Duke Nukem Forever. Seriously.

[Beardhammer]

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.

Do you run Source maxed out? I usually run at just under max settings (I do this in basically every game except for ones that are 10+ years old), and it looked just about as good as DNF running maxed out. Keep in mind, "max" settings usually requires some .cfg editing here and there - for whatever reason, Source doesn't allow to really max out settings just by selecting "very high."

I will say that I did like how DNF handled depth of field and dynamic LOD, and it looked quite nice, but I was honestly really turned off by how lousy the physics were. An oversized monster truck rams a pig cop and the pig cop just bounces away like it's made of rubber? Really? Even having the pig cop explode into red mist would be better than THAT.

I'm pretty sure DNF is using some version of the Unreal 3 engine, but I can't be certain. It looks similar to Global Agenda in several ways (another game that operates on the Unreal 3 engine.)

[ProZac]

I played the demo, and while I wasn't impressed, it wasn't terrible. It didn't look great, and I was never wow'd by anything, but it was a fun little romp. Duke says Duke-things and is generally entertaining. The 2 weapon system is definitely the worst part. As mentioned, it places a sniper rifle right when you need it and a rocket launcher right when you need it. However, over the course of 5 minutes, I swapped between a sniper, shotgun, rpg, and shrink ray. So, there was quite the variety, and the rpg has a lock on making it useful against pig cops as well, not just vehicles. If they can manage to keep the variety of weapons available so you can swap around at anytime, it might work. However, I think it might have just been set up like that specifically for the demo. I assume the shrink ray will still just be a novelty that never gets used (it basically was in Duke3D as well).

So, nothing amazing, but good mindless fun. I'm really hoping someone mods it so you can carry all weapons.

[Beardhammer]

I played the demo, and while I wasn't impressed, it wasn't terrible. It didn't look great, and I was never wow'd by anything, but it was a fun little romp. Duke says Duke-things and is generally entertaining. The 2 weapon system is definitely the worst part. As mentioned, it places a sniper rifle right when you need it and a rocket launcher right when you need it. However, over the course of 5 minutes, I swapped between a sniper, shotgun, rpg, and shrink ray. So, there was quite the variety, and the rpg has a lock on making it useful against pig cops as well, not just vehicles. If they can manage to keep the variety of weapons available so you can swap around at anytime, it might work. However, I think it might have just been set up like that specifically for the demo. I assume the shrink ray will still just be a novelty that never gets used (it basically was in Duke3D as well).

So, nothing amazing, but good mindless fun. I'm really hoping someone mods it so you can carry all weapons.

In all honesty, Duke has nothing on Turok for sheer weapon variety. I still consider the Ceberal Bore to be one of the most amusing guns in any shooter. And I seem to remember Rage Wars having an Inflator/Deflator weapon that would either inflate someone until they exploded or deflate them until they died from emaciation.

Then again, Duke3D had a grow ray (maybe it was just shrink ray alt-fire... been way too long) that made things explode, too.

[Ingolifs]

Well I just finished it. Not bad.

[Beardhammer]

I'm expecting Serious Sam 3 to be a better successor to Duke3D than DNF. Technically, though, Serious Sam 1 and 2 did that already.

[zmatt]

played a bit of it last night. The game is absurd in a good way. The graphics are bleh but it's unreal 3 so yeah. The gameplay is entertaining and so is the story and acting. It's not gonna win any awards for depth of the story or how moving the characters are but during the whole game I had the team America theme in my head. I wonder if the presentation will be seen as gaudy or too much to the international players?

[SlyReaper]

I'm quite liking it. It's a good over-the-top mindless shoot-em-up. There is something resembling a story that serves merely to punctuate the carnage, and a couple of mini-game type puzzles during the quiet bits. The shrink ray makes an appearance, more as a novelty than a serious weapon. The Duke says cheesy things, and there are a lot of references to the earlier games (I played the Duke3D multiplayer on a friend's console back when I was a kid, but other than that I don't really have much experience of the early Duke games). The visuals are okay, but aren't going to win any awards.

Since I'm not a long-standing Duke fan, I can judge the game on its own merits. Does the game stand on its own merits? I'd say yes. It has enough variation that you don't get bored of shooting up aliens, the boss fights are satisfying to complete, and the gaudiness and absurdity of the whole thing has a certain charm to it. Worth 30 quid? Nah. Unless you're a hardcore Duke Nukem fan, wait until it's on sale.

[Beardhammer]

(I played the Duke3D multiplayer on a friend's console

*snicker*

[SlyReaper]

[zmatt]

He snickers because Duke, at it's heart has always been a PC franchise and is best on the pc.

[Vapour]

Duke on Ps1. That's where it's at.

[Beardhammer]

He snickers because Duke, at it's heart has always been a PC franchise and is best on the pc.

This can be applied to most console games and nearly all console shooters

As a side note, I was surprised to see The Escapist hand DNF a 2/5. I expected a site like that to give it a 5/5 and herald it as the wittiest game of the century, featuring mind-blowing graphics and unparalleled gameplay.

I guess things are pretty damn bad if you're getting bashed by a site like The Escapist. I'll almost feel sorry for them if they get a bad review from GameSpy and PC Gamer.

[psion]

The game feels like a refurbished 2004 title to include all the trappings and limitations of modern console shooters. Which is probably exactly what it is too. So, so many invisible walls. Nothing clever or interesting happens. Gameplay is 10% tedious, 10% old-school fun, 80% mediocre.
It'd get a middling score by most reviewers if it were something like $15. Being a full price title demands that it be shit on.

I'm not sure why you're ragging on The Escapist. They have hoards of fanboys that they have to keep docile, but they're not that bad.

[SlyReaper]

Also, aside from invisible walls, there are places where a 2 foot drop kills you. You jump down onto a ledge, and the next thing you see is bloody broken sunglasses lenses. The fuck?

[Beardhammer]

The game feels like a refurbished 2004 title to include all the trappings and limitations of modern console shooters. Which is probably exactly what it is too. So, so many invisible walls. Nothing clever or interesting happens. Gameplay is 10% tedious, 10% old-school fun, 80% mediocre.
It'd get a middling score by most reviewers if it were something like $15. Being a full price title demands that it be shit on.

I'm not sure why you're ragging on The Escapist. They have hoards of fanboys that they have to keep docile, but they're not that bad.

Aside from Zero Punctuation and Extra Punctuation (and Extra Consideration), there's nothing on The Escapist I'd consider even worth watching - it's like a repository for all those dumb, failed YouTube TV channels. Game Dogs? Really? We need anthropomorphized dogs wearing human clothes talking about random hipster-gamer crap? Every now and then I watch a Yahtzee video and apparently I'm getting forum badges for doing this. Your forums have an achievement system? WHY?

It's worse than fucking Facebook and Reddit. It's every bit as annoying and sad as those two services without having the borderline legitimacy of either.

[mosc]

The escapist is 50% shit, 30% good, and 20% awesome. You have to accept that half the shit on their website is not worth clicking on.

I regularly follow Movie Bob's movie reviews and his cultural musings along with extra credit and zero punctuation. I also liked Doraleus and associates. There, I fessed up to that one, whew!

[Endless Mike]

Everything has achievements now. Today I learned that Zappos.com has achievements. Or at least the VIP accounts do.

[big boss]

The escapist is 50% shit, 30% good, and 20% awesome. You have to accept that half the shit on their website is not worth clicking on.

I regularly follow Movie Bob's movie reviews and his cultural musings along with extra credit and zero punctuation. I also liked Doraleus and associates. There, I fessed up to that one, whew!

I also watch all those videos, except I don't know who Doraleus is. But Extra Credit is by far one of the best video game web video series as far as I'm concerned, the guys are really smart and do what they do in a very professional manner without all the silly immaturity (not that I don't appreciate zero punctuation's over the top criticisms).

[Endless Mike]

The Redner Group, the PR firm promoting DNF for 2K posted a tweet saying any reviewers who wrote bad reviews wouldn't get early copies of future games they're promoting. Among reviewers, this is not known to be uncommon, but has never been publicly stated before. Today, 2K dropped Redner Group.

[SecondTalon]

The Redner Group, the PR firm promoting DNF for 2K posted a tweet saying any reviewers who wrote bad reviews wouldn't get early copies of future games they're promoting. Among reviewers, this is not known to be uncommon, but has never been publicly stated before. Today, 2K dropped Redner Group.

Huh. Good for them. Because fuck that. If a game's shit, a game's shit. Bad reviews hurt the individual game, but help the industry as a whole as people will just stop buying games (or at least buying them at full retail) if they're all shit.

[psion]

I'm not sure why you're ragging on The Escapist. They have hoards of fanboys that they have to keep docile, but they're not that bad.

Aside from Zero Punctuation and Extra Punctuation (and Extra Consideration), there's nothing on The Escapist I'd consider even worth watching - it's like a repository for all those dumb, failed YouTube TV channels.

So, because they have some shows that don't interest you means that they would praise DNF as a flawless game.
I feel like I'm missing something.

edit: I forgot to mention that the most fun I had was putting trip mines on people's faces. The game never tells you that you can, so I can only assume it's completely unintended...

[SecondTalon]

You're confusing a rant on the Escapist as having anything at all to do with Duke Nukem Forever.

[EmptySet]

The Redner Group, the PR firm promoting DNF for 2K posted a tweet saying any reviewers who wrote bad reviews wouldn't get early copies of future games they're promoting. Among reviewers, this is not known to be uncommon, but has never been publicly stated before. Today, 2K dropped Redner Group.

...wouldn't stating that publicly just undermine the credibility of all the reviewers who didn't give it poor reviews? I'm at a loss as to why anyone would think it was a good idea to make threats like that where everyone can see them.

[Beardhammer]

You're confusing a rant on the Escapist as having anything at all to do with Duke Nukem Forever.

Idiots tend to have idiotic opinions about things. These are the kinds of people that tend to look at the newest God of War/Modern Warfare clone and scream about how freaking AWESOME it is... even though it's just a rehash of a game that's, what, like four or five years old now?

It's why I'm surprised DNF was given such a low score.

[netcrusher88]

At a guess, it's because (based on reviews I've read) in addition to being a legitimately bad shooter, half the jokes haven't been funny for half a decade and the casual over-the-top awfulness the game is littered with makes about one in five reviewers feel, I quote, "physically dirty".

[mosc]

I know it sucks and I'm not arguing that it doesn't, completely and utterly, suck. That said, I can't help wondering if this exact game had come out 10 years ago (with 10 years ago graphics) and the exact same gameplay if it wouldn't be considered a classic today. Thoughts?

[Menacing Spike]

Everything has achievements now. Today I learned that Zappos.com has achievements. Or at least the VIP accounts do.

You can do anything at zombocom.

*KAZING*

*ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED*

[SecondTalon]

I know it sucks and I'm not arguing that it doesn't, completely and utterly, suck. That said, I can't help wondering if this exact game had come out 10 years ago (with 10 years ago graphics) and the exact same gameplay if it wouldn't be considered a classic today. Thoughts?

Probably. The notion of regenerating health, limiting guns so you have to think ahead and so on would have.. maybe not been revolutionary, but given the genre food for thought.


...

trollface.jpg or something, knock yourself out.

[mosc]

Yeah, besides the halo stuff. Do you think the throwing of turds and taking of pisses would have played differently 10 years ago? I think it would have. It was a different industry before hot coffee.

[SecondTalon]

To a certain extent, yeah. 2003, Postal 2, urinating freely on everyone, using cats as silencers and so on. It was made with the intention of being in very poor taste and succeeded admirably in that. So it probably would have gone over a lot better in 2001.

[Thirty-one]

Does anyone consider Postal 2 a classic though? Admittedly I only played it for a few minutes, but it didn't strike me as a good game in any way. Was it generally well liked?

[ProZac]

I had a lot of fun of with it, but it was really in a "This shouldn't be allowed" sort of way. It wasn't horrible in that it was boring or unplayable. But it wasn't amazing in any way either.

I mean, 10 years ago, the genre was quite different from what it is today. That's a hard comparison to make, seeing as that was about the time Halo was shifting the genre. 5-6 years on the other hand... is about where it feels it belongs (from my, idk, 90 minutes of playing so far). There's plenty I've seen so far just among the style, animations, graphics that just make me think "Oh wow, that's terrible", but back then would have been standard. By no means groundbreaking or a classic, but I doubt it'd have gotten nearly the hate it has been in reviews.

[SecondTalon]

Does anyone consider Postal 2 a classic though? Admittedly I only played it for a few minutes, but it didn't strike me as a good game in any way. Was it generally well liked?

Well, I was more of using it for a benchmark as to what passed as envelope pushing humor in a video game.

[Beardhammer]

I know it sucks and I'm not arguing that it doesn't, completely and utterly, suck. That said, I can't help wondering if this exact game had come out 10 years ago (with 10 years ago graphics) and the exact same gameplay if it wouldn't be considered a classic today. Thoughts?

Probably. The notion of regenerating health, limiting guns so you have to think ahead and so on would have.. maybe not been revolutionary, but given the genre food for thought.


...

trollface.jpg or something, knock yourself out.

The whole "choose which weapons you have" doesn't work in practice, though, because the player will just use whatever weapon the monsters are using because that way they can be sure they won't run out of ammo.

Far better to give people the ability to carry all weapons and instead limit them by how much ammo they can carry and find for them. But that concept DOES kinda clash with the "realistic" shooters that are popular right now.

[psion]

Yeah, besides the halo stuff. Do you think the throwing of turds and taking of pisses would have played differently 10 years ago? I think it would have. It was a different industry before hot coffee.

I don't. Duke3D had you pissing in urinals, there just wasn't a stream of urine to be seen. The South Park games had Mr. Hankey among other weapons. Hot Coffee was more of a political campaign than anything. People hated and demonized GTA for "polluting our children's minds", but they didn't have much ammo until Hot Coffee. I don't think the event changed the industry in any meaningful way.

I do think DNF would have fared a lot better if it were released 8-10 years ago. Whether or not it'd be a classic would probably be based on how much people cared about tits in video games in that time period. I'm thinking back to games that were released from 2001-2004, and there are so many titles I'd rather play. Right now. Games that I've already completed, multiple times, and I'd still rather play those games than finish DNF (I'm about halfway, and I had to force myself to get that far). Max Payne. Alien vs Predator 2. Silent Hill 2. Morrowind. Jedi Knight 2. BF1942. I can go on and on... (*looks further out of curiosity*)... and on and on and on and on...

[Sir_Elderberry]

Does anyone consider Portal 2 a classic though? Admittedly I only played it for a few minutes, but it didn't strike me as a good game in any way. Was it generally well liked?

The reading mistake I make every time this other series is mentioned. (And you can imagine the induced emotions.)

[Beardhammer]

Yeah, besides the halo stuff. Do you think the throwing of turds and taking of pisses would have played differently 10 years ago? I think it would have. It was a different industry before hot coffee.

I don't. Duke3D had you pissing in urinals, there just wasn't a stream of urine to be seen. The South Park games had Mr. Hankey among other weapons. Hot Coffee was more of a political campaign than anything. People hated and demonized GTA for "polluting our children's minds", but they didn't have much ammo until Hot Coffee. I don't think the event changed the industry in any meaningful way.

I do think DNF would have fared a lot better if it were released 8-10 years ago. Whether or not it'd be a classic would probably be based on how much people cared about tits in video games in that time period. I'm thinking back to games that were released from 2001-2004, and there are so many titles I'd rather play. Right now. Games that I've already completed, multiple times, and I'd still rather play those games than finish DNF (I'm about halfway, and I had to force myself to get that far). Max Payne. Alien vs Predator 2. Silent Hill 2. Morrowind. Jedi Knight 2. BF1942. I can go on and on... (*looks further out of curiosity*)... and on and on and on and on...

Agreed. DNF would have been a GOOD game eight years ago, but it wouldn't have made game of the year. Not competing against Half-Life 2 and the like.

[Thirty-one]

Does anyone consider Postal 2 a classic though? Admittedly I only played it for a few minutes, but it didn't strike me as a good game in any way. Was it generally well liked?

Well, I was more of using it for a benchmark as to what passed as envelope pushing humor in a video game.

Ah, my mistake. From reading the reception bit on wiki it seems to me they got mostly the same kind of reviews though, perhaps with the difference that more was expected from DNF (for some reason) and that that added to it.

Does anyone consider Portal 2 a classic though? Admittedly I only played it for a few minutes, but it didn't strike me as a good game in any way. Was it generally well liked?

The reading mistake I make every time this other series is mentioned. (And you can imagine the induced emotions.)

That's what I first typed it as, then I noticed and went "Nooo, no no no, no!" and fixed it.