Duke Nukem Forever. Seriously.

[savanik]

I liked how they did it in Farcry 2 (and probably a load of other games) where you could carry 3 weapons.
A small (Pistol) A medium (Shotgun, assault rifle etc) and a heaver (Sniper Rifle, Rocket launcher) and then a slot for explosives 'n' shit.

Bah! Spoiled! Back in the days of Contra, we had a single weapon! And if you picked up another weapon? Your old one was GONE FOREVER. And we liked it that way!

[Menacing Spike]

I'd prefer they did it like in Duke Nukem .

[phlip]

I'd prefer they did it like in Duke Nukem .

Where there only exists a single gun in the entire game, and you just collect power-ups occasionally to make it stronger?

Or, at least, that's what I remember, it's been a long time since I've played the original Duke Nukem.

[EmptySet]

I liked how they did it in Farcry 2 (and probably a load of other games) where you could carry 3 weapons.
A small (Pistol) A medium (Shotgun, assault rifle etc) and a heaver (Sniper Rifle, Rocket launcher) and then a slot for explosives 'n' shit.

Bah! Spoiled! Back in the days of Contra, we had a single weapon! And if you picked up another weapon? Your old one was GONE FOREVER. And we liked it that way!

Of course, in Contra, Spread was the only weapon you ever needed...

[sunami]

It's gone gold.

[the_bandersnatch]

This is going to make things awkward for Yahtzee...

... Unless it's exactly as he predicted.

[Triangle_Man]

What?

Is this the month of making the impossible possible?

What?!

[Thirty-one]

Wasn't the major selling point of DN3D the fun weaponry and level design, rather than the humour?

It was to me anyway, which makes it confusing to see people waiting for this for over a decade.

[Deep_Thought]

Oh hell, this surely means that Rapture prediction from the weekend was out by just a few days. I am going to stock up on tins of baked beans on the way home tonight...

[savanik]

But have they actually shipped any units yet?

Didn't DNF go gold once before, as well, before being 'delayed'?

[RockoTDF]

I recall someone on slashdot saying once that in the time it took to make DNF that he was a kid, went to high school and college, and is now in the gaming industry and therefore could have been on the development team.

[SecondTalon]

I recall someone on slashdot saying once that in the time it took to make DNF that he was a kid, went to high school and college, and is now in the gaming industry and therefore could have been on the development team.

See Also : The List. And the xkcd List about The List.

[big boss]

Apparently there is something like a capture the flag mode called "capture the chick" or something like that and if she gets rowdy you can slap her. I'm surprised I haven't seen anything about that in the newspapers.

This is going to make things awkward for Yahtzee...

... Unless it's exactly as he predicted.

Yahtzee is awesome, I recently watch all of his videos because they are so damn hilarious and you know that when he gives a good review the game is really really good.

[SecondTalon]

Apparently there is something like a capture the flag mode called "capture the chick" or something like that and if she gets rowdy you can slap her. I'm surprised I haven't seen anything about that in the newspapers.

It's been all over the internet. The Real Media won't actually realize it's there until next year.

Still, there's this commentary on it, so.. enjoy.

[big boss]

Apparently there is something like a capture the flag mode called "capture the chick" or something like that and if she gets rowdy you can slap her. I'm surprised I haven't seen anything about that in the newspapers.

It's been all over the internet. The Real Media won't actually realize it's there until next year.

Still, there's this commentary on it, so.. enjoy.

Ohh joy this should provide for some fun, yea i was talking about the so called "real media" which seems to always be behind, I guess, the "not real media"

[Prefanity]

Apparently there is something like a capture the flag mode called "capture the chick" or something like that and if she gets rowdy you can slap her. I'm surprised I haven't seen anything about that in the newspapers.

It's been all over the internet. The Real Media won't actually realize it's there until next year.

Still, there's this commentary on it, so.. enjoy.

I still prefer what Penny Arcade had to say.

[podbaydoor]

The Call of Duty guys aren't naked and subservient. There is a difference.

[Wodashin]

Did you know there is necrophilia in Call of Duty and Halo?

[podbaydoor]

You mean teabagging?

[Prefanity]

The Call of Duty guys aren't naked and subservient. There is a difference.

Oh, I agree there's a difference and I'm not certain placing all the manifold moral outrages perpetrated in video games on a single ladder is a great idea either. That said, the PA comic does illuminate how many of us don't really bat an eye at extreme displays of violence in video games. I think that's useful.

You mean teabagging?

Yeah, that'd be it.

[Adacore]

See Also : The List. And the xkcd List about The List.

I'm sad that it's going to be released on the 10th June. It's only five days shy of the release date of the final Harry Potter film - that would've been a really neat expansion for the list. "All Harry Potter books and movies were released", but no, they have to release DNF too early

[podbaydoor]

When did you ever get the idea that the DNF release date would be...convenient?

[SecondTalon]

The Call of Duty guys aren't naked and subservient. There is a difference.

Oh, I agree there's a difference and I'm not certain placing all the manifold moral outrages perpetrated in video games on a single ladder is a great idea either. That said, the PA comic does illuminate how many of us don't really bat an eye at extreme displays of violence in video games. I think that's useful.

Eh.. I'd say PA still misses the point* while the Manly Guys doing Manly Things gets it a little bit better. But.. I really don't want to get into it here.

*See Also : Whatever fallacy it is that people use wherein they submit that since there are worse things in the world than X you are not allowed to be upset about X and oh god I'm just stopping now.

[mosc]

ugh, I just wasted way too much time on that link. God damnit SexyTalon

[SecondTalon]

... so long as I can get that to me a memephrase, I'm okay with that.

[Menacing Spike]

The Call of Duty guys aren't naked and subservient. There is a difference.

I don't know if you played a CoD or CoD clone, but you spend half the time either knocked out, crawling for your weapon, or being tortured.
You also spend the whole game following orders blindly. This is especially apparent in Crysis 2: the dude obeys absolutely everyone. Except the evil aliens, but that's probably just because they can't speak.

[SecondTalon]

Yeah.. I'm going to disagree. You're still a proactive force on the universe at large. If you wanted a game analog, imagine Bioshock 1 wherein every 2-4 minutes someone dropped a "Would you kindly" on you, letting you watch a cutscene of you doing some subservient task or demeaning thing, then spending the rest of your time locked in a small room.

Now... none of us have played Capture The Babe, but I kinda doubt that beside the "Reassuring ass-smack" button, there's a "Give her a firearm so she can shoot the Blue team if they come close" button. I also doubt the Babe is ever represented by someone with chiseled abs and a 5 o'clock shadow. Of course, it's possible some of the out-of-the-box player models are split in an even 1:1 male/female ratio, allowing the ladies to carry the babe around, but.. I kinda doubt it.

So we're dealing with manly men and pigcops carrying a "poor defenseless lady"* around and her reaction to the universe at large being nothing but panic and unconditional submission to the forces around her.

Now.. there's a hell of a lot of room there for well-thought out parody, with a bunch of sunglass-wearing gun-toting one-liner-spewing hardass ladies running around and "rescuing" a guy in a speedo who needs a reassuring smack on the ass every now and again along with what they have in the game. But that's not what it sounds like they're doing. Sounds like they're doing more of the same.

[Menacing Spike]

Imagine Bioshock 1 wherein every 2-4 minutes someone dropped a "Would you kindly" on you, letting you watch a cutscene of you doing some subservient task or demeaning thing, then spending the rest of your time locked in a small room.

It's the same but for the whole game! Crysis 2 again: Go there, soldier. Kill this evil scientist dude, soldier. The evil scientist dude speaks to you and you obey him and get new objectives. Then you meet another dude and instantly obey him instead of the previous dude.
It's as if the protagonist had a permanent "obey every order ever" geass. Of course most of them use and deceive you. That's... not empowering, running around being the little bitch and errant boy.

[SurgicalSteel]

The Call of Duty guys aren't naked and subservient. There is a difference.

I don't know if you played a CoD or CoD clone, but you spend half the time either knocked out, crawling for your weapon, or being tortured.

What? Have you ever played one of those games? And besides, even if you were right, it would be you the player who is being made subservient, not you the player making someone else subservient.

[broken_escalator]

The woman's job is to be a sexy, inanimate object. Somehow it doesn't really compare to being the dude who shoots other dudes for yet another dude.

[Menacing Spike]

The woman's job is to be a sexy, inanimate object. Somehow it doesn't really compare to being the dude who shoots other dudes for yet another dude.

I was referring to the complete lack of say in the matter and complete obedience, not on the inanimateness.

[SecondTalon]

Imagine Bioshock 1 wherein every 2-4 minutes someone dropped a "Would you kindly" on you, letting you watch a cutscene of you doing some subservient task or demeaning thing, then spending the rest of your time locked in a small room.

It's the same but for the whole game! Crysis 2 again: Go there, soldier. Kill this evil scientist dude, soldier. The evil scientist dude speaks to you and you obey him and get new objectives. Then you meet another dude and instantly obey him instead of the previous dude.
It's as if the protagonist had a permanent "obey every order ever" geass. Of course most of them use and deceive you. That's... not empowering, running around being the little bitch and errant boy.

.... you're still an active protagonist.

"Go there, kill this dude"
"No"
"...... okay, but the game isn't going to continue"
"Okay. I'm still not killing the dude."
"You know you're going to be bored, right"
"Yes. But I'm an active character which means I don't do a fucking thing unless I actually do it."
"Okay then."

The player character is always an active character. By definition. They are never a passive, submissive character.* The closest you come is when the game takes your control away for a time - see : Bioshock and it's use of the in-game cutscene and so on. I could go on for paragraphs about how that's an interesting use of player control and removal thereof in a game, but whatever.

The bottom line is that I can't think of a single game in which you're playing a character that could be easily replaced by an inanimate object, which is exactly what Capture the Babe does for the Babe in question. Most games replace her with a bit of cloth on a stick.


*The backstory can have them as passive and submissive. Their interactions with the world can be one of submission and inactivity. They can spend the entire game basically as a stealth game - doing everything in their power to avoid confrontation and interaction with other characters... but you're still in an active role. Because you're controlling them.

[broken_escalator]

I was referring to the complete lack of say in the matter and complete obedience, not on the inanimateness.

I'm not sure why you'd say the protagonist has no say in the matter, unless its a special case such as bioshock-esqe plot devices. Besides, you said being the guy doing the shooting isn't empowering... how does that compare to being a flag again?

[Menacing Spike]

I'm not sure why you'd say the protagonist has no say in the matter, unless its a special case such as bioshock-esqe plot devices. Besides, you said being the guy doing the shooting isn't empowering... how does that compare to being a flag again?

Same thing, expect you shoot things. There are no relevant choices (do I kill this soldier with this generic boring weapon or that one?), hence no power.
Some games such as Bulletstorm are also utterly linear; however the protagonist is making his choices, not obeying blindly.
Of courses in some games the player can make choices, and that's even better.

... technically yes, even when one of the dudes told you to jump into the big acidic alien tube you had to press a button to do so. However, you had no in-game means to refuse anything aside from standing around or letting an enemy kill you, and that was immersion breaking. Not moving causes the current orders-giving dude to hurl insults at you until you do. It's also repeatedly made very clear that the character is unimportant and irrelevant, and only his suits matters, so the protagonists follows orders AND takes abuse. The player has an active role, the character does not. He is but a tool, not much better than a flag.

The bottom line is that I can't think of a single game in which you're playing a character that could be easily replaced by an inanimate object

I can and it's hilarious.

[Beardhammer]

Played through the demo. Took about 30 minutes.



This isn't Duke Nukem, this is Halo with a Duke Nukem mod running. You're limited to two weapons - instead of carrying an armory and rationing ammo, you just toss an empty weapon or less-useful weapon for whichever weapon you need to get through the next set-piece battle, which will invariably be located in the general vicinity. Pig cops shooting from a distance? No problem, railgun's right there. Gotta fight a dropship? Damn, glad there's an RPG and ammo crate stashed right next to the cover you'll use during the fight.

Instead of having health that you have to replenish with medkits, your health regenerates by hiding behind a rock - fully. Since when does Duke hide from ANYTHING? He's not some pansy ass Marcus Fenix or Master Chief, he's Duke fuckin Nukem. He ain't got time to bleed, let alone run and hide like a bitch. There's a button assigned to beer, and I'm going to assume beer is going to be the "hilarious and edgy" way of saying "medkit." So not only does our health fully recover after a few seconds of squatting behind a rock... we can also patch up at will.

The Duke humor is there, but it honestly feels forced and sterile, not natural like it was in Duke3D, though that could be due to nostalgia.

The driving section sucked, just like the driving section in ANY shooter (the only shooters with decent vehicle controls in my experience are Battlefield 2/Battlefield 2142 and Unreal Tournament 2004 - no surprise, considering they're both from before Halo and Call of Duty became ridiculously popular), and there was an entirely predictable "go find a gas can by fighting an entire army" segment and even a scripted sequence as you ride back to the truck.

The game engine is functional and nothing more. It looks good enough, but the physics and detail aren't worth writing home about. If you can run Source engine games at maximum settings, you'll probably think Duke Forever is a step backwards. I'm not sure which engine it runs on (looks like a bastardized Unreal Engine 3.)

I dunno. Taken on its own, I'm sure Duke Nukem Forever will be worth the $20 I'll buy it for when it goes on a Steam sale, but taken as an actual Duke Nukem game (especially compared to Duke3D)... I'm not impressed. Then again, I wasn't expecting it to be worth anything to begin with, so I'm not really disappointed.

[Beardhammer]

Regenerating health can be a valid design decision. It eliminates the problem of having saved at low health and thus having to tediously retry a section over and over. On the other hand it dilutes the satisfaction of completing a section while taking little to no damage, since you can just heal up after every fight. Personally I like the hybrid approach used by games like Metroid Other M where you can regenerate some small portion of your health bar.

I prefer games that make a new autosave at the beginning of each map. If you chew through all your medkits and end up in a situation you can't win... well, too bad junior, fire up that autosave and suck less this time. Maybe allow them to change the difficulty on the fly in case they were playing on Normal and they need to kick it down to Easy to get past a section.

Regenerating health is just a dumb concept overall. Gimme medkits and shieldpacks, please.

A limit of two weapons only I'm much less fond of. Often the "best" strategy in such games is also the most boring: use the one weapon you find tons of ammo for to kill all the mooks, while saving the really good (but limited ammo) weapon for a possible "boss" fight which may or may not be coming up soon. Thus ignoring all the really cool but highly situational weapons. This can leads to lame, repetetive gameplay and removes the strategy of picking the best weapon for the job. I also find the time spent looking through the pile of weapons after a fight and picking the best two to be a tedious exercise in inventory management, something I can tolerate in an RPG but that really breaks the flow in an action FPS. In a game series known for pioneering the use of the shrink ray and frost gun in an FPS, this makes me a bit sad that Duke would go this route.

It cuts both ways. With the whole "you can only carry two weapons" thing, it forces you to make the best with what's available. Problem is, this means most developers get lazy (and/or are terrified of making it too hard for the people that can do little more than mash buttons) and just throw weapons all over the place, usually with sniper rifles immediately before sniping sections and rocket launchers immediately before set-piece vehicle battles. The demo does EXACTLY this.

With the "carry a small armory with you" concept, you're free to design areas around someone having access to every weapon in the game, and you're again making it important for the player to understand ammo rationing and using the right weapon for the job - again, not something the average CoD/Halo-playing frat boy is likely to understand or even care about, which is why it's rare these days. You do end up with the typical BFG never being used except in boss fights, but I don't really see that as a major problem. An even better part of this design is that if the player runs out of a particular ammo type, as long as they aren't REQUIRED to have that weapon to get through the next area (in which case you really should have some ammo pickups for that type in the area), they can probably use a different gun and get through based on ingenuity and/or balls of steel (fuck you, I will kill that Cyberdemon with my pistol because my balls are just that huge.)

As far as the DNF demo went, it's essentially Halo running a Duke Nukem mod. It's not Duke... at least, not the Duke we all knew and loved from 15 years ago.

The game engine itself is pretty lousy, too, honestly. It doesn't look all amazing - I'd say Source with all settings maxed out looks better and also performs better.

[archeleus]

http://i.imgur.com/LpNk9.jpg

NSFW but boobs

Some DNF content that you'll be interested in.

EDIT:

The game engine itself is pretty lousy, too, honestly. It doesn't look all amazing - I'd say Source with all settings maxed out looks better and also performs better.

I dunno what you're talking about those boobs seem okay.

[Amnesiasoft]

The game engine itself is pretty lousy, too, honestly. It doesn't look all amazing - I'd say Source with all settings maxed out looks better and also performs better.

At least the textures in the demo were all nice and sharp looking, can't say I've ever felt the same way about a Source game.

[Menacing Spike]

http://i.imgur.com/LpNk9.jpg

Why do they still have their panties on?

[SecondTalon]

http://i.imgur.com/LpNk9.jpg

Why do they still have their panties on?

Because tits are rated R M, but genitalia are X AO.

Welcome to America!