Slashdot Mirror
Ars Technica Review Slams Duke Nukem Forever
Kethinov writes "Ars Technica writes one of their most negative reviews of a game in a long time, referring to Duke Nukem Forever as 'barely playable' and 'one of the worst games from a major studio in quite some time. The jokes border on hateful. The graphics are a blurry mess. The shooting is unsatisfying.' Their verdict? Skip this one."
Really? Was there any doubt?
That game map in the review is indeed damning...
...that the whole point was that it actually was planned to be a joke, hence, "Forever", and that they weren't supposed to be working on it for real. Their only task was to load the 3d rendering program and to build another fake "screenshot" with some new changes to the old "screenshot" so that it looked like they were doing something.
They could have milked this another 20 years if they'd been smart, but NO, they had to go and actually try to build the thing...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Read the review. He didn't say it didn't live up to the hype, he said it was a terrible game. The humour is not risque, it's just offensive. The gameplay was tedious, a cover-based shooter, but without any support for cover except walking around a corner. The levels were linear and unimaginative. The one good point he identified in the game was that it was short.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Hype? More like "running joke". DNF wasn't hyped so much as it was ridiculed and made the butt of jokes.
And not in a good way, either.
...we should wait for the sequel then ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6MjzgTZriw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5Yngipvz6M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q86vWgaLuwE
watch in that order, and you will see about a first couple of hours of gameplay along with the reviewer's impressions. Saved me some time otherwise possibly spent downloading and trying the game myself (let alone buying it).
Duke Nukem Forever is the kind of game where you find a pack of cigarettes whose cover shows a mustached man wearing leather—and they're called "Faggs."
I heard that Ewe Boll will be directing the feature film... [ducks]
Actually, stupid stuff like that is what you would want a Duke Nukem game to be. However most of the stuff is simply over the top while throughout the rest of the game it doesn't even involve any funniness nor keeping the old gameplay or even broad levels around. It has become a very linear, boring shooter.
TotalBiscuit said it best when he said: they kept all the bad stuff from old DOS games and all the bad stuff from new shooters and added it together. They made Duke an old man that can't jump, can't hold more than 2 guns and needs assistance in every fight.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Yes, IGN with a 5.5 seems to be one of the more generous scores - and IGN tend to "mark high" anyway. That's not a criticism of IGN - their scale is internally consistent and I know that a 5.5 from them is actually really quite bad.
I've posted my own review of DNF in my journal and basically agree with the overall consensus - that this is a really bad game.
I see comments below a lot of the reviews on the major sites defending the game, claiming that the reviewers are holding it up to unfair standards due to its development time. This isn't true. It's just a bad game which is not fun. If you compare it to any current major fps, it is horribly lacking. If you compare it against the better fpses from 5 years ago, it is horribly lacking. In many ways, it is horribly lacking compared to its own predecessor; Duke Nukem 3d.
Interesting to note that the console versions are being slammed even more than the PC versions. The Eurogamer "face-off" comparison made it clear that there is a clear hierarchy to the versions. The PC version is the best, though still desperately ugly. The PS3 version lacks some of what passes for graphical polish in the PC version. The 360 version is horribly, horribly broken. That's extremely unusual for an Unreal engine game, where the 360 would normally be expected to outperform the PS3.
One is only allowed to insult white males of Western European heritage - because they are an evil blight upon Gaia.
And if they're Christians, you're even allowed to burn them alive.
As long as you pay for your carbon credits.
You know what? Under other circumstances I'd agree with you.
However, having actually played through the "alien hive" level mentioned in the review, I can't actually think of a better description of it. As the Ars Technica review states, that level made me feel almost physically dirty. Not in a good way, like after making an uncomfortable neutral or "dark side" choice in one of the better RPGs, but rather in a "I really wish I had never had to play that and never want to play it again" way.
This is state of most modern games.
Overglossy graphics, crappy game play, rollercoaster ride.
Look at the map comparison between Duke 3D and Forever. The sad part? It's like that between all games from the 90's compared to now.
Games that you used to have an openish enviroment, are all now rollercoastered.
Games you used to play for 20+ hours, are all 4-6 hours now.
This is what happens when you get big corporations running the show. and of course, Hollywoodizing crap. Let's make it shiny and expensive, but not give any value. (it's like going from the great black & white movies, to the trashy color movies that came out).
ya, Duke Nukem Forever is a crappy game, should of never been made. But it's actually a shining example of the current gaming industry and what they think about their customers.
Be seeing you...
can't hold more than 2 guns and needs assistance in every fight
I'm starting to miss some of the old shooters due to this. Ammo hoarding and hidden super-weapon hunting were quite fun back in the day. Would be nice to see some games stop following the "realistic" formula and bring back the "arsenal on back" model. It's always satisfying to run into a new room, take a look over the enemies, and grin as you pull the perfect gun for the job out. To quote Unreal 2, "Show me the crowd pleaser."
Fear is the mind killer.
I see comments below a lot of the reviews on the major sites defending the game, claiming that the reviewers are holding it up to unfair standards due to its development time.
PCGAMER gave it an 80%, giving it leniency for the years of development. If a car was 14 years in a development and came out at full price and didnt have an engine then I cant give it leniency when it cant compete with anything else on the market.
I hadn't spotted the PCGAMER review. That was a good, decent thing they did there, giving DNF 80%. They've sent out a nice clear signal that I should absolutely never let any of their reviews factor into a purchasing decision. Good of them to give me a warning like that, wasn't it? Refreshingly honest, in a curious way.
This is not an 80% game. Five years ago, it might just about have been a 50% game. In fact, even that's generous. Resistance: Fall of Man is a vaguely similar fps which launched with the PS3 around 5 years ago and it is infinitely superior to DNF in every conceivable way.
I'm the last person who should be defending this game as I've been taking the piss out of it for 5 years. I've never been a fanboy of the sequel, never did I have confidence it would ever deliver anything at all. I liked the original as a teenager but that's about it.
Regardless though, I've nearly finished the game (Australia, we got it 4 days early) and I can say if you liked the original game, this is a fantastic melding of the original and modern day gameplay. This game is getting slammed far far too excessively.
I guess it was to be expected - but I personally went in expecting garbage and got a half decent game. It's certainly better than diluted trash like Crysis 2.
The game is a little obnoxious for the PC types but you know that going in to it, you wouldn't go to see Fast and the Furious 5 to expect high quality cinema. This game is trashy, dumb - yet quite fun, it's a guilty pleasure for my childish side and honestly the core gameplay itself? It's really fairly decent.
The graphics while not top of the line (quite bad in spots) are also quite GOOD in other places, several scenes I've been outright surprised at how good they are.
If you played the original game and you're in the 27 -> 45 age group with any sense of nostalgia, try it out with an open mind. Don't expect some thick storyline, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. I know I was.
P.S no it's not perfect, some scenes are frustrating in difficulty or not funny - but all games have low spots, overall, it's not even 1/3 as bad as some of these people are saying.
It sounds like it could have used some more time in development...
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
They were mainly bitching because the jokes weren't funny and it's true. Just because a joke is offensive does not automatically make it funny nor when someone finds that offensive joke to be unfunny it means they are hypersensitive. It can truly be possible for offensive jokes to just purely be unfunny and that's unfortunately how the jokes are in DNF.
Your argument(and SMBC's) on offensiveness is correct in a narrowly specific way; but much less so in a contextually useful one:
Obviously, what different people take offense at varies; but, at a population level, you can categorize and quantify to a reasonably useful extent. At that point, you can, in fact, come up with an "offensiveness" metric relative to a given assumed audience for something. If your assumed audience is sufficiently broad, you can omit specific mention of the assumed audience and let context carry the load for you. There is certainly room for rhetorical chicanery, as with many ambiguous areas of natural language; but that doesn't equate to meaninglessness.
Saying "thing X is offensive" is somewhat analogous to saying "humans are bipedal". In strict point of fact, there are counterexamples. People exist with zero, one, very occasionally more than two, legs and there are a few specimens who walk on all fours. Implicitly, we are treating those as anomalies outside the universe of discourse when we say that. Similarly, there are almost certainly who find gunning down alien-rape victims as they plead inoffensive. However, the reviewer(correctly or not) is implicitly arguing that they are an anomaly among the audience of the review. Now, as noted, "offensiveness" leaves room for chicanery, and you can also make "thing X is offensive" statements that implicitly argue for a highly unrealistic audience sample; but that just makes you wrong or dishonest, rather than "offensiveness" as a metric meaningless.
There is ONE huge problem with Duke Nukem Forever and nobody seems to get it.
What is a PC game done being reviewed on a console?
Lots of weapons? Do you remember how you selected them? That is right with the row of number keys. Easy and fast to select a weapon. Can't do that on the console. THAT is why Halo has a two gun limit, because the x-box controller lacks a means to very quickly switch weapons.
Same with the inventory items, you can't use half a dozen inventory items on a console, so they limit it.
Duke Nukem Forever just shows just what consoles have removed from games. Checkpoints? For the Duke? That nobody evens cries out about this horrow shows how much we have lost.
Is it any wonder they added poop slinging? It is the level a console player would enjoy.
The Duke is dead, the consoles killed him.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.