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Duke Nukem Forever: barely playable, not funny, rampantly offensive

arstechnica.com

41–50 of 78 posts

Re: Duke Nukem Forever: barely playable, not funny, rampantly offensive

#42
post #2

Its hard to trust a humorless judgement of humor. While I haven't played the game myself, I'd like to point out to the author of the article that if attempting to describe why a something isn't funny, the best weapon in your arsenal would be humor, not simply sticking up your nose in disgust (though one could mix that in). That said, a lot of the jokes in the game sound pretty straightforwardly shitty and weird. Howe…

Ugh, I hate it when people ignore their comedic ineptitude just because they happen to be discussing involving comedy. I much rather this article over an unintentional cringe-fest because they author decided to venture into comedy.

Re: Duke Nukem Forever: barely playable, not funny, rampantly offensive

#44
post #26
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tautologies are also very cheap these days :) It wasn’t meant to be an attack, I’m mostly wondering about the motivations. It takes a huge amount of work to make such a game, even if everything goes perfectly well. I know there are interesting technical challenges in the game and there’s potentially a lot of money and other motivation, but I simply can’t image myself working hard several years to create a virtual env…

The legendary Carmack has been working on a game called "Rage" for the past 6 years. Six years ago, iphones & androids didn't exist. Game developers do it because they enjoy it, even if the hard-core-games tend to make less dough than games like angry birds or guitar hero.

And if they're building a game full of misogyny and shit-throwing "because they enjoy it", that's somehow better?

Re: Duke Nukem Forever: barely playable, not funny, rampantly offensive

#45
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd suggest you play the demo before sticking with how you're describing the article. I'm a fan of nearly all types of comedy and don't mind the mindless, 'tasteless' humor types. That said, the demo was tasteless AND unfunny. Considering Gearbox and 2K's recent track record, it's not too surprising -- they've been relatively mediocre at best lately.

Hey, I can believe that the game sucks in a painfully humorless way, never said it didn't. I'm just talking about the writing style of the article. If it was that unfunny, there should have been plenty of material in the article for the author to riff on. As is, he sounds like a straight laced bore.

Yeah, because we need more over-the-top game "writing".

Re: Duke Nukem Forever: barely playable, not funny, rampantly offensive

#46
post #44
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The legendary Carmack has been working on a game called "Rage" for the past 6 years. Six years ago, iphones & androids didn't exist. Game developers do it because they enjoy it, even if the hard-core-games tend to make less dough than games like angry birds or guitar hero.

And if they're building a game full of misogyny and shit-throwing "because they enjoy it", that's somehow better?

Hey! Misogyny is bad, but (virtual) shit-throwing is just funny!

Angry Turds for iOS. Coming soon. It's a steaming-pile of gaming goodness!

Development was tough. We had to push and push, but we made the drop.

EDIT> I'm just glad to be done with development. Now I can spend more time at the pool, with the kids.

EDIT2> So, apparently someone already made Angry Turds for iOS. I'm not affiliated with them in any way.

Re: Duke Nukem Forever: barely playable, not funny, rampantly offensive

#47
post #2

Its hard to trust a humorless judgement of humor. While I haven't played the game myself, I'd like to point out to the author of the article that if attempting to describe why a something isn't funny, the best weapon in your arsenal would be humor, not simply sticking up your nose in disgust (though one could mix that in). That said, a lot of the jokes in the game sound pretty straightforwardly shitty and weird. Howe…

There's a difference between witty but offensive, and just offensive for offensive sake. Just being offensive is juvenile humor, and isn't all that funny. I can watch some comedians stand on stage and say a bunch of things that make me think, 'I can't believe he just said that', but I'll be laughing the entire time. Or I can watch a movie that just plays one poop joke after another and not laugh once. His review soun…

What gives me the impression of "humourlessness" is that he condemns jokes based on what they're about rather than whether they're funny.

For instance, he tells us that Duke blows up some pregnant women and then makes a joke about abortion. And I agree, that's pretty darn offensive. But is it funny? We don't know, the reviewer doesn't tell us the punchline.

I've watched a couple of videos and it looks like there's a few funny bits. Heck, even Duke signing a copy of his book "Why I'm So Great" to get extra health seems like it could be chuckle-worthy.

Re: Duke Nukem Forever: barely playable, not funny, rampantly offensive

#49
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd suggest you play the demo before sticking with how you're describing the article. I'm a fan of nearly all types of comedy and don't mind the mindless, 'tasteless' humor types. That said, the demo was tasteless AND unfunny. Considering Gearbox and 2K's recent track record, it's not too surprising -- they've been relatively mediocre at best lately.

Hey, I can believe that the game sucks in a painfully humorless way, never said it didn't. I'm just talking about the writing style of the article. If it was that unfunny, there should have been plenty of material in the article for the author to riff on. As is, he sounds like a straight laced bore.

Criticizing a game review primarily because it's not funny seems like a non-sequiter to me.

Re: Duke Nukem Forever: barely playable, not funny, rampantly offensive

#50
post #43

I think the lesson here is sometimes when a publisher shuts down a studio instead of letting the game get finished they actually know what they're doing.

I thought that they ran out of money. That's a little different than voluntarily shutting down.
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