Duke Nukem Forever

[Carbo]

@Tornado: fair enough, cause it sounded like the fault was mainly Gearbox's for the game being the way it is now.

I've been told they even botched a Doom reference in DNF aswell.

(spoilered to be safe)

So you know how it went in 3D, you find a secret room and see Doom Guy on the floor halfway through his death animation and Duke says "That's one DOOMed Space Marine". A nice little jab there, a classic in fact.

So in DNF (again, I've only been told this), apparently you can go underneath a painfully obvious tentacle to find a dead guy in there. Except this dead guy is wearing a helmet that is identical to those seen on Dead Space's Isaac Clarke. So what does Duke say?

"That's one DOOMED SPACE MARINE!"

...Isaac was an engineer. From the Dead Space franchise. Nothing to do with Doom. At all.

Made me laugh, really. x)

He says "That's one DEAD SPACE Marine".

Anyway just finished the main campaign. This game is really fucking long. You can't fault the ending for being incredibly true to DN3D in how little it tries to put a closure. But really, the entire Dam scenario was probably my favorite part of the game.

I've got a feeling that they've already got a sequel in plans for this.

Edited June 12, 2011 by Carbo

[Swiss]

He says "That's one DEAD SPACE Marine".

[Solid SOAP]

Fan remake of the 2001 trailer, made with audio and visuals from the new version of the game. The less than a week wait for this game is killing me. ;_;

[Johnny Boy]

Well that makes sense then. Still seems like a strange franchise to choose a reference for though, surely something Serious Sam-related might have fit in better?

Ah serious Sam. I'd sure wish they'd make more games about him. But back on topic DNF was an ok game for me.

[Scott]

Ah serious Sam. I'd sure wish they'd make more games about him. But back on topic DNF was an ok game for me.

Oh hell no, I've barely finished the first game, and I bought it like 2 months ago D:

[Shaddix Leto Croft]

Ah serious Sam. I'd sure wish they'd make more games about him. But back on topic DNF was an ok game for me.

They are making a Serious Sam 3 right now I made a topic on the forum but I lost intrest in the game

On topic:

I really liked that 2011 version of the Duke Nukem Forever 2001 trailer tis very good

[Swiss]

Well guys...if I could just direct your attention here...

Yeah, Serious Sam 3 already looks like it's going to wipe the floor with DNF in terms of old-school fun. That's a surprise.

And does anyone know if a non-First access demo will be released at any point? I am at least curious to try the game out.

[Carbo]

It wont.

And even then you're better off waiting for a Steam sale or something than playing a 9 month old demo.

Also there's a SS3 thread for this. Comparing SS to Duke is just stupid, the games are nothing alike, and Serious Sam isn't really that old school to begin with.

[Scott]

It wont.

And even then you're better off waiting for a Steam sale or something than playing a 9 month old demo.

Also there's a SS3 thread for this. Comparing SS to Duke is just stupid, the games are nothing alike, and Serious Sam isn't really that old school to begin with.

Plus Some of Serious Sam's enemies lack decent design...just saying :/

I mean seriously...

The monsters on the Monster Munch crisp packets look alot better

But while I'm talking about Serious Sam, remember when he was basically a Duke Nukem rip-off in terms of looks...

[Johnny Boy]

Well I'm glad to hear they're making SS3

[Swiss]

The game got a 3/10 and a 2/10 from Eurogamer and Jim Sterling, respectively. Granted they're classed as very harsh critics but still, this has to say something.

Still, I'm glad at least some people got some enjoyment out of it. It's just a bit of a shame it didn't live up to it's name really.

[Carbo]

Jim Sterling's review was complete and total flamebait if I've read it. It was complete shit, but then again very few people actually take him seriously nowadays. Ironically, IGN's review is probably the most accurate review of the game available in so far.

This game doesn't deserve stellar scores, good deal of them are spot on, but what bugs me about most reviews is that they criticize it for the absolute wrong reasons. While it should be given 5s for being a completely average gunwank with not much space to innovate on the genre or anything that makes it stand out in the crowd, it's getting 5s for being "too old", which is complete and utter bullshit when it copies so much from the Halo rulebook. It's almost insulting.

I'm not the one to complain about reviews, but so many of them are laden with underlying bias and hypocrisy, and it sends off the completely wrong message on what should be improved. Even /v/ who are incredibly audacious about the game are complaining about how the reviews are full of themselves, and a good deal of them hate this game.

Edited June 13, 2011 by Carbo

[Blue Wisp]

[...] it's getting 5s for being "too old", which is complete and utter bullshit [...]

Correct me if I'm wrong but:

Edited June 13, 2011 by Doug Dimmadome

[Carbo]

Correct me if I'm wrong but:

This has relevance how?

DNF isn't old. This is the fans' main complaint; it's too goddamn modernized. It's a build that holds development from 2008. Two weapon limits, linear levels, regenerating health, etc. All of the modern tropes of FPS are intact in this game, and the entire game had to be designed to accommodate those tropes which were handled in a sub-par quality.

The game is just poorly done. The only thing old about this game is that it runs on Unreal Engine 2.5, but even that is modified to at least a relatively respectable quality.

Edited June 13, 2011 by Carbo

[Swiss]

I'm not going to lie and admit I didn't read Sterling or Eurogamer's reviews since, like you said, they're all saying the same thing. And Sterling is a troll, but that goes without saying.

To be fair, as much as I know it's not a good Duke game because of all the modernisation, it takes a lot to deserve a score like that. It still looks hilarious and I'm sure it's got a good few fun moments, just not worth the money they're asking for it in my opinion.

[eXtaticus]

I saw gameplay footage of the first level - it looks just as good as DN3D, actually...

[Gavvie]

I'm going to be quite honest here: I'm enjoying the game.

Yes, it's not brilliant. It's not going to be the greatest shooter I play this year, but it's by no means the worst I have EVER played (that accolade goes to World War Zero on the PS2 at present. Abysmal game). At times it's broken, buggy, and ridiculously hard owing to overpowered enemies and underpowered guns. If you haven't been running around the level nabbing EGO upgrades, you're in trouble.

Here's the thing: I'm enjoying it because, despite its moment of sheer hair-ripping-out-of-head annoyance, it can still be enjoyed. Of course it's going to be broken, it's been in development for so long, on so many different game engines, that trying to fix it would've taken, pardon the pun, forever. If you were a fan of Duke 3D, and still are a fan of the humour that game portrayed, then there's still a lot to like here.

I don't think 5/10s are harsh scores. If I was to score it, I don't think I'd go much higher than that. It's kinda sitting on the fence of good and bad, not tipping one way or the other. The best accolade you can give the game is that it exists, it isn't exactly broken to the point of being unplayable, and that your enjoyment of the game will vary.

[Detective Shadzter]

Woah! I've just read through Eurogamer/Digital Foundry's Face-off comparison of all 3 versions of the game and I can't believe how terrible the Xbox 360 version looks compared to the others. The frame-rate on the Xbox 360 version is all over the place and causes awful screen-tearing, while the PS3 version gives a near constant 30fps. PC version gives the best performance of all 3 platforms, but I just don't get why the Xbox 360 version is so bad If they can get it to run decent on the PS3, then why not the Xbox 360?

Just look at the comparison videos in the article

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-duke-nukem-forever-face-off

I don't have a gaming PC, so I'm definitely going for the PS3 version when I eventually pick the game up.

[SuperStingray]

I'm not very far in yet, but I'm more taken by the spectacle than the game itself. The environments are deep, rich, colorful, interactive. The dialog and flow of the story is hilarious and well timed. But what falls flat is the game itself. The problem with the design is that it doesn't feel like there is one; it feels like they made it up as they went along with no regard to how every sequence is juxtapositioned. Jumping from fighting aliens to navigating an RC car through a puzzle back to fighting aliens is just awkward. I was kind of looking forward to it partly because of how it brings Duke's interactions with the environment to a new level, but without a solid game around that stuff, it feels more like a gimmick than anything. I'm still gonna finish it if only to get some closure, but I'm mostly curious if they incorporated anything from Yahtzee's review...

[Phos]

http://www.giantbomb.com/quick-look-duke-nukem-forever/17-4385/

I just watched this Quick Look on Giant Bomb and I don't think I want to see this game ever again.

[Solid SOAP]

I bought the Balls of Steel Edition the other day and... I'm really enjoying it. I have no idea what critics and haters (Sorry to use such a juvenile term, I can't think of a word more appropriate) have against this game. No, it isn't perfect; I'm playing on the 360 and I've encountered some graphical glitches, driving controls took a bit to get used to, and I'm not a huge fan of some of the more crass bits of "humor" (The twins told me to stop playing with my balls at the beginning of the game, what about that is witty or satirical?). However, the game itself is loaded with fun and silly shit to do, and I'm really having fun with it. The environmental interactions are just as good as I imagined them to be from previous trailers, as I had quite a bit of fun dicking around with vending machines and microwaves. What sticks out for me in this game isn't only the envirnomental interactions, but the sheer variety of gameplay it has. Stingray claims it awkward to move from a puzzle to gunfire, but I find that it makes the gameplay significantly more dynamic and varried than most modern-gen shooters, it seems to take a lot of inspiration from the Half-Life games more than anything, the only modern gen similarities being the health regen and 2-weapon limit, which I'll admit the latter was a dumb decision.

In short, I find this game to be a lot of fun so far. Maybe not the greatest game of all time, but any critic or person saying this deserves less than a 6 I'll never understand.

[Carbo]

Allegedly the head for the PR Agency that sends out review copies of games and were in charge of Duke Nukem Forever was INCREDIBLY pissed off about how absolutely atrocious the quality of some reviews were and was threatening to permanently blacklist sites from reviewing their games.

A PR agency has apologized for publicly threatening to blacklist videogame review sites that "went too far" with their negative reviews of Duke Nukem Forever.

Things are not going well for Duke Nukem Forever. After nearly a decade and a half "in development," the game was finally finished by Gearbox and turned loose to reviewers, who wasted no time in savaging it as a half-baked mess. Some reviewers were more or less harsh than others - our own Russ Pitts recommended that "if you are stuck on a deserted island with only this game to play, go fishing instead" - but the cumulative effect was enough to finally enough to push Jim Redner of The Redner Group, the PR agency handling the game, over the edge.

"too many went too far with their reviews...we r reviewing who gets games next time and who doesn't based on today's venom," he wrote on the official Redner Group Twitter feed. "It's one thing to not like a game, it's an entirely different thing to rate it a 2 & b completely mean spirited."

In other words, if you were too hard on the Duke in your review, which is by any definition an entirely subjective measure, you may not be getting any more games or coverage support from the Redner Group in the future. It's a pretty shocking admission to make publicly, and the agency quickly deleted the tweets and apologized for "acting out of pure emotion." A separate apology to numerous individual game journalists was also sent out, admitting that the outburst was a "juvenile act" and also stating that 2K Games had absolutely nothing to do with it.

"Though I didn't name names, I did say that I thought some reviews had gone too far in tone," Redner wrote. "I respect the scores, it had to deal with the tone. I was unable to properly convey that in 140 characters. But that it beside the point."

"We are all entitled to our opinions regardless of score, tone or meaning. My response was a juvenile act on my part. I know better and my emotion got the best of me. I have worked very hard on this project. I want it to succeed. I just got upset and acted out," he continued. "I believe we are all allowed to voice our opinions and that opinions by their very nature are correct. Many of you quickly pointed out my error in judgment. For that I thank you and apologize."

2K Games has not commented.

In my fully honest opinion even though I'm completely riding against the Destructoid and 1Up reviews of the game I'm not sure whether this was the right way to approach it.

Edited June 15, 2011 by Carbo

[Yong]

Allegedly the head for the PR Agency that sends out review copies of games and were in charge of Duke Nukem Forever was INCREDIBLY pissed off about how absolutely atrocious the quality of some reviews were and was threatening to permanently blacklist sites from reviewing their games.

In my fully honest opinion even though I'm completely riding against the Destructoid and 1Up reviews of the game I'm not sure whether this was the right way to approach it.

U mad, bro?

Honestly, even the PR guys should've known this wasn't going to be GotY or anything. But seriously, these PR groups and game companies handpicking reviewers that'll kiss the ground they walk on just to slap 9s and 10s on a trailer or game box are the scum of the industry. And these guys were going to do this out of a petty grudge, even worse. Glad someone put a stop to this before it got out of hand.

[Tornado]

Haven't played it yet (doing something in GT5), but the art book alone was worth the extra $40 I dropped on the BoS edition.

[SuperStingray]

Alright, I finally finished the game. I'll definitely say that it got better as it progressed... then worse... then better again... then just ended anticlimactically, but it never reached anything that made it extraordinary. There were no climaxes or major encounters, just fight after fight after shitty vehicle section after fight. Because I've never really followed news in the industry until around 2004 or 2005, I first heard of DNF far later than most (~2007), so I'm probably more lenient on it than the people who waited 13 years for it. I know I'd be pretty mad if something that I anticipated for 3/4s of my life ended up merely adequate.

What I can say is that while it's mediocre as a game, I can't help but find it refreshing in some ways. A game where you can pick up a fresh turd in a men's room toilet and throw it at walls isn't exactly high-brow entertainment, but where Call of Duty tries to embrace the youthful desire to be an action hero by putting yourself in the shoes of one, Duke Nukem tries to embrace it by associating it with everything else you ever found entertaining when you were 12. It's by far the most immature game I've ever played in my entire life, and for that much I love it.

As for the rest of its positive qualities, I did enjoy the environments. They were very intuitive and detailed, to the point of making finding Easter eggs a key element of the game itself. You can tell the art designers had a clear vision of what they were going for when you see the details of the Casinos and alien tunnels. Plus the mixture of desert and industrial environments brought back memories of Half-Life. I especially loved navigating the vertical maze of tentacles and steel under the Duke Burger. I'm also enjoying the multiplayer, which isn't very deep, but an interesting mix of both modern and classic Deathmatch shooter tropes.

Now for what sucked: First, enemy variety. Seriously, as far as common enemies go, I can remember maybe 4 or 5 tops for the entire 7 hour campaign. And the amount of bosses was certainly small enough without 2 of them being rehashed. You do NOT just rehash the first boss as the last boss without some major changes to the battle- he had the same freaking moveset but they just added two health bars. Next, the music. The theme and menu music are fine, but there really weren't any intense tunes in the actual game. The background music was just that- in the background. I didn't really hear anything that made me feel pumped. The music was actually fairly calm in some of the boss battles. Third, it's just hypocritical for the game to be making fun of tropes of new shooters when Duke is restricted to two guns, has a regenerating health bar and a considerably linear environment. Sometimes it felt like it was becoming what it was trying to parody, which is pretty much the worst thing a satirical work can do.

Lastly and worst of all- the story. I know the story's supposed to be taken as seriously as the plot of a Drawn Together episode, and the dialogue itself was amusing, but the story just reflected very poor design of the game progression itself. Characters and plot devices just popped in and out with no rhyme or reason. The actions of the President make absolutely no sense and they never really chose to expand upon WHY he so stubbornly tries to get on the aliens' good side. There was even a fetch quest dream sequence that had absolutely no reason to exist and was never mentioned again other than the fact it was obligatory for a strip club to appear at some point. And I won't spoil the ending because there's really nothing to be spoiled- the game just ends. It just stops. You defeat the alien emperor, shit blows up and... that's it. There's some kind of attempt at a cliffhanger after the end credits but not only does it make sense, but I don't think a game that was perpetually delayed for 13 years has any right to end without solid resolution.

I don't know what else to say about it really. It was a great distraction and an adequate game. In the end, I just feel bad for George Broussard who spent a decade and millions of dollars to make a great game only to end up going too far trying to make everything perfect, solid and up to date and sacrificed its potential.