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

arstechnica.com

71–78 of 78 posts

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

#71
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.

Much like stories or novels published after the author's death are generally bad. More often than not there's a reason why they weren't published. There are rare exceptions where the novel/story was interrupted by author's death, but otherwise - beware.

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

#72
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please, create this game, I will buy it. You had me at the assless chaps gun.

Was it only Quake that had such extensive modding capabilities, or was it Duke also? In short, if they stick to the spirit of games from that time, then user content will show up and you'll both get your wish.

Games don't seem to stick around long enough for modders so much nowadays :\

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

#73
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…

Most judgements of humor are humorless. You don't say something isn't funny to get a laugh.

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

#74
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was it only Quake that had such extensive modding capabilities, or was it Duke also? In short, if they stick to the spirit of games from that time, then user content will show up and you'll both get your wish.

Games don't seem to stick around long enough for modders so much nowadays :\

Thats only half the reason for the lack of mods, the other is that the orignal game creation sdks are now free or freemium atleast so it wouldn't make sense to try to mod something if you can get supreme tools for original creation nearly for free.

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

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It "officially dies", then in a matter of a year or two, a sequel is whipped up by another studio using the inherited rights to the name. This is not what happened. Please don't spread lies. The single player game is exactly what 3D Realms had developed and Triptych finished following 3DR's demise. Triptych consisted of a bunch of 3DR guys who wouldn't let the game die and spent close to a year working out of someo…

There's no reason to call someone a liar when it could just as easily be a simple mistake. Don't attribute to malice, etc.

He's making stuff up and stating it authoritatively as if it were simple fact. I'm not sure what else to call it.

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

#76
post #60

I 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,…

Not sure I agree with the rampantly offensive part. If I remember in Duke Nukem 3D there is a strip club level. I wouldn't call that the best way to represent the empowerment of women. Of course, that was never the intention of the series. The game is very conservative through and through. Duke even sounds kind of like Ronald Reagan.

On the issue of the gameplay, this game is really bad. It plays like a cheaper version of Doom 3(another poorly delivered, over hyped game). They really should have taken a look at Serious Sam if they want to know how to make an old school shooter nowadays. By the way Serious Sam 3 is going to kick some serious ass, unlike this game.

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

#78
Not that it will change anyone's mind, but given that I'm more than half way through DNF on the PC, here are my thoughts:

- Graphics on the PC are decent when maxed out on good hardware.

- Load-times are unbearably long. 25-45seconds on a Dual-core 3.0Ghz machine (SATA drives, no SSD here) and an Radeon HD 6950.

- Did I mention load-times?

- Nudity is abundant and enjoyably breasty (I sincerely doubt MOST of the people looking down their nose while playing this game don't actually enjoy this aspect).

- Level design is boring and feels very "last gen shooter". Not much detail (although the Vegas back drop during the first 1/4 of the game is decent) and movement through a level is primarily linear.

- Guns are boring and feel VERY uninspired. There is nothing "fun" about the weapons. There isn't a single gun I enjoy shooting. I'm a gun connoisseur when it comes to FPS; for example, the Turok remake was an OK game (annoying terrible at parts) but the weapon design and sound work was fantastic.

- Enemies are not fun to fight or kill. Some of the bosses are interesting, but the enemies you fight the other 97% of the time are either overly aggressive and beat you down, making you frantic to take them out at the expense of "having fun" with them (e.g. freeze ray, shrink ray, etc... you are just panic'ed to kill them) or they have some annoying stupid AI routines (like flashing in/out of position as their health gets low) that does nothing for the gameplay and just artificially extends the boring-ass battle.

- The game isn't funny -- it's not that they don't try, it's just a bunch of humor that isn't enjoyable anymore. Sort of like popping Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure in and not laughing once and trying to remember why you were rolling on the floor laughing when that movie came out. Or popping in Wayne's World and trying to remember why you EVER though Dana Carvey talking strange and both of them stay "SCHWING!" ad nauseum was enjoyable.

- Monster-truck/mini-car-driving scenes are the most enjoyable so far.

- Difficulty is not balanced well at all. With 3 or more pig-gorillas on screen you can get your ass handed to you very quickly on Easy and on Hard you can take down a boss just as quickly. I don't understand what the difficulty settings do exactly. Regardless, Easy doesn't feel "Easy" and Hard doesn't always feel "Hard".

- For as much time/money/marketing Broussard put behind the "interactivity" of the world -- it feels really flat. There are a few simulated things (like pin-ball machines and poker machines) that are fully implemented and a total waste of effort IMO, at the expensive of plenty of other things being non-inter-actable. This is a perfect example of "depth" not "breadth" design in all the wrong places.

- The game is written/designed around the idea that you care at all about the fan-fare that is Duke. I don't and I imagine most people playing this game honestly don't care at all about the Duke character -- given that, a lot of the enjoyability of being in this all-duke world, being this over-the-top-character that is super-flat... just means nothing. So what little "umph" being Duke was going to breath into this just isn't there at all. As a comparison, it was intoxicating to be Shepard in Mass Effect 2 with all the characters in the world reacting to seeing you for the first time after what happened (avoiding a spoiler here) -- in Duke, I am just not entertained by all the things Duke in this world. IN FAIRNESS, I might have cared in 2004, so maybe all this stuff was applicable and funny at some point.

You can't slap a single tag on this game like "Offensive" or "Unfunny" or "Uninspired" and point at that single thing as it's failing... it's all of them to some degree.

The game is not a glaring flop, it's just mostly boring to play (it feels like a chore to me), has a few high-light moments (bewbs) and is totally forgettable.

For $5 rental? Sure pick it up and play it. For $39-49-59? No freaking way. I can literally think of 100 better games to put your money on depending on your preferences.

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