endless hordes of pure carnage. Being my first look into the franchise I wasn’t expecting it to be so intense. I pumped the difficulty right up to the hardest and got my gamer sweat on. The endless variation of enemies each had their own specific abilities and weaknesses but when paired together like they were really had me running around for my life as I was chipping down the horde. This was ideal in the widespread landscapes of Siberia, however, we soon ventured into some tight corridors and choke points with an overwhelming force of speedy-bois and death after death tactics started to show in eliminating these threats.

Now, the DLC has 5 levels which are supposed to supply roughly 5 hours of gameplay but taking into account difficulties, exploration, puzzles, sidequests, and secrets; I can see quite a few more hours added to that estimate.

Entering the frozen shores of Siberia, the landscape is vast and well frozen, with a few small control towers scattered 100s of meters from each other. The lands felt empty and lifeless until you encounter the horde and slaughter everything that moves, but then still after that, you are just wandering around the snowy land in silence. There are a few shacks here and there but they don’t really scream civilization, I mean the main points of interest in the areas are these massive industrial buildings but other than the limited scattered notes and recordings there are absolutely zero signs of habitation and liveliness. Surely there would be a small village somewhere for the workers? Atlas no, I guess the place is overrun with Mentals’ twisted creations so I don’t blame every man and their dog packing up and moving out.

Traveling through Siberia felt extremely eerie, with the soundtrack playing in the back being very atmospheric as well, this made me feel lonely and with no chatter from any NPCs added to the lifelessness of the land. When flesh did eventually meet the grinder, however, the adrenaline started pumping, the heavy metal soundtrack started to blast and stuff got exciting.

Entering the arena and slaughtering the abominations while face-melting riffs and hardcore blasts beats were making sweet sensual love to my eardrums had me craving more until the very last enemy had been slain. It quickly faded out and the eerie desolate white-noise background sounds came back. Luckily enough, when you were in the main points of interest the battles were all closely spread, unlike when you are venturing the desolate wastes. Combat was smooth, seamless, and easy to pick up and the character models looked good, however, the cutscene models felt and looked extremely lifeless and janky.

The game looked cool graphically and running a 3070TI, 5800X, and 32GB RAM I was able to play the game on ultra settings, capped at 60FPS, and with all the insanity that ensues in the game with what feels like endless enemies, I didn’t notice any major performance issues or frame drops. The only issues I encountered was on loading into the next stages until everything loaded the frames tanked.

Serious Sam: Siberian Mayhem was some of the best, mindless fun I’ve had in a while, as I slaughtered my way through Mentals horde blasting them apart with my trust pump-action and a grenade launcher, death after death. Figuring out enemies’ weaknesses, I slowly made my way through the game. Although the game had a few cons, it ran smooth, even with what felt like hundreds of kamikaze soldiers running ‘head’-first at me while screaming, there were no major performance issues that made the game unplayable.

If you are a massive fan of the series I recommend picking it up and if you are new to the series like me, this is a good way to get introduced without dropping more than $20USD.

Written by: Bigfoot