[Fury]

I have played DNF for two days now. My opinions of it are a bit mixed but I have yet to finish it.

Quality of assets is slightly varied, which is quite understandable given its development history. But is it ugly? No, I don't think so. There are a few places where textures for example were clearly sub-par. My biggest gripe graphics-wise is that everything has plastic feel to them most of the time. So bottom line, graphics are pretty much average. As for sounds department, I think sounds could have had a bit more depth and sharpness to them. Sometimes the audio environment just kinda feels dull. Music is what you'd expect from a DN game, but I think the soundtrack is a bit lacking in variety and gets monotonous after a while. So again, average.

I think DNF is sorta fun to play. At first it is odd to play shrunk Duke like if it was DN1 or 2 turned 3D. Or drive RC car while shrunk or monster truck in various places. It felt out of place but in the end it served as good distraction of the usual shoot 'em up play. Controversial themes like Duke's one-liners, the girls, etc do give a good chuckle every now and then. Difficulty seems to be quite fine, the medium difficulty isn't too hard or too easy.

Guns pack enough punch not to feel peashooters. I did notice though that sometimes it feels as if DNF uses armor.tbl, pigcops can sometimes take a lot of punishment but sometimes they die very fast for example. One time its enough to kill a pig with few slugs from the Ripper, another time you need to empty a whole clip into one to drop it. It's odd. The two-gun limit has been mentioned every second post and I tend to agree. While guns are almost always laying around waiting to be picked up, it just doesn't feel like Duke not to be able to carry a whole arsenal with you. There were a few times when I ran out of ammo at which point Duke automatically switches to his next weapon. If that happens to be RPG or Devastator and you're still pressing the trigger, well, let's say you may end up in small bits before you notice it. I really wish Duke's kick would have been standard melee attack.

There's no saving game manually either, it's all checkpoints. Though checkpoints are basically littered around after every fourth corner so it's not really a problem. What is a problem though that weapons dropped by killed monsters vanish when loading a checkpoint.

What was shown in the playable demo isn't much to speak of. The mine level is actually really boring compared to most other levels and I don't get why they decided to show off that level in a demo, there would have been much better demo material too.

My verdict so far is that while DNF doesn't suck, it is still fun enough to play that it is strong in the average class. It could have been better and I actually hope 2K Games and Gearbox create a new Duke game from scratch that can live up to modern standards while still being a Duke. Is it worth full price? Nah. I'd say it's totally worth buying it for bargain prices though.

[Commander Zane]

Sounds exactly like my opinion of Half-Life 2 when I first played it; not amazing, but still enjoyable. I think this'll be the same way for DNF as well.

[General Battuta]

Duke Nukem Forever is just a game designed for some dumb, politically incorrect fun (like imagining stupid, promiscuous women getting raped and then dying) (while they apologize for it)

Man, I can't believe the Duke can't even rescue his babes. He has failed.

[General Battuta]

This was a great post (mostly because of the box art analysis)

The gameplay is intrinsically tied up in the storyline.

In Duke Nukem 3D, the environments, NPC characters and overall production design are relatively 'realistic', which is contrasted with Duke's superhuman run-and-gun ability and total lack of psychological complexity to emphasize that, yes, this guy is a cartoon like Bugs Bunny - but also a transgressive and rebellious figure because of that cartoonishness. The gameplay in DN3D is a huge component of Duke's characterization.

The strippers in DN3D are just women who strip. They didn't shriek innuendos at you at all. They didn't declare themselves stupid in scripted sequences. They did their jobs in exchange for money. Again, the interactive world was 'realistic' (for a 1996 game) and Duke was the cartoon avenging force who flew down to Earth to right the wrongs. Kinda.

(People have noted that in Duke II, Duke is a full-fledged celebrity. But that's part of the 80s action parody - Duke is simultaneously an everyman and a celebrity, a blue-collar Joe and a relentless killing machine. But in the grand scheme of things, he's far more populist hero than elitist billionaire. Think of the Ghostbusters - beloved by the public despite being impoverished, uncouth and totally reckless. Duke is a similar underdog. The aliens in Duke II interrupt his TV appearance and steal his moment in the spotlight, because Duke just can't catch a break!)

BeanTaco hit it right on the head: Duke in DNF is clearly an entirely different character, to the point of being essentially the opposite character. He's an impostor.

With the 2-weapon thing and the slower movement, Fake-Duke is 'realistic'* while the world is cartoonishly exaggerated. Women are literally subhuman cock-hungry idiots and not just perceived that way by a flawed protagonist. The president is a liberal pantywaist caricature who (allegedly) gets his comeuppance when Fake-Duke "proves" that the world does need another George W. Bush. Y'know, someone who's motivated by sheer literal prejudice - we don't need no evidence of WMDs. Those alien Iraqis are obviously going to rape our (white) women because, naturally, that's what they do.

It bears repeating that the "normal" people in these games represent you, the Duke's Bro. Those moronic groupies sucking Fake-Duke's cock and getting raped are you.


Fig. 1: Your Face Here.

These NPCs are so ridiculously idiotic and annoying that Duke actually appears rational, levelheaded and intelligent by comparison. The first hour or so of the game is spent with Fake-Duke just walking around gawking at the absurdity around him, because he's normal now. DNF is almost evangelical about this. If you're not like Duke, the game says, you're a ****ing moron and a *****.

Even DNF's cover shows Duke, from the perspective of a kneeling person, holding his gun like a cock. The game's box is telling you to suck Duke's dick. I guess it's truth-in-advertising.


Fig. 2: John Romero's about to make you his *****.

Of course, that's not the real Duke. Duke fought the pigs, not his fellow man. Plus, the point of DN3D and earlier games, to an extent, is that no-one can be Duke. He's an amoral force of nature. He's a superhuman wish-fulfillment character. He's a cartoon.


*The DNF health system, bizarrely, goes in the opposite direction, replacing reasonably plausible sci-fi health pickups with the purely fantastic 'ego' system. So while Duke3D is a mortal (every)man who transcends his situation through impossible skills and bravado, Fake Duke is immortal despite lacking much remarkable talent or courage.

[Luis Dias]

Yeah, that's an awesome post. Totally convinced me. What a shame.

EDIT: Where's it from and from who?

[General Battuta]

Some random-ass SomethingAwful poster in the hilarious cluster**** of a DNF thread

[StarSlayer]

So....

Not going to start the game living in hiding in Stockholm under the name Vladimir Lestrade nor a section on the moon where I was cooking ravioli for and incoming alien wedding party?

[BrotherBryon]

The GameTrailers review was not kind to the new Duke.

[Commander Zane]

I'd say the game wasn't bad (Really the core of the game is enjoyable) if it wasn't for the goddamn puzzles being blood-boiling-frustrating to the point of wanting to drive my fist through the ****ing monitor.
Parts of the game expect you to know exactly what to do the first time you go through it, and gives you clues---wait they don't give you clues, unless if they do they make them apparent that they're relevant to completing the puzzle when you've forced yourself to a location where the only option is to kill yourself. The ****ing puzzles ruin the fun out of the game.

[Ace]

Duke Nukem 3d was fun... this game... is not fun.

I find myself going over to Red Faction: Armageddon because that's a game with a mindless plot, fun weapons, and generally fun gameplay. (The open world and human opponents of Guerrilla were better, but Armageddon still is at least fun)

[Hades]

I'd say the game wasn't bad (Really the core of the game is enjoyable) if it wasn't for the goddamn puzzles being blood-boiling-frustrating to the point of wanting to drive my fist through the ****ing monitor.
Parts of the game expect you to know exactly what to do the first time you go through it, and gives you clues---wait they don't give you clues, unless if they do they make them apparent that they're relevant to completing the puzzle when you've forced yourself to a location where the only option is to kill yourself. The ****ing puzzles ruin the fun out of the game.

I actually found the puzzles to be simple and easy and had no trouble with them.

[Turambar]

You keep saying that, yet when I looked at Bulletstorm gameplay videos, the people trying to kill you miss when firing from ten feet away, which sounds very unfun.

they aren't trying to kill you.  They are ugly bags full of sweet, delicious points.  It's up to you to extract those points.

[Kosh]

In Duke Nukem 3D, the environments, NPC characters and overall production design are relatively 'realistic', which is contrasted with Duke's superhuman run-and-gun ability and total lack of psychological complexity to emphasize that, yes, this guy is a cartoon like Bugs Bunny - but also a transgressive and rebellious figure because of that cartoonishness. The gameplay in DN3D is a huge component of Duke's characterization.

Except for strippers there weren't any NPCs in DN3D, and if it wasn't for the engine limitations of the day they probably would have done more in that department. And given the large number of easter eggs and references I wouldn't consider it to be too realistic.

[General Battuta]

Except for strippers there weren't any NPCs in DN3D, and if it wasn't for the engine limitations of the day they probably would have done more in that department. And given the large number of easter eggs and references I wouldn't consider it to be too realistic.

Are you seriously suggesting DN3D was a multiplayer only shooter? Because that's what you just said.

Then your second sentence just misses the whole point of the argument, you're not even talking about what he is.

[NGTM-1R]

Except for strippers there weren't any NPCs

Who the **** were all those people shooting at me?

[TrashMan]

People are overanalyzing DNF.

I's a simple, silly shooter.

[Mika]

I have been following up some of the reviews, and based on what I saw myself, the game polarizes people quite a bit actually.  My personal feeling is that the game is average at moment, quite good at some points and sub-par in a couple of places that I have seen so far. So I don't get the very low scores around 3/10, unless the review is somehow biased from the get go. And get this, somebody has already analyzed the review point distribution from tens of reviews, and found out that it's actually two Gaussian peaks overlapping around 5.8! Yes, they probably take it too seriously.

The other stuff the PC modding community (some of them apparently game developers themselves) has already enabled console back in the retail version, allowing for cheat codes to be used, and more importantly, adjustment of the field of view back to around 90 for wide screen displays. Also included are the first person driving (very HL2-esque!) and some depth of field modifications. They also found out that the bump mapping in the retail version is somehow broken, the textures should have considerably more depth effect, which was also then corrected giving markedly improved visuals. It also turned out that the game uses both normal and bump maps at the same time, the reason for this is unknown at the moment.

Enabling the console
More pronounced bump mapping

Now if they only could remove the two gun limit that would be it...

[Mongoose]

Yeah, I was kind of surprised at the outright hostility present in a few of the reviews I read.  Based on the demo, the full game seemed like it would come in somewhere around average to mediocre, but some of the comments were what I would expect for a title that was flat-out broken.  Maybe some reviewers bought into the decade's worth of hype.

[achtung]

I'm playing it now. It's not that bad. It's the level of humor I expected from a Duke game. I guess some people expected something better than DN3D. Take off the nostalgia glasses and you'll see this game was everything they intended DN3D to be.

[General Battuta]

I'm playing it now. It's not that bad. It's the level of humor I expected from a Duke game. I guess some people expected something better than DN3D. Take off the nostalgia glasses and you'll see this game was everything they intended DN3D to be.

I have a hard time believing DN3D was intended to be terrible