Duke Nukem Forever: barely playable, not funny, rampantly offensive
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
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?
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.
Thankfully, I still have my receipt and will probably return it this afternoon. I'll get the PC demo or borrow it from a friend in the future.
But why?
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.
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. However I'm trying to imagine the author describing a Louis CK comedy set, a dirty comic I find hilarious, and I'm fairly sure he could ruin that in short order, so I'll hold off on my judgements.
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.
As is, he sounds like a straight laced bore.
I mean his first reaction was to kill the women - and then shout down the game for it - considering they explode exactly 5 seconds after the dialogue ends, so yeah, really tried to avoid that huh..
Also, my favorite bit:
"Duke, what's happening to us?"
"Looks like you're... awkward pause fucked."
If that's any indication, I completely sympathize with the reviewer.
For those who don't have the 50min to watch it. Both of the guys commentating don't like the game at all. It's supposed to be boring and archaic, and then there's the lazy humor...
I thought Borderlands was fantastic. It can be a grind at times, but it's a really well done FPS-as-RPG. The four-player co-op was icing on the cake.
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.
But when he started going on about the checkpoints, health, shooting, chopping, loading and level design... my willingness evaporated.
If you are looking for a ZP review a genuine one isn't up as of this exact minute - there is a review of DNF on the site but it's a 'tribute' of sorts from September 2010. I look forward to Yahtzee's take on the real thing.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/reviews/3541-Top...
The game has a 50% on Metacritic, so I'm personally reluctant to give it the benefit of the doubt.
I also liked the fact that this is one of few FPS's that actually got me killed a couple of times lately.
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.
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.
A point this author didn't make is that it actually feels like different teams in different era's worked on the game, some levels have very blurry low-res textures, other levels are crisp and well-designed.
And as for the "feces"? Picking it up is optional and it dind't cross my mind. You can interact with the environment 1000 times more than Halo (for instance) allows you to which is great.
It's a game for people who've waited 12 years for Duke Nukem.
Did anyone really expect this to be anything besides a cheap cash-in on the last gasp of the Duke Nukem franchise?
I'm not sure how many people expected just plain Daikatana bad.
That doesn't seem to have been the case.
The game seems to have been mostly complete in 2009 when 3D Realms ran out of cash. Gearbox negotiated with Take Two for the assets and worked with Triptych Games, made up of former 3DR employees, to finish it off.
A showreel containing art that appears in the final game was floating around the Internet in 2009, and the finished game contains an internal trailer by Triptych from 2009 which is very similar to the final game.
I really do think the released game is polished up version of the game from 2009. A half-hearted sequel would use more modern technology, and the mishmash of assets does suggest a protracted development cycle.
I suspect what Gearbox was really after was the rights to the Duke Nukem character and getting involved with DNF was just a means to that end. I suspect we'll be seeing another Duke game relatively quickly.
While the game is far from great, I don't think the game is anywhere near as bad as some reviewers would have you believe. It's just dated and disjointed. I suspect some of the overwhelming negativity is due to the continued creep of sensationalism; you simply don't get many hits for calling something a bit crap, only calling it the worst thing ever.
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 someone's house with no compensation. The work done by non-3DR/Triptych people was mainly the multiplayer and the console porting.
However I also HATE God of War for its violence and misogyny. quite strange.
The downfall was perfectionism.
The difference between these two companies and the making of DNF? As Steve job said, "Real artists ship".
Long answer: If you were offended by a game where you get pixelated peeing, some strippers with streamer pasties on their boobs and a few cuss words, yes it was offensive. This is hardly comparable, though, as at the time there was nothing like it, unless you include the idiotic outrage from Mortal Kombat.
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.
It's not a game I would like to play more than once but in my opinion, it was worth his pre order price. I was entertained about 8-10 hours with mini games, some jokes and first person action.
There're parts which appear unfinished and can't be missed, but DNF can be a entertaining game if you can look over it.
And to think the game was not even true 3D! (You could aim straight ahead, shoot and hit your friend that was flying in the air). Despite that technical shortcoming, the game was FUN. I wasted many hours during summer in 1995 playing this game with a friend, and we even made our own levels to play in deathmatch, figured out novel ways to place laser tripmines, and used teleporters for nefarious purposes. Sounds like a classic case of "we made it 'cause we can" not because it was fun.
- 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.
How big is entertainment sports business? How many millions of dollars do we pay individual players?
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 environment where you can throw shit around and watch women explode because of alien insemination. (This is a simplification indeed, but the point should be clear.)
Would you invest the time and effort? If yes, why do you feel it’s worth it?
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.