Duke Nukem Forever Reviews

[nELsOn]

So Gearbox officially owns the rights to Duke Nukem now, yes?
Seeing that the game ended as it did I'm really curious if they're going to make another Duke game. Maybe a reboot cause those things seem to be rather popular lately. And I wouldn't mind playing something like Duke Nukem Begins or so, either

 

[Maximus2003]

Just thought I'd paste my thoughts here:

The Good
- The game has its moments, there are some missions that I found enjoyable, there was a dessert driving mission which I enjoyed.
- There are babes
- Big bosses to fight.
- Nice to have the original Duke voice.
- Once you have finished the game some additional content unlocks, such as cheat modes, artwork, etc. I think that is actually quite a nice touch and I wish more games would do this.

The Bad
- Artwork and other assets that date back to 2004 makes the game look very dated. Some scenes just looks terrible.
- The game starts off slow and boring, even the action bored me. To be honest I pretty much hated the first 1.5 hours of play, after that it starts picking up a bit.
- There are a lot of "grind" missions, missions that are too hard and too dull and makes it feel more than work than fun.
- The humour that made the original Duke Nukem 3D game funny, doesn't have the same punch any more.
- There is an unfinished feel to the game and it definitely lacks some spit and polish. The strange thing is that they finished the single player part in 2010 already and was working on the console versions and multiplayer only the last few months.
- You have to kill most bosses more than once.
- The game has these moments of terrible performance when the frame rate drops and the whole game becomes sluggish.
- The fact that you can only carry two weapons at a time is kind of stupid, especially in a game such as DNF.
- Slow loading times, especially if the game was shut down and you start up and load the campaign. At one point the game took 3 minutes to load a mission, I restarted the game and all was fine again.
- Extremely linear level designs. If you want to go linear without the game feeling too linear I think the Crysis 2 design got it down pretty well.

Conclusion
This game would have been great if it was released back in 2004, in the end it was an ok, albeit very linear FPS game. There are some in the community who really enjoyed it so there is still some hope for those who would like to play as Duke Nukem once again. I personally would recommend that you wait until the game lands up in the bargain bin before you get it.

My Score
6.5/10

 

[Bgood]

Sounds like one for the heavily discounted Steam sale.

On the wider point on linearity ,noticing it a lot . I'd guess the main problem is dumbing down through bad feedback. They bring in a bunch of noob players and play test a game that's in development for a day or two. If any of these get stuck, just once, they modify the game to make whatever they're struggling with easier for these casuals. These decisions suck. Look at Portal 2, as I read in a review somewhere; you get the impression that if one of their play testers so much as looked at a wall for ten seconds they'd decided to stick a big direction sign on it. Brink's auto jump/climb, ironically called SMART lol.

This is why imo, we all look back on early games with great fondness-games that didn't sign post everything and actually trusted players intelligence by demanding commitment to a learning curve. The sad thing is Epic seem to be going down this, 'make it easy for play testing casuals' route too. If we ever get another UT it'll probably have full auto aim and no dodge at all.

I don't thing games should be made artificially difficult ,but they shouldn't be made artificially easy either ,as we've seen lately.

As for consolization, well this ties in with the above - rant over .

 

[Sjosz]

You know what? I'm only a couple hours in (at the third Lady Killer level), but so far the game is really not as terrible as a lot of reviews make it out to be. I'm sure there will be terrible parts down the line, and the game does a lot of bad things, but I sat through a good part of what I've played so far thinking some of it is neat.

 

[Plumb_Drumb]

you know, it's mostly the twelve year olds that claim this is the game aimed at twelve year olds.

 

[Bgood]

What's not known is how much of it Gearbox was 'handed' and how much is Gearbox's own content. The full price does seem high though, for any game built on UE2.5 in 2011. Of course that could be forgiven if it were stellar otherwise, but you read a lot of complaints in the reviews about its linear levels.

 

[Maximus2003]

You know what? I'm only a couple hours in (at the third Lady Killer level), but so far the game is really not as terrible as a lot of reviews make it out to be. I'm sure there will be terrible parts down the line, and the game does a lot of bad things, but I sat through a good part of what I've played so far thinking some of it is neat.

If you didn't find the start of the game that bad then it is good as the rest of the game is better than the start imho.

What's not known is how much of it Gearbox was 'handed' and how much is Gearbox's own content. The full price does seem high though, for any game built on UE2.5 in 2011. Of course that could be forgiven if it were stellar otherwise, but you read a lot of complaints in the reviews about its linear levels.

I'm thinking they got handed a massive amount of work. When you unlock the extra's when finishing the game you get to see some of the artwork, 3D models, etc. The artwork and 3D models are date stamped and lots of it comes all the way from 2004. It is almost like Gearbox wanted us to know that, "hey guys, it is not all our fault that the game looks so dated". And that is why I won't criticize them too much either.

 

[Capt.Toilet]

- The game has these moments of terrible performance when the frame rate drops and the whole game becomes sluggish.

I am assuming you were playing the pc version correct? The PC demo had this same exact problem, most notably in the beginning bathroom segment, and the hallway leading to the boss before it caved in. Was hoping the bad performance was because the demo was so old.

 

[hal]

What's not known is how much of it Gearbox was 'handed' and how much is Gearbox's own content. The full price does seem high though, for any game built on UE2.5 in 2011. Of course that could be forgiven if it were stellar otherwise, but you read a lot of complaints in the reviews about its linear levels.

My understanding from reading dev quotes is that Gearbox simply polished and executed the design that was in place. MP was largely done by Tryptich Games.

I read plenty of complaints about linear levels, but singleplayer games that do not follow the sandbox mode are all pretty much linear. Even DN3D, which everyone fondly remembers as an open-world was really pretty linear too when you get down to it. I think of a game as linear to a fault if it gives the player nothing to explore. DNF does have a small bit of exploration, so it isn't the shooter on rails that I've heard some reviewers call it.

 

[Plumb_Drumb]

I have never thought of DN3D as open world, even in the slightest.

I mean, not at all.

 

[StalwartUK]

There is a bit of difference between a game like Duke 3D that allows you to explore the level and a pipe shooter like CoD that railroads you to a single path that gives you little oppourtunity to explore.

 

[Northrawn]

I have never thought of DN3D as open world, even in the slightest.

I mean, not at all.

But it was the opposite of being linear.

You start with a linear path (the linear vent from the roof's house). From therre it is your choice to complete the level in hundreds of different possible ways.

Nothing wrong with bottlenecks that are there to show of some cutscenes or whatever. And I also like rooms that you cannot leave without killing a sequence of enemies ... but DNF is an on rails shooter (but you can move a little to the left and right on the bandwagon).

 

[Leo(T.C.K.)]

DNF doesn't have savegems. So DNF wins from Daikatana.

You know that the savegems can be turned off? Besides they had that feature mainly planned for the playstation version, which never came out.

Still I will stand up for Daikatana, the fact that most of you seem to prefer DNF over Daikatana just because of stupid reasons is that.

Because DNF is a worse game imo (and took more than decade to get it released, sheesh), Daikatana is more oldskool gameplay than DNF. And the multiplayer was really blast. Many people preferred it over the buggy singleplayer experience. Sure there is some lag sometimes, but it more depends on the server. You can also play it without lag and the hit detection is better than Quake 2 for example. In Quake 2 when you fire rocketlauncher it fires where you had your crosshair before, like two seconds ago, delay like that, I never had the same problem in DK despite the fact that downloading off DK servers is not allowed for some reason, which sucks and you always must have custom maps installed.

I think the fact that DNF may be accepted better than DK is the fact that it's Duke Nukem game and that this is in the modern era, where many have been used to the fact that games suck for most part these days. And also that Romero wasn't involved, since people wanted Daikatana to fail, many of the reviewers even admitted it, that they wanted to fail it so badly and wanted to give it low score no matter what, just to show their middle finger to Romero, because of the ad campaign and hype, that he was himself victim of.

And of course those graphic whores, you now see everyone complain about DNF graphics as it was when they complained about Daikatana when it came out. It's running on modified UE 2.5 btw, not UE 3.

 

[KDR_11k]

I'm sure Gearbox will create a Duke Nukem and Claptrap buddy cop game.

Duke may be outdated and lame but he's not remotely as annoying as a claptrap.

 

[Grasshopper]

Why does this game is topseller in the UK for example after the demo was out. It is top seller on Steam, Amazon, Gamestop ... all after the demo.

Oh, yes ... now I remeber. The last time people with brains listened to reviewers was when there was not internet and we had to buy magazines that covered games ... and demos were something of two years in the future.

Reviews are only opinions that in my experience matter as much about a game as the opinion of that homeless dude under the bridge over there. But then he mostly has more insight and intelligence than 99.96% reviewers out there ... and I am not talking about the DNF review.

The reason sales are so high is, everyone had to buy it in pre order to get the demo. If they had been allowed to get their hands on the demo before , the sales would have been much lower. They will never release the demo to the general public now because sales would suffer more.

I don't know when you will see modding. There is no editor now and none promised for the future. They even removed the console because it was too easily exploited.

As for the hype making expectations too high, all of that was created and inflated by Gearbox and 2K. They pretty much shot themselves in the foot. People expected a lot because they were promised a lot.

 

[Grasshopper]

So Gearbox officially owns the rights to Duke Nukem now, yes?
Seeing that the game ended as it did I'm really curious if they're going to make another Duke game. Maybe a reboot cause those things seem to be rather popular lately. And I wouldn't mind playing something like Duke Nukem Begins or so, either

I'm thinking they picked up this bag of feces for a good price knowing that with little work and slick marketing, there was money to be made. Most of what was released was done six years ago. Since performance sucks and multiplayer is unplayable, what did Gearbox and 2K do all of this time. They got a lot of people to buy this game and Borderlands by promising them first access to the demo. (one week before release, BFD) They will make a few bucks, but, I wouldn't count much on support or sequels. These snake oil salesmen are going to laugh all the way to the bank.

 

[Grobut]

I read plenty of complaints about linear levels, but singleplayer games that do not follow the sandbox mode are all pretty much linear. Even DN3D, which everyone fondly remembers as an open-world was really pretty linear too when you get down to it. I think of a game as linear to a fault if it gives the player nothing to explore. DNF does have a small bit of exploration, so it isn't the shooter on rails that I've heard some reviewers call it.

Sandbox? Who in their right mind would call D3D a "sandbox" or "open world" game?

But that said, D3D was not a wholly linear game either, it would very frequently present you with alternate paths to take. It often required knowing a secret, a wall you could blow up or a hidden switch, but the choice was there when you found it.

And much like Unreal, it's one of thouse games that never seemed linear even when it technically was, and that's really hard to quantify and explain, but some games can pull it off, and others cannot.

 

[SkaarjMaster]

So I guess I couldn't try the demo if I wanted to then..........starting to lean toward not getting this game now.

 

[KaiserWarrior]

5.5/10 to 6/10 for me so far, about halfway through the game. Note that I don't use stupid skewed scores where an 8 is "average", I really mean out of ten.

Game is a competent shooter with the Duke style laid over it, with somewhat outdated graphics. I never expected it to be anything more than that -- Duke 3D was honestly just a Doom clone that let you pee in toilets and look at bad textures of risque posters. The Duke character was what made that game, and it's what makes this game. People that don't like the Duke character as much as they used to will probably take it for the mediocre game it is.

Honestly, if the game had come out as a budget title, say $30, I think it would have been much better received. People are trashing it, which is a shame because there really are far, FAR worse pieces of shit out there, it's just that these days FPSes are ginormous Bigger-Than-Hollywood clusterfucks of cash from ultra-big-name developers/publishers. In that environment, DNF can't compete.

But it's good for what it was trying to be: a modest slice of 90s nostalgia. The fact that you can now actually play Balls of Steel ("Now I DO have time to play with myself!") sets the tone of the game, IMO.

 

[hal]

The reason sales are so high is, everyone had to buy it in pre order to get the demo.

Since performance sucks and multiplayer is unplayable, what did Gearbox and 2K do all of this time.

I'd be willing to bet most people got into the demo through Borderlands as it was wildly popular. I think maybe one other person on my Steam friends' list pre-ordered the game.

Gearbox starting working on it last year. They just executed the plan. Be mad at them for the promises made about the game, but not for what it is.

Sandbox? Who in their right mind would call D3D a "sandbox" or "open world" game?

But that said, D3D was not a wholly linear game either, it would very frequently present you with alternate paths to take. It often required knowing a secret, a wall you could blow up or a hidden switch, but the choice was there when you found it.

And much like Unreal, it's one of thouse games that never seemed linear even when it technically was, and that's really hard to quantify and explain, but some games can pull it off, and others cannot.

I don't mean in a strict sense. I'm just talking about the few multiple pathways to the same door that everyone remembers as being incredibly non-linear.

Honestly, if the game had come out as a budget title, say $30, I think it would have been much better received. People are trashing it, which is a shame because there really are far, FAR worse pieces of shit out there, it's just that these days FPSes are ginormous Bigger-Than-Hollywood clusterfucks of cash from ultra-big-name developers/publishers. In that environment, DNF can't compete.

I do agree. Gearbox and 3DR just oversold the product big-time.