Serious Sam 4 is the latest instalment in the once-iconic first-person shooter series that hasn’t stood the test of time. Serious Sam 4 is often dubbed the first-person “bullet-hell” shooter, and while this is true, a less-than-appealing protagonist and story don’t do it any favours, as we discovered when we reviewed its PC version last year.
The game’s Xbox Game Pass arrival was first revealed via the Xbox Game Pass app, which revealed a December 7 release date. The game is currently unavailable on Xbox One consoles and is only available via Xbox Game Pass on Xbox Series X|S and PC, as well as Xbox Cloud Gaming.
A new console trailer for the game is available below.
No holiday season is complete without open hostilities and a guy wearing a dirty white vest on TV, so Croteam and Devolver Digital have duly unleashed the high-powered prequel Serious Sam 4 on PlayStation 5 & Xbox Series X|S today, gifting players around the world an ammo-stuffed pièce de résistance with a side helping of chaos.
Humanity is under siege as the full force of Mental’s hordes spreads across the world, ravaging what remains of a broken and beaten civilization. The last remaining resistance to the invasion is the Earth Defense Force led by the ever-dependable blue-collar grunt Sam “Serious” Stone and his heavily-armed squad of misfit commandos. It’s time to make these alien assholes pay.
According to a statement given to Kotaku, Serious Sam 4 was released in 2020 before the launch of the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S consoles, and developer Croteam was unable to release an immediate port of the game to the PS4 and Xbox One due to an exclusivity deal with Google Stadia. When the exclusivity with Google Stadia expired at an unspecified date, Croteam confirmed that the game would be released on PS4 and Xbox One.
The game takes up 30GB of space on Xbox Series X|S consoles, which is a small amount of space in a world where shooters have triple-digit file sizes. Its appearance on Xbox Game Pass is an unexpected addition to the service, fulfilling Croteam’s promise of a 2021 console debut.