Nostalgia Forever. I remember playing the older Duke games as a kid (strip bars anyone?!) and thinking it was an amazing game. Like many people here, I carried that nostalgia with me for many years to the point where I bought (I didn't pre-order) DNF--and well... all I can say is, when you grow up your taste in things change. I wouldn't call DNF a bad game, it's just not something the adult me wants to play. I know though, if I handed this to my younger self, I would be quoting the stupid one liners all day at school. Gearbox made a decent game, they just didn't realize their main demographic grew up.
Duke Nukem Forever: barely playable, not funny, rampantly offensive
51–60 of 78 posts
Re: Duke Nukem Forever: barely playable, not funny, rampantly offensive
#52I found this review interesting and more balanced: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/06/13/wot-i-think-duke-...
Re: Duke Nukem Forever: barely playable, not funny, rampantly offensive
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm waiting for Yahtzee to rip into it. He has a knack for separating the merely pedestrian from the truly terrible. If he can't laugh at DNF, there's a good chance I won't be able to, either.
There's nothing to laugh at. It's just bad. Offensive is besides the point, that's how bad it is. Humour used to be ancillary, now the shooting is so bad, the design feels haphazard and the whole thing is so linear that self-references and unfunny shit are front and center. It's rather embarrassing.
Yeah, as I was reading the review, I was willing to give the game a rent despite Kuchera's complaints about the comedy.
But when he started going on about the checkpoints, health, shooting, chopping, loading and level design... my willingness evaporated.
Re: Duke Nukem Forever: barely playable, not funny, rampantly offensive
#54[deleted]
Re: Duke Nukem Forever: barely playable, not funny, rampantly offensive
#55[deleted]
Re: Duke Nukem Forever: barely playable, not funny, rampantly offensive
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think that people who played Duke3d remember one of two things: badass non-stop action and a lack of bubblegum, or fantastically misogynistic humor. He clearly falls into the former category. However, even with this I fail to see how he can think it's that far off Duke3d in its humor. It was always toilet humor, we're all just older now...
> we're all just older now This is it. I think people don't realize they've grown up and what they found funny when playing DN as a child is simply not funny anymore. After all kids are easily amused.
That and the fact that the racy humor was more of a novelty in 1996, when most FPS were in the Doom sci-fi vein of 'stoic hero shoots his way through alien/monster/etc wasteland'. Ten GTA games later, nothing really shocks us anymore.
Re: Duke Nukem Forever: barely playable, not funny, rampantly offensive
#57Its 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…
I totally agree with this. The article really put me off by beginning with outright moralizing. By all means, tell me the game isn't fun to play. Tell me it's all corridors and cutscenes. Tell me it's slow and buggy. Those are things I care about. I definitely don't need to hear anybody's opinion about whether the tasteless humor is the acceptable kind of tasteless humor, or the unacceptable kind that makes fans of i…
Speaking of the morality in DNF this strip sums it up nicely.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2011/3/23/
Re: Duke Nukem Forever: barely playable, not funny, rampantly offensive
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Maybe I don't 'Get' this game either, but the examples he cites just don't sound funny. The label on a carton of cigarettes is 'faggs'? That's not funny, it's not original, and it's not creative.
Sure, that is an offensive word, but that's not my problem with it. I was practically in tears laughing at a Tosh.0 skit the other night that was basically a 5 minute long gay joke. But it was witty and original. Just saying the word hasn't been edgy or made me laugh since about the 6th grade.
I'm not saying we should ban this game. But I do think there is a very big difference between the reviewer not liking this kind of comedy and the reviewer being humorless. I love comedy, I pay to see live standup all the time, practically the only things on my DVR are comedy, but I would never buy this game. Their 'funny' and my 'funny' are two entirely different things.
Re: Duke Nukem Forever: barely playable, not funny, rampantly offensive
#59I've only played through the first 20 minutes or so and had a blast. Sure its not cutting edge at all but you can see the old 3dRealms touch of being able to interact with a lot of things.
Users should set their expectations of the world's greatest game aside and just taking Duke Nukem Forever with a grain of salt. To me its like an 80's or 90's action movie.
I would have payed to play this even if it was a 2 hour tech demo just to see what they were working on all this time.
Re: Duke Nukem Forever: barely playable, not funny, rampantly offensive
#60I found the review persuasive. The points about misogyny resonated with me, but everything he criticized about the gameplay resonated as well.
Linear gameplay with cutscenes, bleah. Regenerating health, meh, not in this kind of game. You can only carry two guns and they aren't fun to shoot -- what are they THINKING? This is DUKE. I don't know what era they grew up in, but my action heroes can carry at least six guns, maybe eight, and at least half a ton of ammo.
Nothing as fresh and silly as the shrink gun was? It was little novelties like that made Duke fun to play. If you want to make penis jokes, make a penis gun. If you want to make a joke about homophobia, make a leather gun that decks a bad guy out in a leather outfit with assless chaps, temporarily incapacitating his friends as they laugh at him. Blammo -- joke's on them! It wouldn't have any point against the big bosses since they work alone, but it would be fun to use anyway -- what is this big blob of alien going to look like in leather? It would also add some sexual interest without being too misogynistic, since you could shoot women to give them a bad-ass leather and sunglasses look, which would give them a lot more class and dignity and real sex appeal than they usually have in Duke games. Maybe they'd grab a gun and fight on your side for a while.
How did I just think up a major improvement to the game while writing an HN comment, and they couldn't do it in... how many years?