Oops, I have broken my own rules in a serious way. I bought a shootybangs game, *and* I broke Guybrush’s Law.

Well, I suck at this game. I died on the first level, less than 30 second in. Time to ragequit.

This is distracting… time to go hit the forums to find out which of the many and various graphics settings to adjust. Ah, PC gaming, never change.

Some guy on the forums, very helpfully: "some brick walls were flickering but got it sorted by messing with the graphic settings".

*which* settings?!?

There is a dedicated "tech support" forum for the game on steam, but you're not allowed to read it—not even allowed to SEE it—if you didn't buy the game on steam. That's unhelpful.

Changing the parallax mapping settings gets rid of the flickering—but also my framerate.

Weirdly, if you turn parallax mapping off entirely, the performance gets even worse! (A review mentioned this, but I had to try it anyway).

Feels good to be back in The Talos Principle

NO VISITORS

Saw some things I could jump on, so I am now engaging in ill-advised and awkward platforming! Probably pointless, of course…

Aha! Of course the platforming wasn't pointless—this is a Croteam game, after all.

Skill tree? Sigh. One whole branch is just boring melee stuff? Sigggghhh——WAIT. I NEED THIS.

Unheeding of his friends, Sam listened to the aliens' lies. They pierced his inner thoughts. "It'll be fun" they promised. God knows he could do with that. When was the last time he'd had _fun_? He was almost convinced.

But no: it was no time for fun. It was time to get Serious.

I am enjoying this game, despite myself. It is so joyfully silly.

I have one complaint about Serious Sam 4, and it's that pressing "3" first gives me the feeble pump shotgun, and I have to press "3" a second time to get the double-barrelled monster I actually wanted. This is my primary cause of awkward fumbling in battle.

Nice attempt at camouflage, mister level designer!

(Well, it would be if the items didn't all flash bright colours.)

Freedom at last! Sam escapes into the beautiful countryside…

…only to find it's all fake. It's another lie. He's been living in a computer game this whole time.

This is mad. The level I cam from is somewhere back this way, lost in the distance.

All this farmland out here? It's not a skybox. It's actual walkable terrain, for miles!

I really, really hope this means there's actual levels on this scale later in the game!

Okay, so Vesuvius here is fake. But look at the actual terrain continuing on into the horizon beneath it… more exploring for me!

Seeming endless surreal forest

I _think_ that's going to be a bit of playable level up there? Supposed to be the crater or something I guess? Will have to wait and see.

Beneath illusory Vesuvius
lie fields flat and filled with flowers.
And a single lonely sapling,
defiant of the alien powers.

I never thought I'd say this about Serious Sam, but you know what? All this running around forests and wide open fields has got me hankering to play DayZ again…

Now that I'm well out from under its slopes, I can turn around and see the fake mountain again. Unsurprisingly, not much detail in the texturing on this side.

6km from the objective, and the terrain still continues further. No going back for me yet…

Is this it? Is this finally the edge? Sam steps forward… nope! Just a bit that didn't render yet.

9,257m from the objective, the sun gives up and goes home for the day. But I'm not stopping yet.

You see those hills, way off in the distance?

You. Can. Go. There.

Not like your skyrim nonsense, where a tiny 100m lump is 400m away with fog to make it look like a distant mountain.

No, these hills are 23km away (~17km away from the first pic in the previous tweet).

Not quite at the summit here, only because the trees there block the view.

I came to Pompeii to induce a volcanic eruption to destroy the aliens, and all I got was this stupid beautiful enormous nature walk.

(Of course, I had to break out of the level first.)

Sam Stone went over the mountain, to see what he could see.

More mountains…!

Standing on the side of this hill, looking down at the treeline below, really makes me homesick for Chernarus.

I love that their terrain texturing and vegetation placement, even all the way out here, miles beyond the level bounds, still has variations that make the place feel naturalistic (leaving aside the lighting quirks).

Another range of hills surmounted. Looking back, and looking forward:

It's all just perlin noise, no doubt. It's clear I've left the authored parts behind long ago. But the result is still pleasant.

Oh, this is different. Out here at the 40km mark, there's a rocky hill! Not just smooth grassy slopes and forests.

No doubt it's just a texture variation for the steeper slopes. But a change is a good as a holiday, right? When you've been running through similar terrain for 40km, something different is certainly a nice change.

The rocky terrain has displacement mapping! And I can't walk on it properly, it's slidy. This is great! I get to do more than just hold shift+W for a bit.

(How much do you bet there's a hang glider on top of that high outcrop ahead?)

No wonder I have trouble walking up this slope! It's rather steep.

Nope, I can't make it up here. Gonna have to go around this hill.

Or not! There were some shallower slopes, part grass and part rock, that I was able to clamber up.

Anyway, no hang glider here. Great spot for one, though, if this was a farcry.

The hills beyond that one are also rocky. I've had to give up going in a straight line, and start pathing around the steep valleys, or I'd get down in one and not be able to get up the other side.

Serious Sam: hiking simulator!

This is the last tall hill for quite a distance, by the looks of it. Saying goodbye to Vesuvius for now… I wonder if I'll find a further peak that's high enough to see it again?

That valley was 10km wide. This hill on the other side isn't nearly as high as the last range I crossed—no volcano visible from here.

Facing outward again, looks like I'm in for some pleasantly rolling slopes on the top of this range of hills.

If anyone else wants to explore out here, this is the third level, "Four Horsemen". Not far in, a side quest starts with a letter and a key that leads you to a dead soldier and a grenade launcher attachment. Jump on the weapon crate and onto the roof there, and you're out.

I'm gonna keep on going for a while, until I need to make dinner. Not because there's anything to see out here—except more hills and forests—but because I find this soothing, relaxing.

Oh, if anyone from Croteam reads this, please don't patch out that level bounds break. It's harmless, and has brought me a lot of joy.

But if you want to patch in a sign there saying "Infinite nature walk, this way", that's okay with me.

Even out here, 60km now, my brain is reading the terrain as shaped. Look at the hill in the distance, how the treeline breaks? Surely that's a manmade clearing, there'll be a farmhouse there… (of course there won't).

Of course there wasn't—it was just a gap between two different treelines rolling across the hilltop. But I had to check.

There's a peak in the far distance in this same photo that I'm tempted to go climb—should have an awesome view from there. But it's 90 degrees off from the course I've been taking, and looks probably 30km away from here. If I go there, I'll never get back on this course again.

And at this distance, I think maybe that's Vesuvius just poking its top out behind the hills? If so, this'll almost certainly be my last sight of it: the atmospheric haze will surely hide it by the time I reach another hilltop high enough.

I should've added a close-up to the previous tweet. Here it is, a tiny faint bump protruding beyond the ridgeline.

There's another steep rocky slope to the left, but straight ahead the hills are falling away. I wonder if there's an ocean out there?

Perhaps not… this looks suspiciously like the edge of the map ahead.

Let's go there and find out!

Yep. 68.39 kilometres away his objective, Sam finally realises that he's must've taken a wrong turn somewhere.

What does a true explorer do, upon reaching the end of the world?

There's only one thing to do:

Feels like:

And that's the end of "Serious" Sam Stone's nature walk. Thank you all for joining me. I'm going to go have dinner, and Sam's going to go back to shooting aliens, which is the job he was brought to Pompeii to do in the first place.

One final addendum: There is actually an ocean out there, and a low-poly city, and beaches! They're actually very close to where I started, I just went in entirely the wrong direction.

This little nook was very clever, and very entertaining.

The picture will mean nothing to you, of course, unless you've been here. But if you haven't been here, I don't want to spoil the fun.

I suppose I should've expected this, being in Pompeii and all…

Oh, this game…

It spawns like 120 kamikazes on you all at once. Beautiful!

This is a horrible tease.

I can't find any way to get up here. I even broke out of the level and climbed on top of half the enormous walls that surround it, but still couldn't get here.

I have another complaint about Serious Sam 4. If I am having a hard time getting through some area and decide to use cheats, then it displays a "CHEATS USED" overlay on the screen permanently from then on. It’s needless and obnoxious.

Sure, it also disables achievements and high scores or whatever—I don’t give half a shit about either of those. But don’t put extra noise on the screen, please!

Anyway, I reloaded an earlier save and had to struggle with that part repeatedly regardless, because god mode doesn’t seem to actually work?!? Cheats were enabled (cf. the screen yelling at me) and god mode was apparently turned on, but I was taking damage and died anyway. Welp.

All I wanted was a way to get through the parts where it gets too overwhelming to be fun, so I can get back to the parts where it is fun.