In a hilarious press release, filled with Duke Nukem-esque banter, the publishers announced the return of the token series, “a glorious throwback to the golden age of first-person shooters where men were men, cover was for amateurs and pulling the trigger made things go boom.”

 

If you aren't familiar with Serious Sam, it started as an indie developed first-person shooter and managed to garner a lot of success, fans, a sequel and even a recent HD remake. The game plays as a classic arcade style shooter, with hordes of enemies descending upon the player, who is left to defend himself with a huge arsenal of futuristic weapons.

 

And while Serious Sam isn't going to win any writing awards, the story for the third game is set as a prequel, taking place before Serious Sam: The First Encounter. In it players will battle the invading legions of the evil extraterrestrial overlord, Mental, as they attempt to conquer the Earth. The game is set against the collapsing temples of an ancient civilization and the crumbling cities of 22nd century Egypt.

 

“Serious Sam 3 is about pure fun and unfiltered action,” said Davor Hunski, chief creative office at Croteam. “We wanted to expand on everything gamers love about the series while adding some genuinely unique new features to really enhance the mayhem Serious Sam is known for.”

 

The game will feature the frantic arcade-style action of its predecessors and will introduce hordes of crazy new enemies (the enemies in this game can get absolutely massive). New monsters such as the Scrapjack and towering Khnum will be joined by classic Serious Sam foes such as the headless Kamikaze and Gnaar, according to Croteam, “Your days of mowing down zombie Nazi space pirates are over.”

 

Something lots of fans will no doubt appreciate is that the new game will also be introducing a melee attack option, tough at this stage we don't know how this will work. Croteam said it will be able to, “drop an enemy right where they stand in the most violent way possible.”

 

The game will also support online multiplayer, with players able to battle against each other in modes like Deathmatch and Beast Hunt, or team up to play the full campaign together online, with up to an unprecedented 16 players at once.

 

Serious Sam 3: BFE has a preliminary release date of “summer 2011”, which means we can expect the game here in the winter. It's slated for release on PC and “game consoles”, which we take to mean PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.