This November has been an enormous month for gaming, with major mainstream titles coming out every other day. Now, the indie scene rolls out its own heavyweight in the form of Serious Sam 3. Developed by tiny Croatian studio Croteam (named after their own country, as it is so unknown in game development circles) and boosted into stardom by equally tiny indie publishing outfit Devolver Digital, Serious Sam 3 promises old-school FPS gameplay with hundreds of weird and ugly monsters to kill per level, mixed in with modern production values and online co-op for up to 16 players. Beyond the break, a very metal launch trailer, and play-by-play first thoughts on the initial sections of the game.

At the time of writing, the game has just been unlocked on Steam. Over the next few hours, I’ll be updating the segment below with my thoughts on the first few hours of the singleplayer experience. It’s not quite a review (that’ll have to wait until I’ve completed it and given the multiplayer a fair shake), but it should give you all some idea of what to expect. Stay tuned, and keep refreshing. If you’ve any questions or want something in particular focused on, beep me on Twitter and I’ll try my best to oblige.

[Liveblogging Begins]

7:45pm – Game unlocked and downloading. ETA: 45 minutes. It’s a mere 4.2gb, which is small by modern game standards.

8:30pm – Game downloaded, launched, and it’s straight into a rather po-faced intro. Looks lovely though, and all rendered using the game engine.

8:39pm – Sweet jeebus, there’s a lot of options here. Red, Green, Hippie and ‘Kids’ blood modes are back, too. About 5000 video options, and on launch it asked if I wanted the regular or ‘moddable’ version of the game. PC game to the core, this one.

8:48pm – Intro over, time to first monster death: About five seconds. City looks very gritty and Modern Warfarish, bu I’m smashing cartoon alien heads with a sledgehammer. Already found one of Croteams famous secrets – Sam’s red and yellow sneakers. Who needs army boots?

8:55pm – Well, that was a very large alien spaceship. It also blew up that building pretty impressively. Real graphical statement of intent, that. Also, I notice it cleverly lowers your running speed to something more approaching human levels when indoors, but outside you still sprint like a pro.

9:10pm – Great googly moogly, the melee combat in this is satisfying. I’m fairly sure that if you hit a guy with a sledgehammer, they’re not meant to explode into all their component parts… but they do in this game. Also, three different attacks on the hammer – vertical, horizontal and circular.

9:15pm – Remember how you met the Kamikazes in the first game? Nice callback. Also, big fights = soundtrack rocks out.

9:20pm – Kleer skeletons are much less scary/frustrating when you can just SMASH THEM WITH HAMMERS. Also, ‘Secret Arc De Triomphe Enabled’?

9:25pm – Level 1 had 17 secret areas. I found 3.

9:40pm – Some nice dark and atmospheric areas with enemy ambushes from the shadows. Not sure how nice that’ll play with a half-dozen impatient players, though.

9:45pm – One of 9 secret areas found in Level 2. Yeah, this bears replaying. I’m also on Hard mode, not Serious, which should throw more enemies at me.

10pm – I’m going to lose some PC gamer cred here, but I could use an objective arrow. These dusty city streets all look the same. Give me enemies to point the way forward, at least!

10:15pm – Only have the first two guns s far, out of a great many, and things are already hotting up. No enormous open field battles yet, but some large courtyards filled with fodder have filled that role nicely. I think I’ll end the liveblogging here, with this observation: This is Serious Sam 3. It might look all gritty and modern at first glance, but this is a pure arcade shooter where you’re wading neck deep in alien spiders and cyborg zombie clones while cracking one-liners and finding goofy secrets. This is old-school. This is what Duke Forever wished it could be.

[Liveblogging Ends]

Serious Sam 3 is available via Steam now for $40, £30 or €40, depending on where you live, although that Euro price is rather cheeky. Still, nothing stopping an American friend from gifting it to you…

[Serious Sam 3: BFE on Steam]