Croteam recently updated Serious Sam 3: BFE with Fusion 2017. The most notable changes are the inclusion of a built-in benchmark and the option of selecting between 2 API’s – OpenGL and Vulkan. Quoting from Croteam’s post at the Steam Community, the other big changes are:
- Changes made to the levels and enemies to fix a so called “churn” with the overall gameplay; where the game seemed to annoying or monotone. Due to these changes, mainly on Normal difficulty, some battles were changed, some enemies no longer spawn, and some enemy stats have been changed. In general, the game should be less annoying and difficult to play on Normal.
- Enemies that had a perfect immunity to non-explosive weapons, like the Khnum and the Technopolip now have a 50% immunity to non-explosives instead.
- Hard and Serious difficulties have been made more difficult. Some enemy spawns that no longer appear on Normal will appear again. Several enemies also have additional attacks on Hard and Serious! (You’ll “love” the kleer.)
Users of high-refresh rate monitors would be glad to know that this game is easy on the GPU. Reaching 100 FPS at 1920 x 1080 resolution is easy for modern mainstream GPU’s like the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060.
Vulkan was tested and, once again, proves to be not a marketing gimmick. Switching from OpenGL to Vulkan improves the frame rate by 48%. This is impressive given that Vulkan implementation for this game is still in beta.
If you are currently looking for a fast-paced first-person shooter game that is challenging, cross-platform, easy on the hardware, supports Vulkan, and affordable, Serious Sam 3: BFE is a perfect candidate. It’s now selling for only PhP 99.99 at the Steam Summer Sale 2017.
