BeyondUnreal Reviews Duke Nukem Forever

  • Two Factor Authentication is now available on BeyondUnreal Forums. To configure it, visit your Profile and look for the "Two Step Verification" option on the left side. We can send codes via email (may be slower) or you can set up any TOTP Authenticator app on your phone (Authy, Google Authenticator, etc) to deliver codes. It is highly recommended that you configure this to keep your account safe.

Jacks:Revenge

╠╣E╚╚O
Jun 18, 2006
10,065
218
63
somewhere; sometime?
are you endorsing drug use?

fuckin' Mormons.
how do they work?

sane-clown-posse-20101001-203455.jpg
 

Grasshopper

New Member
Jan 21, 2008
121
0
0
Upstate NY
Nice read and a really fair review imo. Basically mentioned everything I noticed while playing, pros as well as cons.



I agree. It's simply impossible to live up to this kind of hype. I played the whole game in basically two sittings because it was just fun to play.
One thing that definitely bothered me was the lack of blood decals though. Blood and gore is such an essential part of a Duke game imo and there's lot of it in DNF. But I never got any decals, when I stomped monsters or executed them, or parts of them hit walls... A minor detail, maybe, but there's blood on the camera and all, so...

I can't believe people keep excusing what this game is because of the "hype". The hype is what Gearbox and 2K made it. They created it and blew it way out of proportion to make sales. It's the same thing as the disappointment when UT3 was released. Fans were promised a lot and didn't get it. When you promise great things, people expect great things.
 

Sir_Brizz

Administrator
Staff member
Feb 3, 2000
26,020
83
48
What? Ever since Gearbox took it over, the only "hype" they've been giving the game is that "Duke is back!" That by itself wouldn't cause over a decade of failed dreams.
 

TheIronKnuckle

What the hell is this "ballin" thing?
I can't believe people keep excusing what this game is because of the "hype". The hype is what Gearbox and 2K made it. They created it and blew it way out of proportion to make sales. It's the same thing as the disappointment when UT3 was released. Fans were promised a lot and didn't get it. When you promise great things, people expect great things.

when a game is in dev hell for 13 years I don't really expect much tbh :p
If a game was in truly continuous development for 13 years I would be impressed, but sceptical at how they managed to keep up with technological growth and advancement.
 

Grasshopper

New Member
Jan 21, 2008
121
0
0
Upstate NY
What? Ever since Gearbox took it over, the only "hype" they've been giving the game is that "Duke is back!" That by itself wouldn't cause over a decade of failed dreams.

I you had been following their forums, you would have seen a great deal more hopes raised by them than "Duke is Back". One of their most common quotes was "the greatest game ever".
 

Grobut

Комиссар Гробут
Oct 27, 2004
1,822
0
0
Soviet Denmark
I can't believe people keep excusing what this game is because of the "hype". The hype is what Gearbox and 2K made it. They created it and blew it way out of proportion to make sales. It's the same thing as the disappointment when UT3 was released. Fans were promised a lot and didn't get it. When you promise great things, people expect great things.

Hype wasen't an issue for me, i know that no game can change hands so many times and not have problems as a result. We don't see it often in games, but it happens a lot with movies, where a director will get in a fight with the studio and quit, and then another one takes over, and the end product allways suffers for it.

So yeah, i was fully expecting choppy narritive flow, old assets mixed in with newer assets, probably a bad rushed ending, i knew there would be problems, there simply had to be.


What i was also expecting, however, was a game that was like DN3D, a classic and fun shooter, voiced over by the Duke.

What i was not expecting where all the boring puzzles, the Doom3 style constant monster spawn-in, the boring vehical sections, the even more boring turret sections, the prolonged sections where you never get to shoot anything, all the setpieces of the game that where obviously just copied from other popular games, and just how few jokes the Duke actually makes, and how so many of them falls flat (yeah Duke! make fun of Valve's redundant puzzles! ... wait what, you still expect me to do the damned puzzle? shoulden't this be where you pull out the shotgun and yell "BLOW IT OUT YOUR ARSE!" and destroy it? WTF!?).

I knew the game would probably lack direction, what i did not know was that it would so frequently be, well, boring..

And sure, it has it's good moments too, thouse mostly beeing the ones that are like the old DN3D game with some honest to tits action, but you have to wade through a lot of dull and boring gameplay between thease sections.
 

Eyuva 'S' NRG

dont mess with the toilet monster
Apr 27, 2000
330
0
0
Toilet
Visit site
I think it was slammed because it's a game that feels, plays, looks and is clearly designed around 2004. Half Life 2 would take the same beating if it were released today. The game mechanics people are used to today are much more streamlined than they were back then and the game just doesn't feel that "good" for 2011.

Now, comparing it to games in 2004, it would have been pretty good...

As per what? Comparing Unreal Tournament - released in 1999 to games in 2011 - The original owns almost anything released in the past 3 years, except maybe Starcraft 2, but thats an RTS, not an FPS. So Duke Nukem Forever looking like it was released in 2004 is hardly a drawback.

I don't care if it has whizz bang super matrix style effects - that doesn't matter. As long as its a good game I don't care. M.U.L.E. is a good game. It was released in 1984 with the most basic of graphics. Yet, it is still a good game.
 

Sir_Brizz

Administrator
Staff member
Feb 3, 2000
26,020
83
48
As per what? Comparing Unreal Tournament - released in 1999 to games in 2011 - The original owns almost anything released in the past 3 years, except maybe Starcraft 2, but thats an RTS, not an FPS.
UT also costs like $10 and a large part of why it stands up so well is nostalgia. Aside from that, UT is not single player and thus cannot suffer from the problems DNF does.
So Duke Nukem Forever looking like it was released in 2004 is hardly a drawback.

I don't care if it has whizz bang super matrix style effects - that doesn't matter. As long as its a good game I don't care. M.U.L.E. is a good game. It was released in 1984 with the most basic of graphics. Yet, it is still a good game.
Nobody else cares about that either. A single player FPS feeling and playing like it was released in 2004, with the added issue of looking that old AND the added issue of also feeling like a video tour through FPS gaming history over the last 12 years really hamper the game's overall quality. Is it the worst game ever made? No. But it's not the best and some people won't find it very entertaining.
 

WedgeBob

XSI Mod Tool User
Nov 12, 2008
619
5
18
Cleveland, OH, USA
I think the game was mostly slammed just for not living up to 13 years of hype. It's hardly a bad game, and it makes you laugh. It's not an amazing game, but I don't feel it deserves the panning the press is giving.

This is true...sure it wasn't worth getting the Balls of Steel Edition for, which I almost did, but at the last minute, I canceled the BoSE package and went straight for a Steam direct download instead, which wound up being the better move, imo.

Needless to say, it is pretty good, but I still find myself reverting back to the EDuke32 community and supporting the growth of Duke 3D modding. Seems like more people are more likely to follow the EDuke32 community rather than supporting DNF any further.
 

DarkEmperor

Buried By The Dead
Mar 22, 2002
192
1
18
Visit site
^^yeah the DLC is more action packed and the flow is better, so are the characters, Duke's acting and the setting. Of course you could get it later 'cause it's not included in those sales yet. (still fresh stuff)

About DNF. If you get over of some of the bullshit it can be enjoyable. Enable 4-weapons inventory for that matter and you 'd better stick to those 4 weapons (for example shotgun, Ripper, BFG/Devastator, shrinker) cause changing weapons all the time can be very frustrating with their system. And disabling post processing effects I'd say because there is no option yet for disabling DoF while keeping the other effects. DoF is really overdone and while you could disable it via console command in the initial release, they 've locked it after the patch. But overall it's a fun game with a lot of variety in the gameplay. And run & gun helps in that aspect too.
 
Last edited: