Can this be the year of the Duke?

[Matt Mortem]

I'm much more optimistic about a Duke game made from scratch by Gearbox

 

[Why Are You Crouching Spock?]

His time is done but the moneyz will ensure he goes on and on.

 

[Darkness Falls]

i'd be down with a sequel made from scratch

 

[Matt Mortem]

I'd say a game made from scratch would have a bunch more going for it.

 

[Why Are You Crouching Spock?]

Duke Nukem super fun party time.
What a great launch. What a great game. Yay everything.

http://uk.kotaku.com/5814858/evidence-that-someone-loves-playing-duke-nukem-forever-online

Also I notice even though everyone is hooked up to a console the clip slices in pc footage. Nice one Gearbox. Make a turd look less like a turd.

 

[Benstamania]

I replayed the demo today and while I still stand firmly behind original statement that it's not a very good game... something about it grew on me. I haven idea why but I had a bit more fun with it this time around... Maybe because I had no expectations this time around? Or maybe Gearbox slipped something into my Vanilla Coke?

 

[Spade]

Played the demo about an hour ago.

The weapon system is a mess. I don't want to walk 6 steps forward, find a new weapon, and have to decide whether it'd be better to hold this for later, only to find out the hard way that the next area either has the perfect weapon for the job already available or none at all. The selection wheel was perfect. No need to "fix" what wasn't broken. Even the weapons themselves don't feel right; the area of effect on the pipe bombs and rockets are so small compared to Duke 3D that there were times I shot right between close clusters of pigs and scored no damage for my effort. And that's assuming you can shoot anything at a distance, between the oddly inconsistent focus on the zoom and the buck wild aim sensitivity (without aim assist).

The visuals are just as bad. This game seems to have halted in progress around 2007, yet it looks so much worse than other games from that year. If any one of the many developers knew it'd be so muddy and incomplete, then they should've gone with Valve's approach to Team Fortress 2 and made it less realistic. As it stands, it follows every bad trope of the modern shooter, right down to using bloom everywhere to hide bad textures. The level design doesn't help, either, 'cause there's no place to go and explore despite many segues and pathways that look like they could lead somewhere.

Overall, I'm very disappointed. I never laughed, the boss was uninspired, the regenerating health, the sprint cooldown...ugh. I usually get a buzz after playing a demo, that urge to replay it. Once I was done with this I uninstalled it. I know this isn't entirely Gearbox's fault, but if this is the product of 12 years of development hell, it should've stayed as vaporware.

 

[Benstamania]

Soapy said it best I believe, Gearbox should have released this as a budget title... 29.99 or less (and based on the demo... I'd say less). Instead they created a stupid collectors edition and gave it all sorts of pomp and circumstance...

I feel bad for the sucker that paid 100 bucks for the Collectors Edition..

I DO have people on my friends list that have it... they "like" it but feel extremely ripped off... If that makes sense.

 

[StrainedEyes]

Soapy said it best I believe, Gearbox should have released this as a budget title... 29.99 or less (and based on the demo... I'd say less). Instead they created a stupid collectors edition and gave it all sorts of pomp and circumstance...

I feel bad for the sucker that paid 100 bucks for the Collectors Edition..

I DO have people on my friends list that have it... they "like" it but feel extremely ripped off... If that makes sense.

The game news sources that I read weren't exactly making DNF sound fantastic before release (from reading event hands-on, watching trailers and seeing the demo in action), and as a result I was not at all surprised when it turned out bad. Honestly, the trailers alone were enough to make me back away from this game, they were really unappealing.

Of course main-stream marketing will try to sell the game as hard as possible with collectors editions and tv-spots and 'balls of steel' billboards to entice the dude-bros of the world, but under that surface DNF had pretty bad buzz around it. A little research the week before release would have saved those people from feeling ripped off.

 

[Benstamania]

Not everyone goes to forums or reads reviews. Some of my friends never even heard of IGN or Giant Bomb.

 

[StrainedEyes]

Not everyone goes to forums or reads reviews. Some of my friends never even heard of IGN or Giant Bomb.

You don't have to be some geeky forum guy to do a little consumer research before buying something.

 

[Benstamania]

....Never mind.

 

[StrainedEyes]

....Never mind.

I am well aware that the mass-market are the people who don't read reviews or visit games sites. That is why advertisers love the mass-market, all they have to do is throw a cool/funny ad on TV and people will buy the product.

I also think that those people kinda get what they deserve. Things like Metacritic and Rottentomatoes exist for those people, so they don't have to read a bunch of sites and spend a lot of time, they can quickly see a review score and move on with their day. 60 dollars is a big expense for some people, and buying things based on tv-ads is an easy way to potentially waste it.

 

[Why Are You Crouching Spock?]

Games sold half a million copies.

 

[Tanin]

I went ahead and bought it after watching some gameplay footage and am enjoying it quite a bit.

 

[Timstuff]

My one hope is that with Duke Nukem Forever FINALLY out of the way, Gearbox can do a proper Duke game from the ground up that doesn't suck. I think first and foremost, they need to acknowledge that Duke is a parody of cliches rather than letting him be a cliche incarnate. If they want to do something funny that makes Duke relevant again, they should pull a Captain America where he gets frozen for 20 years and wakes up in a more modern world that "sucks" (at least in Duke's mind). He should be the butt of a lot of fish out of water humor, and isn't in on the joke. They have to either embrace the fact that Duke Nukem is a character who hasn't kept up with the times, or they have to reinvent him like Eidos has continually done with Lara Croft, and for Duke that just wouldn't seem right. I'm all for Duke being the exact same guy he has been all these years, but when the world he lives in and the people he interacts with all feel like leftovers from the bronze age of gaming, we've got a problem.

One potentially humorous angle they could go with in the new game is to shed some light on Duke's past to explain why he goes to such great lengths to be an over-the-top macho womanizer. My personal theory: Duke had a single mother who was a hardcore ass kicker, but she always treated Duke like crap and would call him a "p***y" nonstop (and to make matters worse, shrimpy young Duke had crooked teeth and acne). His womanizing steroid-popping ways are him overcompensating for his ruined childhood, because when you get down to it Duke Nukem is basically Peter Pan syndrome personified-- he just wants to have lots of toys to play with and he never takes much of anything seriously.

 

[Balthus Dire]

^ Not a fan of the second part, but I think the first part of your post is a good idea. A new Duke game where Duke is almost like a fish-out-of-water parody, but still the same old Duke, might even be funnier. Kind of like Stallone in Demolition Man.

 

[Balthus Dire]

So the demo finally came out on XBL and I just played through it. Yeah, the graphics are pretty crappy. Yeah, the gameplay mechanics are clunky. But you know what? I laughed my ass off playing it. Listening to Duke's quips and the dialogue of the surrounding characters was great. It definitely seems to retain the spirit of Duke.

I'll be picking it up once the price drops.

 

[jacobed]

Yeah its funny at first but wait til you hear the same thing over and over and over and over again. Becomes quite a bit less funny.

 

[Timstuff]

Also, a lot of people are saying that the hive level is one of the most disturbing things ever put into a video game, and the fact that the writers don't even realize it makes it end up just being out of place and tasteless. Reviewers are pretty much saying it's akin to if in a comedy movie the main character walks in on a child being slapped around by an adult, and instead of being shocked and angered the character says a cheesy one-liner about it that we're supposed to laugh at. Never thought I'd hear people saying that even Duke Nukem needs to draw the line somewhere, but the way this level was handled is apparently that bad.

 

[jacobed]

Really? I didn't think the hive level was disturbing at all.

 

[Why Are You Crouching Spock?]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-07-01-gearbox-discarded-blade-runner-ip

Now they have a critical falure that sold 500k copies (so far).
I hope those sales don't go up. Saying that though, people are running out and buying Homefront and Medal Of Honor on the basis is looks like Call Of Duty so I wouldn't give gamers of today too much faith.

 

[Havok83]

So the demo finally came out on XBL and I just played through it. Yeah, the graphics are pretty crappy. Yeah, the gameplay mechanics are clunky. But you know what? I laughed my ass off playing it. Listening to Duke's quips and the dialogue of the surrounding characters was great. It definitely seems to retain the spirit of Duke.

I'll be picking it up once the price drops.

I thought the level design was pretty awful and archaic

 

[Balthus Dire]

Well, you don't have to buy it then...?

 

[Matt Mortem]

Well my buddy and I rented this today and have been playing the last few hours and are actually having a blast. It's not a perfect game by any means, but I'm honestly having fun playing it. I am pleasantly surprised.