Serious Sam 4 has hotfixed some crashes, with performance improvements to come

A little shouting is to be expected when playing a Serious Sam game, considering one of the enemies is a headless fella with bombs for hands who'll come charging over the horizon with an "aaaAAAAAAAAA!", but Croteam's latest circle-strafing shooter did bring some bad shouting too. When Serious Sam 4 launched last Thursday, some players were yelling at technical issues including crashes and poor performance. But the devs put out a wee hotfix patch on Friday night, focused on fixing crashes, so it should be in a better state now if you wanna get back to the good shouting.

"The update takes care of some nagging crashes related to older drivers and hardware, as well as various stability issues we have encountered," Croteam communications man Daniel Lucic said in Friday's announcement. "Overall, this update will make the game much more stable. It even helps out those on older Windows versions, which are still not supported but should be a bit more stable now."

The hotfix also fixed a few other bits, noted in that post, but didn't do much for performance or other issues. It was only the first patch, mind, put out the day after launch.

"We have published a hotfix, and are already working on another one which will sort out even more issues," Lucic said in a forum post last night. "I know this is not the best thing to hear, but from some of you, we just need some patience. We'll take care of everything that we possibly can."

He's been busy on the forums, responding to lots of questions and complaints. He says while some people complaining about performance have computers under the minimum spec, they are seeing some issues for people with good-enough PCs too, so they are "improving performance and stability around the clock and will continue doing so until we minimize issues like that." He notes mod support and a level editor are to come. And he hinted that they "have something cool in the works" related to larger levels being a bit empty.

Serious Sam 4 is out now on Steam and GOG for £31/€40/$40. It does more of that Serious Sam stuff: circle-strafing and running backwards while fighting hordes of wacky monsters. This time, you do get to fight in the Pope's personal mech too.