Duke Nukem Forever Review
The king is dead.
Version tested: Xbox 360
Randy Pitchford is thinking of me. "I would not want to be a journalist on this one," the Gearbox studio boss told Mr Minkley in our Duke Nukem Forever launch day interview. "I would not want to be a critic. It's going to be tough."
His concern, presumably, is that Duke Nukem Forever is such a monumental event, such a literally game-changing, epoch-shaking moment, that the pressure to accommodate its many facets in a single review - to boil down 14 years of expectation into a fair critical summary - is too terrible a burden for any writer to bear. Duke Nukem Forever! It's here! How can things ever be the same again?
I certainly felt that pressure. Do you let the game's famously troubled gestation - which looked like it would never come to term, until Gearbox stepped in at the eleventh hour - affect the score? Do you try to filter its off-colour humour through a modern lens, or accept the adolescent scatology as part of the Duke experience? Do you review for middle-aged fans from 1996, when Duke last appeared in a first-person shooter, or do you review for a generation of gamers that was still in infant school when our flat-top hero first asked pixellated strippers to "Shake it, baby"? So much to consider. Randy's right. It's going to be tough.
Except, with joypad in hand, reviewing Duke Nukem Forever actually proves incredibly simple. Everything else becomes a sideshow when the main event is so obviously, heart-breakingly disappointing on almost every level. The toughest part is deciding where to begin.
Commando and Robocop join the list of movies that Duke pillages for random one-liners.
The visuals that jump out at you first. This is an ugly game, committing practically every graphical sin imaginable. Textures are crude and blurry when they bother to load in at all. Jagged edges turn every diagonal into ziggurat steps while the frame rate chugs up and down. Lumpen and stuttering, Forever does not look like a game that has benefited from millions of hours of development time.
[Please note that we reviewed the game on Xbox 360, but Digital Foundry's Richard Leadbetter informs us that the PC version plays much better. "It's a complete mess on 360 - sub-HD resolutions, hugely obtrusive screen-tear, terrible aliasing, low frame rate," he says. "All of these things can be remedied by playing the game on PC. It doesn't transform it into a good game, but it makes it much easier on the eye and certainly smoother, far more responsive and thus more enjoyable to play." Look out for Rich's full Duke Nukem Forever Face-Off very soon. -Ed.]
It's the gameplay that's important, of course, but beneath the glitchy surface things aren't much better. Aiming is jerky and imprecise, even after tinkering with the sensitivity. Movement is heavy and sticky, frequently leaving you snagged on scenery or bumping up against invisible walls. Both jumping and running feel sluggish, with Duke's grunts suggesting that he probably should have put some more gym time in before his big comeback.
The physics is spotty at best. This is most obvious when you try some of the environmental interactions scattered throughout the game. Pinball tables offer perhaps the worst ball physics in living memory. Basketball hoops repel balls with forcefields apparently six inches away from the net. There's an air hockey game with such skittish animation that you'd swear it was a Flash file being streamed over a dial-up modem.
Level design isn't much better, with few of the locations inspiring the sort of exploration and excitement that made Duke 3D such a memorable experience. Duke Nukem Forever is linear to a fault, and huge chunks of the game are spent simply walking from one fight to another through uninspired corridors.
Most alarmingly, all the weapons are repeated from 1996, and there are no new enemy types either. While old favourites like the shrink ray and the devastator are still satisfying to use, it beggars belief that of all the hundreds of people involved in this game over the years, nobody could come up with a single idea for a new gun or enemy.
The difficulty level, too, holds things back. The FPS genre has changed considerably while this game was in production, and the plastic surgery scars where the circle-strafing fragfest of old has been augmented to more closely resemble today's shooters are plain to see.
Even on normal difficulty, enemies hit hard and are often able to kill you in a few seconds. It's a game that demands nimble movement and heavy firepower, yet the bulging weapon inventory of old has been replaced by a Halo-style two-weapon limit, often leaving you without the right tool for the job.
Duke's health recharges rather than relying on health packs, a concession to the unbalanced damage, yet this in turn demands a shoot-and-hide approach to combat that turns the game into a cover-shooter without a workable cover system. Duke's style all but demands a hell-for-leather approach, yet you're continually penalised for indulging in that aspect of the character. Instead, you lurk and scurry and backpedal away from every encounter.
Boss battles are particularly egregious, cramming you into restrictively narrow strips of gameplay real estate and then spamming you with enemies and rockets until you squeak through on sheer luck, or find a lucky spot where enemy fire mysteriously fails to hit you.
The game is disturbingly in love with first-person platform jumping, and many of the most annoying sections revolve not around shooting enemies but leaping from pipes and boxes, unsure as to where Duke's invisible body is. There are lengthy, clumsy underwater sequences that make Lara's aquatic excursions seem like the pinnacle of game design. Whether you fall into electrified water, off the edge of a rotating cog or simply run out of air while trying to wriggle Duke through a submerged doorway, the fact that loading times run anywhere from 30 seconds to a full minute makes every unfair death sting even more.
1/7 The game is full of awkward pauses, as you wait for scripted events or NPCs to reveal the way forward.
Despite the legendary length of time it has spent in production, Duke Nukem Forever feels terminally unpolished and often unfinished in too many key disciplines to be given a passing grade. When the best new idea on display is running over enemies with a forklift truck, something has gone horribly wrong.
There are some glimmers of the old magic. Instead of a shield, Duke has his ego, which can be permanently enhanced by doing Duke-style things. Pick up a dumbbell and do some bicep curves? You get more ego. Use a PC to look at girly pics? More ego. Admire yourself in a mirror? You get the gist. It's a neat gag, and the idea of someone like Duke literally using his arrogant self-belief as a shield suggests more satirical wit than the rest of the game delivers.
Some gameplay sections also come close to recapturing the simple charms of 1996. A sequence which sees Duke rampaging across desert highways in a monster truck, stopping off at alien-infested ghost towns and gold mines to refuel, maintains a decent rhythm and is a lot of fun. A section where a miniaturised Duke navigates a kitchen by clambering along shelves, hiding behind jars of mayo and leaping over a hot grill on burger bun trampolines is conceptually clever, if blighted by the game's bizarre fascination with first-person jumping.
These are fleeting moments, however, and taken as a whole, Duke Nukem Forever has little hope of ever coming close to the current shooter benchmarks. Even at its best, the game falls far short of its peers and often fails to improve on its now-ancient (yet still brilliant) ancestor.
Multiplayer, an area where a modern Duke game should easily outstrip its past, is poorly handled. Potentially decent maps are ruined by laggy, jerky gameplay and the brazen lack of fresh ideas - deathmatch, capture the flag, king of the hill - means there's no reason to waste your online time for more than one match.
Despite failing so badly in so many areas, Duke keeps quipping away, masking the gaping holes in his gameplay with lunk-headed bon mots and politically incorrect prattle. That's what he's always done, of course, but the world has moved on and Duke's relevance has dimmed.
In 1996, Stallone and Schwarzenegger were on the wane, so Duke's beefcake eighties action movie clichés carried some satirical weight. In 2011, he's a parody of something that no longer exists, the gaming equivalent of an embarrassing uncle who still says "Whaaaaassup?" and pretends to breakdance at wedding receptions.
Since the gameplay no longer backs up his boasts, the half-hearted digs at rival franchises feel very ill-advised. The Duke of 1996 could poke fun at a "doomed space marine" because his game was pushing boundaries that Doom had yet to reach. Given that Forever is so painfully behind the times, similar jibes at the expense of Halo and Gears of War fall awkwardly flat today.
"I hate valve puzzles," he jokes as you embark on an incredibly uninspired puzzle involving steam pipes, but the double meaning would work so much better if Duke could offer anything to rival Portal's genius, or even the basic physics puzzles of Half-Life 2. As it is, these moments feel like the lazy humour of recognition, the Meet the Spartans of video games.
As for Duke's offensiveness, it's barely even worth considering. He's more Jeremy Clarkson than Frankie Boyle, so toothless and desperate in his attempts to seem risqué and reactionary that the only sane response is to roll your eyes. This is far more coarse than Duke 3D ever was, the humour uniformly witless, a parade of blunt profanity, childish poo and wee jokes and obvious innuendo that makes it feel more of a piece with Duke ripoffs like Redneck Rampage and Postal 2: similarly weak games which failed to mask their lack of polish and ideas under a stained duvet of juvenile outrage.
Writing on whiteboards is a lot like using a broken Etch-a-Sketch. Skool Daze did it better.
And it's here that the game plays its solitary trump card. It's Duke Nukem, silly. He's supposed to be cheesy and dumb and shallow. Stop thinking about it. It's justabirrovfun.
Except it isn't. It's not fun at all. It's depressing. Duke's long-awaited comeback has turned him from genre innovator to wheezing has-been. In the time since his last outing, the likes of Halo, Battlefield, Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto have all gone from nothing to world-conquering, genre-defining juggernauts. Even within his own narrow niche, Bulletstorm and Gearbox's own Borderlands have taken Duke's irreverent shooter crown and made it their own, and it seems that after a decade and a half on the shelf, the self-proclaimed king no longer has the muscle to claim it back. Duke Nukem Forever attempts to turn back the clock, but can't even get that right.
This is a game that only works when considered in isolation, and even then any praise must come laden with caveats. But Duke Nukem Forever does not exist in a bubble. It shares shelf space with far more worthy rivals, and competes for our affections with games that have done far more in far less time. Nostalgia only gets you so far, and in Duke's case, it's not far enough.
In the end, you feel every year of Duke Nukem Forever's ridiculous, fractured development seeping out of each unsatisfying frame. With four studios sharing title space in the opening animation, and end credits which run for almost 10 minutes, the weight of so many false starts, dead ends and endlessly revised design documents proves too much. For all his muscle and bravado, Duke Nukem is actually a fragile creature. His legacy is based on a specific combination of time and technology and a mercurial element of fun that simply doesn't lend itself to repetition, especially after so long in limbo.
The appeal of Duke Nukem lives on. But your time and money would be better spent reliving his iconic past than bearing witness to this gruesomely mangled resurrection.
3 / 10
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Comments (340) Latest comment 11 months ago
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Humilating.. all the manpowers, years for what?
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I came to this one knowing that the reviews would be terrible. I am still enjoying it.
I am currently playing through it on hard, and apart from a couple of sections, I am doing fine. I guess being able to aim quicker with the mouse makes it somewhat easier.
Load times are in the seconds on PC, so that becomes far less of a frustration.
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So quite like Frankie Boyle then.
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Duke appears to be the Chinese Democracy of gaming.
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Also, a bit weird to see this reviewed on the 360. What gave you that idea? PC version load times are, uhm, 5 seconds or so, which surely has a lot to do with enjoyabillity. Also, the crowd for this one is likely to be on PC first and foremost.
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What the bloody hell!?
I'd heard this was a bit crap, but that's atrocious. I cancelled my pre-order a few weeks ago as I just had a hunch it would turn out to be a turd... i'd say i'll get it in the sales, but if anymore 3's turn up I won't bother.
Looks like Duke should've been left in the 90's. His main appeal was that the devs did what nobody else dared to do at the time, but now, as games have moved on, everyone's doing their own thing.
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Duke is related to 9 Toes from Borderlands
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I said this would be shit about three months ago and got negged to death.
Got the last 'laugh' though, didn't I, fanboy fuckwits.
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"The software behind it is very sophisticated, very advanced stuff. It's absolutely a triple A, modern, advanced game for this era."
Ahahahahahahaha.
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Tired of lazy reviewers intimating that DNF is boring because it's old-school. DNF is boring because it's an uninspired FPS WITHOUT old-school mechanics.
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]http://howigotsobitter.com/2011/06/08/fi...[/link]
I tried the PC version since and I'm glad you noted the graphical differences, as it's absolutely huge. The Xbox version looks horrendous.
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Just an observation.
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perhaps it would score better if it had only a five hour campaign , was extremely conservative, PC correct, pretty dull but had AWESOME graphics and no frame rate issues?
Oh and perhaps they could make an annual instalment with so many ground breaking changes in each one you think your playing a new game every year.
neg away. I game for fun not just for visuals.
that's what we really want isn't it children?
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It might have been smarter to up-res the original and release it on PSN and XBLA. It would be a lot cheaper, less risky, and definitely faster. Testing to see if there is an audience for this kind of old-fashioned shooter would have been smart.
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Note: I am playing the PC version.
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As for there not being a single new weapon in the game, well that's just nonsense.
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Instead they attempt to seem fresh and modern to appeal to a larger market, this ends up with them losing sight of what the game should be and half-baked mechanics characterise the game. I like modern shooters, more so than old ones but this mish mash 'lets appeal to the Call of Duty market cause that's what's cool' is so stupid.
The King is indeed dead
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But the game itself is a hell of a lot of FUN in places, something that's sorely lacking from most other recent releases.
I've played 5 hours of it so far,and I keep coming back out of enjoyment, not trying to get my money's worth... Which is more than I can say for Crysis 2 (got about an hour into it and just couldn't be bothered playing more)
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But all in all, this is expected. But I still have to own this title.
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Seriously though, it does seem the wait wasn't worth it but by the time I build a new gaming PC that will run it at a decent level this'll be cheap as chips so I'm still gonna bite in 6 months or so.
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And Console versions are far worse than PC one (they was made in 1.5 year after PC one was finished) and this review is on Xbawks
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Seems i will play in PC and use cheatengine to freeze the health or just go downloading a game trainer...
and it will be fun "mindless" shootings.
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Knew it was going to be bad but not this bad!
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Also, I liked the closing statement from the Czech review:
"For some, DNF is a nostalgic return to the early years and a welcome break from the current multitude of ultra-modern, serious shooters, but for others, it's an outdated and perverse variation on Serious Sam. Fortunately, I belong to the first group, so if you'll excuse me, I await my private lapdance. Shake it, baby!"
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Not through it yet, but you have to appreciate the nukem humour to judge it fair. id give it 7/10 sofar.
Hail to the king baby!!!
This is retro, noone should come to this unknowing of its heritage.
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sounds like you need to set it to "piece of cake"
parts are challenging but it is not especially difficult on "normal". Sounds like you are too used to hiding behind a nanny cover system in "other" FPS'.
grow some balls of steel.
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Well, at least it'll probably hit the bargain bin fast.
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They actually have the passion to do Duke a service and not merely get the thing out for the sakes of it.
Release Duke!
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I have a feeling that to really enjoy the game one has to be old enough to have played original duke nukem 3d at the time it came out. Duke forever has a lot of references to other games in it, and frankly, to enjoy duke brand of humour you need some maturity.
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So far reguardless whatever any one else saying i think its a great game so far and just fun.
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I've only played the demo and it was poor, but I'm a massive Duke fanboy, so I'll pick this up eventually, just to experience some history if nothing else.
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I'm disappointed it turned out so badly, but it wasn't at all unexpected. I was a regular 3DR forum member since 1997 and the general vibe I got of their work ethic was to just have fun, drink lots of soda and live on the millions D3D brought them. They were pretty isolated out there in Garland, TX and they closed themselves off from the gaming community and developers, basically got stuck in the past and kept repeating the same mistakes, changing engines and so on. It's a shame they didn't get in some more experienced developers to rescue them years ago.
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Personally, I'd give a 7.
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DNF is a bad game because it's a bad game, not because the genre has moved on a particular amount.
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For me, it's a 5 or 6 at a push, but guess what? I've had more fun with it than any Halo game, any CoD game, even Bulletstorm, Signularity, you name it. It reminds me why I loved games in the first place and it's chock full of memorable scenes that I'll look back on for years to come.
It's a bit of a rough turd, sure, but this is the one game that blurs what a review score represents. We could overlook Alpha Protocol, Nier and Deadly Premonitions glaring faults, for having some elements that stood out for us and DNF is no different. It's a throwback to a time when graphics and high production values simply didn't matter, when fun was the order of the day.
If you need anymore comparisons, Mafia II scored 1 more point than this. (Which i'd say is about right, considering it was a 7/10 for me)
I'm one of the more cynical gamers you'll find, but as of late, anything that breaks the cycle of yet more set piece, corridor shooter number 50, gets my attention. Also, my 12yr old Nephew who's obsessed with COD, absolutely LOVES this. He got it yesterday, and has finished it in a few sittings. He's also starting it again. He just loves it. And he has no prior Duke knowledge.
I'm sorry but if this was released as a 1200 point download title, the score would have been a few points higher, as it wouldn't have been so wrongly compared to Halo, CoD, Battlefield etc.
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I'm genuinely disappointed now with this. It sounds awful. I suppose after the terrible ad for it on TV I should have seen that score coming, but really I think a 3 is generous from the sounds of just how broken it really is.
Ho-hum.
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Portal 2 isn't really a shooter. Also, although it had funny elements in it, I found the single player campaign tone a bit depressing. I'm referring to the messages of the owner of the place. While I'm sure the ultra capitalist mindset was put there as a parody, it's too much like I've seen in real life (I do have a science background) to really find it that amusing.
But lets look at shooters. Gears of war 1 and 2, halos and similar games, like killzone. They are all console shooters with tragic stories and sticky wall cover mechanic slowing down the action. Even bulletstorm for all the fun I had with it had that annoying 'tragic commander in a quest for redemption' story that was, in my opinion, in stark contrast with general tone of the game (not to mention sticky wall cover based shooting. It's really becoming my pet peeve).
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I am pretty sure the disappointment will remain but not as much as on the console versions which are clearly poorly executed, not just from a graphical point of view.
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One factual clarification to the review; there are a few new weapons that weren't in DN3D. There's a new railgun (basically a sniper rifle) and three new alien weapons, broadly equating to a 3-shot pistol, a coherent-beam weapon and a small rocket launcher. None of them add much to the game and they feel pretty limp next to the rest of the weapons on offer, so I'm not surprised the reviewer forgot about them.
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Also there are new guns and new enemies. Pregnators and quite a few variations of the pig cops spring to mind. Some of the aliens drops new guns like lasers and enforcer rocket launcher.
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Why must he give something equally brilliant as portal apart from being an fps they have nothing in common.
I have the strange feeling that most gaming sites don't even give this game a chance and everyone seems to be taking out their frustration on it that they had to wait for so long.
This is nothing worse than other shity, mindless shooters and anyway you will have COD here in a few months stop crying for another COD copy fps.
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DNF is just a bad (and much too late) parody on DN3D. While DN3D was a great game with a lot of silly humour as a bonus, DNF seems to focus on recapturing the humour and afterwards adding some sort of game. I can't get rid of the feeling that in the development of DNF, the actual game was just an afterthought.
That might have been ok if it was as funny as DN3D. It isn't. It's shouting out at everyone "omg look how funny I am", it's a silly attention whore in the shape of a game that never lives up to its drier role model. Take the game out of DN3D, and you have DNF. Does anyone remember Blood? A trash-horror-zombie game by Monolith built on the DN3D engine? That was more of a sequel to DN3D because it also combined off-the-score facepalm humour with a pretty decent game.
It might have been great if it played like an old-school shooter, with all its disadvantages, but with all its advantages as well. One thing I really love about the old games is that you're put in some sector and you're on your own to explore it and to find the way out. DNF follows the modern approach introduced by Half-Life, being totally linear and getting rid of all exploring and free-roaming. Again, HL1 was (for my taste) disappointingly linear, but it was brilliant at everything else, while DNF isn't brilliant at anything. It's just linear.
What really baffles me is that this game is made by Gearbox. The same Gearbox who made Borderlands, in my opinion the greatest FPS game in a long time. If they make DNF, it has to be good, right? Oh how wrong can one be? DNF looks (it's quite horrible graphically) and feels like it was made by the creator(s?) of Postal 2.
So in the end, we have the original DN3D, which was cutting edge back then (I think it was the FPS game that introduced sloped floors and multiple floors above each other, before Quake 1 introduced actual 3D maps). It was technically superior, it was a fantastic action game, it had unprecedented environment interaction, etc. Now we have DNF, which is disappointing in graphics, in gameplay, and in humour.
So I suggest you visit gog.com and buy DN3D: Atomic Edition for $5.99 and get the eDuke32 client (free) for high resolution and proper mouse-aiming instead. And wait one or two months until Duke Nukem Forever is cheaper than that.
edit: I wrongly stated that Blood was made by Bethesda. It was made by Monolith. My mistake, sorry.
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I wish the game just didn't try that crap at all, more shooting, less silly puzzling! The first person platforming works fine for me (BTW, Duke is NOT invisible, you can actually see his feet when looking down but that won't help when platforming), I have no trouble judging distances or how large my bounding box is in FPSes. Less so than in third person games even, the freedom that first person camera controls give helps a lot with understanding the level layout.
On a positive note, the humour contributed by NPCs and the environment is much better than Duke's own and the boss battles were better than the ones in most other FPSes even though that's not a high bar. Also I think the gameplay starts fairly weak but gets a bit better as you progress.
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Tho the whole review kept me wondering what they ment by advancements in fps genre? what on earth does that mean? there's hardly been anything in years that has made any real advancements to the fps genre as whole. The only thing i can think off is Halo 1 for showing fps gaming is possible on consoles.. especialy without the gawd awfull regenerating health crap! that has no place in duke game or any other shooter for that matter, or did they mean multiplayer gaming with all sorts of pointless unlockable stuff and level ups? meh. Everything else i've seen in every single shooter is same old same old we had decades ago.
It could've been a whole lot better game had they not tried to replace old duke mechanics with some of the most annoying current gen fps mechanics, it just doesn't feel right.
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The most damning comment in videogame history.
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If you have issues with "Normal" you should re-play some older shooters.
I played the demo on "Hard" and it was not really that challenging.
As someone else said: For people like you there is the "piece of cake" option.
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Remake?
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"You know that old girlfriend of yours, the one you still jerk off to sometimes? Yeah, she really wasn't that pretty. And she was shagging your Uncle Rob to boot."
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Bar the odd Eg Italy 7 out of 10 this seems to be getting universally slated on metacriticl
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Except the PC version which is averaging 76/100 on there: http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/duke-n...
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"It really doesn't surprise me the humour didn't get through to you. Dan seems to be the kind of person who gets offended by watching a rap-video."
YEAH, GOD, this is really multi-faceted, nuanced humour, probably went straight over Dan's head. Oooor it's just a craply written, dated gag that isn't remotely funny except to hur-hur-hurring halfwits who thought Epic Movie was a good time.
We all get the joke. It's just not very funny and very, very obvious.
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I trusted you, man.
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- Duke Nukem
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I don't need someone to put a number next to a game to tell me whether it's worth spending my time playing, it's Duke Nukem so not playing it was never going to be an option despite it clearly going to turn out shite.
For anyone saying 'Ouch' please do me a favour and go chop your fingers off. This has to be one of the most irritating things to put on a comments page.
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This review calls for a Highly Random personal factoid about Duke Nukem 3d.
My brother developed a habit of singing popular songs of the current time and replacing the words with the words "Duke Nukem 3d". He doesn't play games much at all.
Anyway, my point is...
...well I haven't got one.
Sorry
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"Most alarmingly, all the weapons are repeated from 1996, and there are no new enemy types either"
In DNF there are new weapons such as the AT captain laser, the Enforcer gun, the Railgun, amongst others, and new enemies include octababies, energy leach, octaking and rats, with some others I may have forgotten, please correct this article
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With no Xbox back then, PC had the best games. I was not into fps but I found the game fun too. We were fortunate as teens, since in pre-fast internet days my friend's older brother was (and stil is) an avid gamer and he had his PC up-to-date with the best and most popular games of all genres.
too bad DNF it did not turn out as good as Doom 3. Humor changes, horror remains the same
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I finished the PC version last night, while it's not as great as Duke3D, there's plenty in the game to enjoy, unless you're a Eurogamer journo desperate to validate Rob Fahey's hysterical claims that Duke Nukem Forever is a woman beating sim.
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This and the Colonial Marines preview doesn't exactly bode well for that game...
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I see the boring tripe that's released these days, and wonder what the reviewer is smoking. Entitled to his opinion, of course.
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Good review, bad game
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Another example: Duke is *based* on being a silly, stupid parody of an American macho soldier. There's PLENTY of those around today, notwithstanding the 'heroes' of practically every modern shooter. Modern Warfare, Crysis, Battlefield - these are empty husks filled with cliches. They haven't changed one bit from the 80s and 90s except they use more military lingo. So here comes Duke, being a parody of them, as well as of Rambo/Commando ... and gets a finger. No, you're not funny enough, Duke! We want you to be more modern, more Zero Punctuation / YouTube comedians / hip style. You're supposed to change with times, see! Only he doesn't have to, not really. He's just as hilarious today as he was 15 years ago. The world hasn't changed.
The games have, but not THAT much. What they have shed is the need to do certain things manually, such as operating heavy machinery, or having bits that include pissing, admiring in mirrors, playing billiards, lifting weights and carrying barrels. In new shooters you press a button and the game does all that for you, leaving you to kill terrorists. In D3D and DNF, you have to or can do these things by hand and generally if you want to. To Dan, these things are the epitome of silliness. For me, they make the world more believable and give you something to do beside just shooting and listening to brawny men saying "ECHO BRAVO DELTA TANGO ZERO". I spent 15 minutes playing billiards and another 15 playing Balls of Steel. It made me feel nice to have to remove barrels from a mine cart so I can ride it, push trolleys against a wall to open the way forward and search for gasoline to fuel my monster truck. These are a plus in my book, but here they're glossed over and treated like unnecessarities. They're not, especially not in a Duke game!
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Read PC Gamers review, at least they're not catering to a MW2 crowd. Duke rocks, and for everything he falls short on graphically he more than makes up for in other places, FPS's today, could learn something from "this relic".
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"It's Duke, it's supposed to be silly." "It's Duke, it's supposed to be a throwback to 1995." "It's Duke, it's making a satirical point about gaming!"
If I made the worst game in the world, called it satire, and put a blurb on the back declaring it the worst game in the world, does it deserve a 10/10 score? You may not be having fun, but it does exactly what you expect from it!
For an example of a recent "mindless fun done well" shooter, see Bulletstorm. Sounds like Duke has been reduced to "killing off brand in return for one last cash injection" mode.
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I'm liberal, but I certainly wouldn't knock 3 or 4 points off a score to make a statement about it
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Im not sure if thats aimed at me. If it is, I should point out that I didn't say it was the worst game in the world. I made a point that if, hypothetically, I deliberately made the worst game in the world, it would still be bad, even though it fulfilled all of my expectations. The point being that a lot of the Duke defences seem to rely on saying "It's supposed to be like that."
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Enjoyed the review though
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Well done.
Hail to the out-dated macho man...baby.
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*sniff* I played the demo and I wanted to cancel my pre-order but it was already posted. too late. still I'm happy that the game came out, it gave me hope to a fault that it might be good, and I'm rubbish at shooters so this will be not fun to play at all for me. but still, I guess I will play it in good memory of how cool Duke Nukem was then.
so... always bet on the Duke. no questions asked.
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This game shouldn't have compromised. That it's confused about which way to go has confused many people I think. It's just something that shouldn't have held back.
Still, I do think a 3 is harsh, it's not the worst game I've played this year after all...
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I see no mention of the above in the review? was it even played or did the reviewer just jump on the band wagon.
one of the best games Ive played in ages, a no BS raw shooter that's not serious.
And as for the reviewer saying this game is hard...oh please please, I had it on medium and felt way to easy. I guess being drip fed COD and this happens. Before Fear we had Blood, anybody remember that? Now that was a Hard game, Castlevania on Snes....HARD AS FUCK and to get the true ending you had to do it twice in one sitting.
I think the reviewer makes some OK points, but not a fair review. I'm playing on PC the GFX are quite good maxed, I think the console gamers got bent-over on the GFX and loading times, its like 10-15 seconds on PC and this is on a SATAII drive not an SSD.
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I was playing on the PC, though. Maybe the 360 version is just a shit port.
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It's both reassuring and slightly worrying that I'm if anything less mature now than when the last Duke game came out
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"Most alarmingly, all the weapons are repeated from 1996, and there are no new enemy types either. While old favourites like the shrink ray and the devastator are still satisfying to use, it beggars belief that of all the hundreds of people involved in this game over the years, nobody could come up with a single idea for a new gun or enemy."
- I'm a bit staggered by this statement because it's just a complete lie. The AT laser, AT Captain laser, Railgun and Enforcer gun are all completely new weapons, and the Octababies and Impregnaders are new enemies too. There are also multiple types of Pig Cop and a few other additions like the grabby-tentacle-arm things (which are actually kind of cute in a disgusting way). If you're going to slag a game off you could at least take the trouble to do some basic research so you don't end up just spouting totally untrue garbage.
"...unsure as to where Duke's invisible body is."
- This is also nonsense. Look down. Those are Duke's feet.
I'm not quite finished with the game yet but so far I really like it. You can definitely see how long the game's been in development, for better and worse. It makes for quite a fascinating experience, being able to see where game design elements and references from the late 00s are mashed together side-by-side with level design and concepts from the late 90s. Parts of it are genuinely hilarious and some of the hidden stuff betrays a much more intelligent and thoughtful approach by the devs than you would at first think (I was quite stunned by the subtlety of the Inception reference for example). I LOVE that it forces you to work out the puzzles yourself - barely any onscreen prompts, no irritating NPCs playing the entire game for you.
I agree it would be nice if they'd stuck to a more Duke3D-ish approach to level design; the linearity of the levels is just a little bit underwhelming compared to the massive labyrinths of the first game. But there's so much more variation and so many more ideas being played around with in DNF than anything you see from modern shooters (eg. Call of Duty, which let's face it, is basically a very shiny Whack-a-Mole). It's just so much more playful, more expansive, more fun. I'm thrilled that Duke's back, and that for all its occasional clunkiness and mad grab-bag of ideas, it's retained enough of the old-school Duke design ethos to show the boring identikit modern shooters what they're missing. Can't wait to see what Gearbox is going to do with the rumoured sequel.
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If you look down you can see Duke's legs and feet plus he casts a shadow (at least he does on the PC) which while not completely ideal - the game would have worked best here in third-person IMO - means that I had no problems whatsoever doing the platform bits. I enjoyed them actually as they made a nice change of pace from the shooting and puzzle/exploration bits.
I've just finished Duke Burger on Normal and I'm really enjoying this game on the PC. It's silly but always entertaining and there's enough variety for me that it keeps me playing it to see what comes next. And just when I decide to leave it for the day I reach a new chapter and I'm hooked again. IMO it is deserving of at least a 7 even if the game itself feels like a relic from 2003. Nothing wrong with retro gaming IMO and this feels and looks like a Duke Nukem game and brings back fond memories of DN3D. It's childish, crude and rude and feels rough around the edges but I wasn't expecting anything else. As long as your expectations are of Duke Nukem 3D with an improved engine and you don't expect anything new then I suspect you'll enjoy it. Just don't buy it for the consoles...
My only gripes are (a) the pointless loading screens on the PC - where levels have clearly broken down into separate loads to fit onto the console - but at least the loading times are brief at 5-10 seconds. (b) the Ego stuff for a permanent health boost is a welcome distraction but I preferred the clever design of the original with its hidden secrets which encouraged replays.
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SRSLY? At least they got a re-skin at some point I 'spose...
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It feels more like an under produced mod then a real game.
Borrowed the 360 version from a friend, played it till the roof section of Duke Burger and gave up.
I still hope Gearbox makes a proper Duke game. A game with modern gameplay and a sense of humor. There's room for Duke's sillyness if it's done right.
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I mean I haven't played Duke Nukem 3D game (Amiga man myself) but this was a PC game back in the day.
So naturally you could expect it to run best on PC, so review it on the device it was designed for ffs.
Bad decision Eurogamer.
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Seriously who didn't see this coming?
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On another note. I'd like to say I completely agree with Activision charging for online time. It gets the annoying kids off the servers and you should have a better experience. I think they should release the game's single player experience as a seperate download though through Xbox Live for people who have no interest in online or Maybe just the single player for a reduced price at retail. If you like the online aspect you should be able to purchase an online only version for say 2400 Microsoft points plus 400 points a month or maybe £40 a year for dedicated child free servers with weekly competition prizes for organised matches. It's all a matter of time before this happens. Why people pay £50 for an online game which is full of annoying kids and has a tacked on single player is beyond me. At least MW fans are being given the option of a premium experience now. It might end up costing £100 a year but at the end of the day, for probably around 400 hours enjoyment it aint half bad!
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But don't you agree a game should be reviewed on the device it runs best on?
Especially Duke Nukem, perhaps the most anticipated game of all time.
It's just wrong reviewing this game on console.
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Totally agree. Whilst I am enjoying the game, I do find that the Halo/Call of Duty-style concessions (recharging health, two weapon limit, linear levels and so on) are far more detrimental to the game than the undeniably rough edges. In short, they just don't feel "Duke" like.
Still love the purile humour (am I the only one who found that Valve quip funny?) and there are some really fun parts, but there is more than just a faint whiff of disappointment about the game overall.
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What were they thinking?
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It's a kind of game that makes the industry look so not cool and glad its on its way out! Hopefully!
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I hope this doesn't ruin Gearbox's rep. I'm sure they can produce a Duke game that's as good as Borderlands, given a year or two. They should have been more honest about this game and the issues they inherited though- Randy Pitchford hasn't helped his company by pretending this was gonna be any good.
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I don't really agree with the review much; the underlying points are fair in most cases, but the tone is harsh to an extent that doesn't reflect my mostly pleasant experience of playing the game. But the point about guns and enemies isn't just harsh, it's flat-out false.
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Edited thanks to the person who corrected me about alzheimer. Sorry folks i am from Greece and English is not my native language please try to forgive me. I dont usualy bother you with my bad English but Duke is far too important to ignore.
PS: I dont think is nice to make fun of someone`s difficulty to express himself in your NATIVE language.
@lucky_jim I forgive you. I`ve even put a positive vote to you.
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Edit- just dawned on me that this is a pretty shitty comment. I've left it in the unlikely event it's referred to later, but consider it withdrawn and apologies issued (sorry!): I was pretty pisht when posting and thought better of it when I'd sobered up a bit.
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I'm really sad that the game turned out like this, I was rooting for them, what a shame.
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You often ran round in circles looked for areas to hide in and glitch the bosses.
I really think Eurogamer should review the PC version!
This review is null and void IMHO.
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Duke Nukem Forever was doomed as soon as it turned 2000 and up. Seriousely 14 years of development, the exspectations where way to high for this game. For who did they release this game? Duke fans sure as hell wanna avoid this piece of garbabe. I mean i was 10 or 11 when Duke 3d came out and back then it was awesome, and you giggled with your friends behind the computer cause of all the jokes and pixel boobs. But its 2011, if boobs don't bounce correctly anymore these days in games then people aren't even bothered with them. And the newer generation of gamers who never experienced Duke 3D aren't gonna buy this either cause why would they? There are way better shooters out there then Duke and the missed on the legend it once was.
I know Gearbox wanted to release this game as respect to 3d realms who sadly never seen the end of this game, but i think it would have been better to just let Duke die with its creators, now his legend died. Atleast now i understand why they kept delaying the release, i guess they where al afraid of these grades. Still would have been better to release it in the early days of internet when game sites wheren't there yet, now they have to deal with low scores in both magazines and on the internet, let allone the angry fans who gonna make a youtube hate movie.
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As to the 3/10, seems a bit harsh, but then I haven't played the Xbox version.
EG "Blow it out your ass!"
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The game makes you think a bit which seems to rule out most people who play FPS games these days
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It's really not as bad as a 3. I would be outraged if I wasn;t so high.
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When non-gamers talk about video games, they never seem to realise that games can be good and bad just like any other entertainment medium. When we had the whole Manhunt 2 business, more non-gamers condemned that game on TV than gamers who actually bought it.
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BLAH BLAH BLAH, Bulletstorm is very much the same, gameplay and dialogue wise. And that got like an 8.5/9 on most review sites. Immature humour is great for a blast from the past. I mean we have hundreds of WW2 games. The world has moved on a lot since then so what's different with teh 90's?!!
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I've played this on Single Player now for longer than any call of duty game to date now and lets be honest, there isn't that much you can do from an FPS game other than point and shoot. CoD/Battlefield/Crysis/Halo - they're all the same when you get down to the bare bones. So is Duke really in terms of the game. What keeps us going back to the other franchises? Its the story, the humour and the universe. Duke is a marmite game, you love it or you hate it but you won't know until you try it. Its always going to be that way.
I certainly for one think its quite an enjoyable game and having played the original to death back in the day even getting the null modem cable out and attaching me and my mates PC's in that way to play multiplayer. Its not a masterpiece of modern gaming for sure, but its what I came to expect from the game and its actually a pleasant journey through it.
Its a 7/10 for me and a 3/10 makes it look like the reviewer here picked the completely wrong platform to play on. I for one can't play FPS games with a controller and playing on the mouse I'm sure would make this review come across a lot more different.
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It came close. The only other 3D Realms spin-off that was better than Duke 3D IMHO was Shadow Warrior: "WHOOOOO WANTA SOME WANG!?!".
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So I'm guessing you own Hydrophobia as well then?
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@ CaptainKid - there's nothing wrong about it. If anything, it's just incomplete. I agree, there should be a seperate PC review as it's unfair on the PC gamers out there. However, I don't have a PC so if I'm reading a review for a game that's being released on the 360, then I want the review to be based on the 360 version.
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It seems that we have a split here between people who have not played it saying "Told you it would be crap!" and people who have played it (not just the demo) saying "Actually, it's pretty fun."
Oh, and one reviewer that was so busy dishing out a kicking that he failed to notice points salient to his review, like the new weapons and enemies he castigated the game for not providing. Okay, none of these are a major upgrade to the game but it does make you wonder - to what extent was the game given a chance before the knives got sharpened? I'm not fussed about bad reviews for games I enjoyed, it's all down to taste at the end of the day, but bad reviews that get details from the game wrong do set off alarm bells a bit.
I'm not saying the game is a masterpiece - it's not - but it is a fun experience and a curio from gaming history that's a lot better than the score at the end and the braying from some of the nay-sayers that have not even played the full game suggests. If you're a Duke fan and on the fence - rent it and give it a go, it's worth it
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if they had sorted out the loading times , the framerate who would have cared
Average graphics
Average level design
Average multiplayer
just average and the reboot DN Begins could have been properly green lit .. started from scratch adn maybe you'd get a decent DN game ... anyone who had dreams of DNF being better than average was a fool.
But below par .. after this long ... just not good enough
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The Duke Burger section is fresh as fuck and reminded me of that Toy Soldiers movie. What other game ever had you luring giant rats into mousetraps? There is a lot of diversity in gameplay, pacing and shooting. Yes shooting! There is a lot of diversity in enemies too, and you have to be tactical in chosing your weapon at places because Oktabrains can throw the rockets right back at you, or those teleporting guys with jetpacks outmanouver your rockets. The boss-battles are great. You are not limited to 2 weapons only, you can throw grenades and lay bombs as well as using your fists, smack with the back of your weapons, throw barrels and other items, use torrets or the environment to your advantage, by luring enemies into mousetraps or shrinkpads. The ammonition boxes are fair placed, and the right weapon is always put at the right spot where needed. The level of interaction with the environment reminds me of Half Life 2, if not even Shenmue (Titty City Club). The leveldesign always manages to surprise you: first you have to ride a Toy-car through a destroyed casino and it all feels like a racing track, then you grow back to your full size and experience the same corridors from a totally different perspective shooting pigcops. The platforming is never annoying, sometimes even really fun (Duke Burger Kitchen)
All in all a very satisfying and entertaining experience with some of the most memorable campaign moments I ever experienced in any game.
8/10 (+1 if you like the humor, -1 if you can't stand it)
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What makes this game so enjoyable for me is the variety and humour which is solely missing from most FPSs these days. How can I not enjoy a game where I'm shrunk and leaping around an electrified kitchen one level, climbing around alien tendrils to get up a tower another, playing pinball and air soccer the next in a titty bar then driving a 4x4 through a desert? There's never a dull moment IMO. It's not perfect but give me this game over Call of Duty any day.
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(Sorry, Dan... only teasing... couldn't resist a dig there!
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/facepalm
This was always a PC game, has been for it's 14/15 years in development and that's the audience that's been waiting on it. Not the sugar-rush hyped up CoD fanboys who have only ever played an FPS with a controller.
Let's face it, Duke was always low-brow entertainment. Like a really cheesy comedy that you laugh at and enjoy because it's so damned cheesy.
I think the reviewer completely missed the point tbh. I'll still buy it.
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It's flawed, but 3/10 is way too harsh. If you're an old Duke fan than get it and just have some fun.
(EDIT: typo)
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EDIT: LOL at sensitivities of the people on this site, WOW, chill out guys. My point was that IMO this game wasn't going to be very good and I got negged for that which is odd as it is only my opinion. Then when it turns out the game is actually poop I get negged for saying that as well. How about less negging and more taking on others' opinions?
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Im not that far in (i think), but its a blast
And that is all that matters.
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http://www.next-gen.biz/news/duke-nukem-...
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But I play on PS3. Loading times are long like on 360, but at least there are no framedrops and gameplay itself is smooth.
I can honestly rate it 7/10.
That said, nostalgia is taking it's toll - I played DN3D a lot and is fascinated with every enemy and weapon they brought back.
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Just wondering.
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Is it fun to play? To grab a rocket launcher fire off multiple salvos, and watch them explode in the face of a pig in a police officers uniform? The choice of 360 to review this on I agree, is very strange. A comparison with the PC (since it is mentioned that the 360 version performs so poorly) in the article would add a good deal of value. I hope the DF article is not too far off.
Everyone will choose or not to play a game for their own reasons (whether I buy DNF is largely going to be determined by a similar criteria as DcP). If I play Duke, I'm just looking to enjoy a game in which I run around shooting, explore areas, and laugh a lot. That you were unable, Dan, to mention whether you found it's actually fun to play the game, on its intended platform..maybe it's endemic
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As said before this eurogamer gave the xbox version 3/10 whereas other sites reviewing pc version are much higher as stated previously 8s and 7s.
Sort it out, if we buy a 3/10 xbox game based on a 8/10 pc review your reviews lose their value. As vice versa we avoid a good 8/10 pc game because of a 3/10 xbox game review
This is a big problem these days and needs to be sorted, you could decide to review all copies separately or just state obviously which copy the review refers to so gamers can look on other sites for a review of the copy they may be interested in.
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I think there's even an article somewhere about this on the front page.
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Brink got an 8/10, and I have been told it is an awful, awful COD clone gone wrong. DNF gets penalised because it's NOT copying COD??
I understand the point about it not being old-skool nor modern, but perhaps it has created its own genre?
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Yep - The over hyped pile of shite genre.
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Eurogamer thanks for your opinion, you're spot on. Time to cash this pure CRAP in!
Kind regards, an idiot
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£22.49 I paid... had I wanted to I could have waited a month or two and probably got it for £9.99
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*ducks behind cover*
FUCKUHALO!!!
*reappears*
@271: no, it doesn't deserve an 8/10 because of its "heritage". What it deserves is a score that best reflects its value as a game.
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@ Sar - Thanks for that massively generalised comment. I guess if that's true then you must be among the dwindling masses of smelly geeky virgins who sheds out four/five hundred quid every year to run the latest batch of un-optimised games.
Seriously.
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Everyone seems to be dissing the review on the basis that the reviewer expected it to be good, and that was an unreasonable start point?... Expect the game to be quite bad, but in a retro way, and you will be delighted?
Personally, my time and money are both limited. Why on earth would anyone in my position (i.e. all of us) spend time and money on a game that demands we "go in with low expectations" when we could get one of several top knotch 9/10 game experiences that delivers on high expectations for the same money?
Very odd.
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I (and many, many others) called it when the news of it being picked up by Gearbox was announced.
Some of the things mentioned in this review are almost carbon copies of points I wrote on a post on Kotaku about the fears I had of this game being release.
I'd say it's *exactly* as I expected it to be, except for the fact that I was hoping to be proved wrong in at least some points and everything I suspected would suck about this game - did.
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"Randy Pitchford is thinking of me."
You wish
From analysing the very first sentence of your "review" one can tell, this is going to be a personal agenda.
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Duke Nukem Forever isn't ha-ha side-splitting funny; it's occasionally naff, more often than not crude and frequently immature whilst poking fun at other games and movies with flatly delivered soundbites. But that's what we expect because that is what Duke Nukem has always been about! If it was any different then it simply wouldn't be Duke Nukem!
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P.S: you damn neggers plain suck. Negging for the hell of it instead of talking like normal human beings do. I wish you'd get cancer. Fucking morons.
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I think the game probably should have been a low-priced budget release where it might have been received better critically but, regardless, it seems to be selling well enough anyway. I'm just really glad that I got a chance to finally play a game that two years ago I honestly thought would never come out.
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playin the demo was enough to make me never want to play this game again and know about of fanboy 'its supposed to be stupid idiot' talk hides the fact that the game is shockingly bad and they could of probably released this 10 years ago and it still would of been bad for the times.
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What are you talking about? Why would he have a personal agenda against Randy Pitchford. He even links to his own review of the Xbox Live Arcade version of Duke 3D which he gave 8/10!
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Since when was it a sin to be silly fun? Games that are good or even great get written off so easily these days. Shame.
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Well... maybe because Randy predicted that his review wouldn't matter. That must have hurt his pride.
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Imagine you are 10 years in the past and playing L.A Noire. 20/10!!!
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I think l.a noire would score 2/10 ten years ago. Back then you had way better adventure/puzzle games than this.
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There are lots of things I know that are broken about it, that don't fit with the modern rulebook, but it really doesn't seem to hinder my enjoyment at all.
Most new, modern games are all variations on a theme, they all soften the edges to make them as mass-market as possible, diluting the fun for me in the process.
I've only played for a few hours, but so far it has some real stand-out bad bits, and some stand-out awesome bits too. For me personally, I'm enjoying the stark contrast, rather than the unremitting dullness of most new titles.
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If this game cost a tenner I would be fine with it as that's all it's worth, to charge 30 quid plus for this piece of shit is a disgrace. Maybe in the sequel in 123 years time it will be copies of DNF you'll be finding in the toilet to chuck around.
Well done EG for a truthfully accurate review!
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I should like to add that I had to put on flame retardent underwear to battle off the flamewar that came from some parties after said post.
To those flamers....fuckyou..I am exonerated.
To the EG reviewer who had the balls to score Duke that low...well done. YOU have balls of steel.
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I thought it might at least be a passable shooter that harks back to the days of Duke Nukem 3D and Blood.
I guess I'll give this a wide birth, well at least until I can pick it up for £10.
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you complain its jerky:
why not review the pc version or the ps3 one?
is it normal to automatically pick the 360 code to review (the worst version by far)?????
7/10 for me. ive enjoyed it. (ps3 version)
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As for the game itself, think I'll go find the original Duke Nukem 1 on a floppy disk somewhere. Duke was fun when he was a platform-jumping knucklehead...
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I honestly think there is too much emphasis on the latest bells and whistles with games and very little about wither or not the game is fun to play on here lately and I am finding this game fun to play...works for me and am I happy to have bought it?....yes I am (PC version).
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Will pick it up when it hits a fiver
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Personally I think this review was just a 'hits' grab. Give a conversational game that has mixed opinions the lowest score on meta critic and it will have people flooding to the site to defend it. (I didn't see this on meta critic btw, and until this day I always regarded EuroGamer as a site I would frequent for reviews, but not anymore after this blatant attention grab in the style of .destructoid). I will never visit this site again, what a fall from grace.
Anyway, unless you are 100% hung up on the graphics of the game, you will enjoy it.
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Personally I think this review was just a 'hits' grab. Give a conversational game that has mixed opinions the lowest score on meta critic and it will have people flooding to the site to defend it. (I didn't see this on meta critic btw, and until this day I always regarded EuroGamer as a site I would frequent for reviews, but not anymore after this blatant attention grab in the style of .destructoid). I will never visit this site again, what a fall from grace.
Anyway, unless you are 100% hung up on the graphics of the game, you will enjoy it.
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It's easily the most fun I've had with a single-player FPS game since Half-Life 2. Like a lot of other people here, it's reminding me why I liked games in the first place - and it highlights just how soulless, slick, bland, and cookie-cutter most games have become these days. It's been a long time since I've been served up a decent single-player FPS campaign like this - full of inventive little set-pieces, no idea what the game's going to throw at you next, and can't wait to see where the next level goes.
3/10 is an absolute mickey-take. Glad I didn't base my decision to buy it on that review, because I'd be missing out on one of gaming's roughest diamonds if I had. There, I've vented - now let's get back to slapping those wall-titties...
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Nothing, but absolutely NOTHING warrants your score of 3/10. What a loser you are.
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looks more like the king should stay dead.
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The fact that Eurogamer always seemed to award stupidly inflated scores to incredibly mediocre games did much to make me suspect that this review was a farce, and lo and behold, it is.
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Your defending this pos just because of its history. Look past Duke and the 15 fecking years it took to make and you will find one of the worst games this gen.
Oh and for the people bashing Eurogamer. I only have this to say...STFU and do one and go to a different site if you think they suck you hypocrites.
What you want every game to get 10/10s ? Your only defending DNF because you wasted 15 years waiting for it.
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lol ....people should be ashamed of themselves for liking something you don't? Grow the fuck up, kid.
'nuff said.
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If there are people who like trash thats their own problem. DNF is mediocre and you know it.
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Well I have played alot of turds, very briefly.
At this moment I reserve judgement till I play the whole thing. Kinda got lazy at the Octaking lift fight.
I did get this game with high expectations on launch day and practically regardless of the reviews I was going to get it anyway. But since there were was only one PC review at 80%, I felt good about getting it. I mean hey I was going to get this game in 98!!!
The bastardized James Bond motif turned Duke motif was a nice touch at the beginning, and so was the victory lap at Duke's penthouse/casino/museum and the game started off with a bang with aliens attacking and suddenly I'm playing the Batman erm... Duke Cave.
My character is then shrunk and given an RC car. And thats fun for about 2 seconds till it becomes samey. Also the monster truck is cool at first but then samey and the environments bland. (Skipping around a bit.) Head over to Duke Burger after some bland fighting. Then I enjoyed being shrunk again in the kitchen where it was fun reading the food labels and shooting the pigcops while trying to save the fries cook.
It would have been more impactful and more fun if they kept more of the shrunken parts together to make it more amusing and cohesive. Same with the shooting give me more space to run and gun with more bipedal enemies and bigger levels instead of just ambush and choke points. And let me carry more weapons and inventory especially holodukes.
Add more humor with more pigcops trying to emulate Duke like they did in the gym at the beginning. More ego powerup bonuses with a collection of Dukes video games/X-Rated tapes stolen by an elite pigcop squad!
Its harder to get back into a game unlike back then when everything was new and Duke was supreme. Love that car alarm keychain detonating the pipe bombs. Hated the textures that looked like they came from my old Tandy TL1000. The jumping was atrocious as it was back then, having to look up substantially higher than the point to jump to.
What else is there to say that has not been said? I hope to finish the game sometime and feel good about it like I did back then.
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/reads reveiw
oh maybe not.......
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Just let the old dogs lie, it's never a good thing to make them do tricks.
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By the way... why, WHY they can´t let Duke die with HONOR ?!
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The review tries so hard to be clever... almost as DNF to be brand new. But at least, the last one had s3x...
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Nobody said this game is worth 9/10, hell no. But I defend it, because it is somewhere between 6.5/10 and 7/10. What it is NOT is 3/10. That's just trashing a game for no good reason but personal, subjective and dimwitted reasons. Mister reviewer wanted to look really cool by boasting like this. If he had been honest, he would have played the game until the end, and set aside his eagerness to look cool. Eurogamer is a joke. They're a parody now.
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what a disappointment. In Eurogamer. I am lurking this site since aeons and never felt the urge to comment, but this is just rediculous.
I can see that the game is crap on 360 or on both consoles if you want but everybody I spoke to and pretty much every opinion on the net says about the PC version that it is great fun. So much more fun than any of the on-the-rails, serious biznez shooters which were mentioned in this thread several times.
Especially grown-up gamers who remember the childish humour of the good old days of gaming appreciate this raw approach.
So, EG, please consider splitting your verdicts according to platforms. Your german sister does this. Result?
PC: 7/10 X360/Ps3: 6/10
Lazy F*cks
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And besides, it's released on my birthday, so can't be that bad!
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Anyway sometimes to go two step forward you have to go one step back.
Amazing that no matter how many epic cod, moh, bioshocks, fears, smears etc i play, the 90s pc fps remain the best and funniest due to their simplicity and pixelated graphics. I do not say this out of nostalgia.
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Honestly, anything below a 6/10 is unfair. Perhaps anything above is as well, since the game is hardly flawless... But considering the amount of FPS clones out there, DNF's a damn breath of fresh air. I do notice that the reviewers tend to ignore interesting points in AI behavior, like the semi-intelligent targeting done by the octopus aliens, their throwing back of ordnance at you, and the use of cover by the enemy. This to me, seems like a good satyre of modern FPS staples: even with all their new tricks, Duke's kickin' their asses.
The levels are linear, but they have more than their fair share of interesting puzzles. The major flaw, I'd say, was not enough enemies. Sometimes you'd feel like you were playing a satirical Alone in the Dark. The amount of puzzles vs shootouts should've been more balanced, even if the latter were very fun. Complaints that they were "hard even in the easiest levels" are unjustified. You had all the tools at your disposal at any time, and even at critically low ammo you could manage an amazing comeback if you played smart.
Also, I'm noticing a trend of XBox players bitching about the game.... Well, you're playing an FPS in a bloody console, don't complain if your stupid gamepad isn't fit for it. FPSes and RTSes are the domain of the PC, and shall always remain so. Sell your piece of crap toy and get a PC, if you want the best.
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To begin things WHY OH WHY you reviewed the xbox 360 version ?????????????
The game is broken on the 360.Duke nukem was never supposed to be a console game and when 3d realms stopped working at the end of 2008 the game was pc only.Only after more than a year at early 2010 gearbox tried to port the game on consoles too by hiring other porting companies....
It barely plays at sub 30 frames and at sub hd 1100x688 i think.And without aa or af and with very low quality textures and hideous load times...
When i played the PC version on a decent system i played with 1920x1200 at 100 + fps with full aa and af (You cannot select the level of aa and af under the games options-only enable and disable it but you can go to the nvidia or catalyst drivers and make a profile for duke nukem forever and set it to 16x or 32 x....Also with the hd textures the pc version has the game looks decent and sometimes even nice...
And the interactivity it has is beyond any other game out there...IT is sad how reviewers forget interactivity witch is a long forgotten feature on fps shooters...Also duke nukem forever has great player /hand animations as everything you interact you interact while seeing your hands and body simiral to mirror's edge and fear games...Why nobody mention this ever ????
And what about downgrading the game for its humor...The game is what it is...Duke nukem 3d was no Tolstoy.....So what is the problem with duke nukem forever ? If you don't like its humor don't play it ...let other play the dumn game...Its the same shitty story as with grand theft auto and mass effect and resident evil 5 where every idiot that has complexity problems uses games as cannon fodder.....
So please GIVE THE DAMN GAME A REAL AND DECENT REVIEW...AND PLAY IT ON A GAMING PC AND THEN REVIEW IT.OK ?