# Duke Nukem Forever is DONE bitches!

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/duke-nukem-forever-is-done-bitches/568454>\
**Category:** The Game Room\
**Created:** [January 21, 2011, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/duke-nukem-forever-is-done-bitches/568454 "2011-01-21T15:53:12Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 20\
**Page:** 6

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\
**Post date:** [June 7, 2011, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/duke-nukem-forever-is-done-bitches/568454/101 "2011-06-07T02:06:17Z")

</div>

> [@](#):
>
> Here is my suggestion for the lead actor:  
> [http://thegamingliberty.com/wp-conte...ads/DUKE3d.jpg](http://thegamingliberty.com/wp-conte...ads/DUKE3d.jpg)
> 
> [StockExaminer - AI-Powered Stock Chatbot](http://cdn2-b.examiner.com/sites/def...lman06TIFF.jpg)

I dunno; [this guy](http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0439.html) might work, too.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![D\_Odds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/d_odds/32/2882_2.png) [@D\_Odds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/D_Odds)\
**Post date:** [June 7, 2011, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/duke-nukem-forever-is-done-bitches/568454/102 "2011-06-07T03:29:57Z")

</div>

> [@MichaelEmouse](#):
>
> I hope they make such a movie and forego the bubblegum.  
> Here is my suggestion for the lead actor:  
> [http://thegamingliberty.com/wp-content/uploads/DUKE3d.jpg](http://thegamingliberty.com/wp-content/uploads/DUKE3d.jpg)
> 
> [StockExaminer - AI-Powered Stock Chatbot](http://cdn2-b.examiner.com/sites/default/files/styles/image_full_width/hash/e1/2f/492px-RonPerlman06TIFF.jpg)

At 61, I don’t think Perlman could pull it off. 12 years ago - definitely.

And while “haters will hate” will not defend _everything_, there will always be a small group of reviewers of any game who will hate for one of two reasons - either (1) they didn’t really like the game, or (2) they want to show that they are aloof because they don’t like something popular. My haphazard guess is that poor user reviews of an otherwise highly reviewed game split this 50/50. [I have no idea who this TotalBiscuit reviewer is; I have no idea what his or her reviewing history is; I have no intentions on viewing the review or researching the history. I am not opining on his or her review.]

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![amanset](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8dc957/32.png) [@amanset](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amanset)\
**Post date:** [June 7, 2011, 8:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/duke-nukem-forever-is-done-bitches/568454/103 "2011-06-07T08:23:17Z")

</div>

I don’t expect much from it as frankly, the original wasn’t all that cop. And yes, I bought it and played it when it came out. I even created levels with that Build (right name?) engine thing.

The limitations of the engine were already showing as Quake Test got released around the same time. It was a fairly generic shooter with some added lines ripped off of cult movies and a sprinkling of misogyny. There was no actual good game there and I really doubt there will be with DNF.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\
**Post date:** [June 8, 2011, 3:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/duke-nukem-forever-is-done-bitches/568454/104 "2011-06-08T03:52:35Z")

</div>

Is there a release date for the Lego version yet?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Face\_Intentionally\_Left\_Blank](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/face_intentionally_left_blank/32/288_2.png) [@Face\_Intentionally\_Left\_Blank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Face_Intentionally_Left_Blank)\
**Post date:** [June 8, 2011, 10:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/duke-nukem-forever-is-done-bitches/568454/105 "2011-06-08T10:44:25Z")

</div>

I’ve played through the demo. Um. . .yeah. It’s. . .well, not great.

I played the hell out of Duke 3D. Me and my dumbass friends would put on fake Duke voices and over-react to stuff just to be silly.

“Pass me a ketchup packet.”  
“Sorry, I just used the last one.”  
“DAMMIT! I’M GONNA RIP OFF YOUR HEAD AND SHIT DOWN YOUR NECK!”

A scratch on my car? “THOSE ALIEN BASTARDS ARE GONNA PAY FOR DINGING UP MY RIDE!”

Sadly, we were in our 20’s. Late 20’s. Like 31. (sigh) Point is, I was a fan. The demo wasn’t horrible. Better than _Daikatana_, I suppose, but what isn’t? The humor didn’t really work for me - maybe because movie and gaming culture has worn it out. Maybe because I’ve seen/heard most of the one-liners before. Maybe because I finally grew the fuck up, despite my best efforts. I dunno.

The graphics were reasonable. Decent. Fine. I don’t think they were an issue. Duke isn’t a game you want in the latest, photorealistic engine. It’s a cartoon in spirit, and it should look like one. The levels were not that interesting to me, and I found myself confused as to where to go a couple times. I seem to recall I had this problem a few times in the original as well. Perhaps that’s part of the Duke experience - having to puzzle out where to go next. That’s not too common in modern FPS games, where you’re often on a rail, or the design makes it fairly clear where to go.

Duke jumps like my 74-year-old mother. Only being able to carry two weapons meant I was looking to keep the most effective long-range and short-range weapons. I disregarded the shrink-ray, which is a shame, 'cause, you know, _shrink-ray!_ The old Duke 3D only allowed 2 weapons as well, as I recall. And as for the weapons, what I saw were pretty much the same things from Duke 3D. They’re kinda boring now, except for the shrink-ray, which I don’t think is ever getting old.

In fact, I think, “kinda boring” applies to the whole experience. I didn’t get much in the way of laughs or excitement out of it. I just pushed through to see what happened next, and it wasn’t any more interesting than what I’d already seen. There was a mine cart sequence which might have been fun if it lasted more then 5 seconds. The driving sequence, while short, was really quite poor. Hope there isn’t much more of that.

Anyway, no freakin’ way am I gonna pay $45 or $50 for it. Figure I might get it for under $10 during the 2012 Christmas sale on Steam, and I’m pretty sure that’s gonna happen, if not earlier. From what I saw in the demo, it’s a great game - if it had been released 8 or 9 years ago. They should have been satisfied with the Unreal Tournament engine and just released the damn thing.

Come to think of it, maybe Daikatana had more of legacy than DN: Forever will. At least someone made this out of the game’s dialogue:

[![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/y8SC7z8W134/hqdefault.jpg "Superfly's Johnson (Suck it Down)") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8SC7z8W134)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Rigamarole](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/77aa72/32.png) [@Rigamarole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rigamarole)\
**Post date:** [June 9, 2011, 8:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/duke-nukem-forever-is-done-bitches/568454/106 "2011-06-09T08:37:02Z")

</div>

I don’t actually care about playing the game either, but my jaw literally dropped when I saw an ad for it on South Park Studios’ web site saying it will be _in stores_ in a few days. I mean, it’ll actually _be there, in the store_! I might just go to a store somewhere so I can look at it and take a picture or something as a souvenir.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\
**Post date:** [June 9, 2011, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/duke-nukem-forever-is-done-bitches/568454/107 "2011-06-09T21:35:05Z")

</div>

Carrying two weapons is lame. There are novelty weapons in duke that aren’t that effective but can be fun to use - but when you can only carry 2 weapons you tend to pick the most efficient weapons, which will leave a lot of weapons useless.

One of the dnf devs:

> [@](#):
>
> Yeah, blame us for it if you want. It may change in the future and I don’t know what will happen with it, but it was us. I stand by it too, as you cannot discount designing games for a modern world and part of that world is consoles where the bulk of the sales can be. And on those consoles you have a controller. We tried for a long time to support lots of guns but we simply could not find a nice way to map it to a controller, despite trying 4-5 designs. We gave it enough time and decided to stop swimming against the current and adopt what was basically the “standard”. It’s not 1996 anymore

GROW UP! THE WORLD HAS CHANGED SO MUCH SINCE 1996! WE NO LONGER HAVE THE ABILITY TO HAVE LOTS OF CONTROLS!

PROGRESS!!!

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Jragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)\
**Post date:** [June 9, 2011, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/duke-nukem-forever-is-done-bitches/568454/108 "2011-06-09T22:33:47Z")

</div>

Bwah? They can’t figure out how to have multiple weapons easily? Isn’t Half-Life 2 one of the highest rated, best selling games of all time? You have approximately 8 bajillion weapons today AND it’s been on modern consoles.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Hoopy\_Frood](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hoopy_frood/32/8452_2.png) [@Hoopy\_Frood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hoopy_Frood)\
**Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 3:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/duke-nukem-forever-is-done-bitches/568454/109 "2011-06-10T03:10:38Z")

</div>

I played Bioshock on 360. I had no issues at all controlling multiple weapons and plasmids. Though, admittedly a keyboard would have been more useful. (Though, my PC at the time could never have handled Bioshock.)

Really the argument is ridiculous.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\
**Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/duke-nukem-forever-is-done-bitches/568454/110 "2011-06-10T03:25:41Z")

</div>

OK, so you have two “ready” weapons, and then you can go into a menu on the pause screen to swap out which two those are. How hard is that? I mean, whenever you find a new weapon, there has to be some sort of interface where you decide if you’re going to keep it, and if so, which weapon it replaces. Just let the player do that at any time, not just when you find a new weapon.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Palooka](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/palooka/32/2902_2.png) [@Palooka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Palooka)\
**Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/duke-nukem-forever-is-done-bitches/568454/111 "2011-06-10T03:30:38Z")

</div>

How did Orange Box on PS3/360 handle the weapon switch?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\
**Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 3:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/duke-nukem-forever-is-done-bitches/568454/112 "2011-06-10T03:41:57Z")

</div>

Plenty of games have had more than 2 weapons I’d imagine so it’s not impossible obviously. But usually they’re pretty slow and clunky, pulling up a menu and selecting one, and they wanted to keep it a fast paced game.

Then again, if they wanted a fast paced game, I’m not sure they’d give Duke 20 yards of sprint time, or put in a fucking regenerating health system that slows the game down. Seriously, does fucking everything have to have regenerating health now?

What’s even dumber is that Duke doesn’t have health, he has “ego”, and he can refill his ego bar by doing cool stuff like making brutal kills in certain ways (so I’ve heard). Which actually might’ve been an interesting mechanic - instead of having regenning health or health kits, have the only way the player can regenerate health be that they have to do something awesome to get it.

It seems like they might’ve been on that path, and then halfway over just said yeah actually fuck it let’s just be like every other FPS and added regeneration.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Palooka](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/palooka/32/2902_2.png) [@Palooka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Palooka)\
**Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 3:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/duke-nukem-forever-is-done-bitches/568454/113 "2011-06-10T03:51:12Z")

</div>

I like the Ego stuff and regenerative health in general. It makes it feel more like an action movie where you’re the hero enduring pain instead of being damaged. Regenerative health is great in like MW and other multiplayer games since it prevents people from slowly wearing you down, so it’s about who is better for each gun fight. Kind of like TAM mixed with deathmatch.

But after watching some live streams of DNF from the Australia leak/early release, this game looks terrible. It takes like 40 seconds to respawn if you die, which is insane. The AI is terrible with Pig Cops shooting walls for no reason. There are long empty periods. Cancel your pre-orders before it’s too late! Not that people should be pre-ordering in this age of digital distribution in the first place for exactly this reason.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\
**Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/duke-nukem-forever-is-done-bitches/568454/114 "2011-06-10T04:22:21Z")

</div>

I would’ve thought you’d have been more of an old school health kit kind of guy, if only because of the tactics in strategy of map control/prediction/etc that comes with it.

[This](http://gfmreviews.blogspot.com/2011/06/problem-with-modern-shooters.html) lays out a decent case that regenning health is boring. It incentivizes slow and cautious play because you can always pop under a rock and be good as new. It takes away the thrill of being low on health and not knowing when you’ll get the next batch. It also reduces the importance of screwing up and getting hit - any hit that doesn’t kill you in a regenerating health situation is no big deal, you’ll be back to new in 3 seconds. Whereas with non-regenerating health, the hits that don’t kill you matter - they’ll wear you down and gradually reduce your chance at success - getting hit becomes a real problem even if it doesn’t kill you, which incentivizes better play and generally makes your actions more important.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Palooka](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/palooka/32/2902_2.png) [@Palooka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Palooka)\
**Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 5:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/duke-nukem-forever-is-done-bitches/568454/115 "2011-06-10T05:01:36Z")

</div>

I like the health kit system too. Both systems have merit. I don’t know about that article. I know that in health kit games, I’ve been forced into save/load situations 'cause I was playing terrible. That sucks too.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\
**Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 9:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/duke-nukem-forever-is-done-bitches/568454/116 "2011-06-10T09:35:33Z")

</div>

Okay. It’s now out. Anyone played it?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\
**Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 10:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/duke-nukem-forever-is-done-bitches/568454/117 "2011-06-10T10:53:31Z")

</div>

> [@Quartz](#):
>
> Okay. It’s now out. Anyone played it?

It comes out on Tuesday.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\
**Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/duke-nukem-forever-is-done-bitches/568454/118 "2011-06-10T16:12:50Z")

</div>

Regenerating health _can_ be good. It worked well in Portal, because it took the emphasis of the game off of combat, and it was never meant to be a combat game. But if it has the same effect in DNF, well, what’s left _besides_ combat? Just a long series of interactive juvenile potty jokes?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\
**Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/duke-nukem-forever-is-done-bitches/568454/119 "2011-06-10T21:43:12Z")

</div>

> [@Justin\_Bailey](#):
>
> It comes out on Tuesday.

In America. In much of the rest of the world, it came out today.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\
**Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/duke-nukem-forever-is-done-bitches/568454/120 "2011-06-10T21:45:18Z")

</div>

I figured a [general DNF thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=611934) was justified since this is mostly old and focused on the dev history of the game.

[Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/duke-nukem-forever-is-done-bitches/568454.md?page=5)

[Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/duke-nukem-forever-is-done-bitches/568454.md?page=7)
