This makes me sad: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/reviews/2011/06/duke-nukem-forever-review-barely-playable-unfunny-and-rampantly-offensive.ars
I usually agree with his reviews so it looks like I’ll be picking it up in the bargain bin at Walmart. Oh well.
What’s the DRM on this? I’ve been thinking about it, and the PC is the mandatory version, but…
Ah. Steamworks. You know, I should install Steam one day.
The PR firm that handled the promos and advertising apparently threatened websites that gave bad reviews with no longer providing advance copies of games. They later retracted the statement & apologized. Still, that’s never a good sign.
So I’ve played most of the way through the campaign, and I like it. It has somewhat of an old-school feel to it, there are lots of puzzles, especially jumping puzzles, some of which are really tough for an average gamer like myself (the kitchen and the gears were pretty tough for me). The misogyny is overblown by the reviewers, so far there’s been all of one chapter in the strip club. The puns and the like… one guy complained about Duke saying “Pork chop sandwiches”, saying it was a pop culture reference that didn’t work. I’m more inclined to say that it’s because you’re blowing the hell out of pigs.
Is it the best game I’ve ever played? Nope. But it’s far from the worst, and while there are lots of things they need to fix if they’re going to put out another Duke game it’s been pretty fun. I’d give it a 75/100 with no real complaints. I haven’t tried the multiplayer yet, though. After I finish the single player I’ll get on that.
All of the above is my opinion, and my opinion only. If you buy it and you hate it, don’t blame me.
I have decided to add it to my Christmas list. I always have trouble finding stuff that is inexpensive enough for my Mom to buy and yet something I won’t just go get and at the same time something I will enjoy. This seems to fit all those requirements.
Steam is painless.
It auto updates your game son the background (haven’t had to worry about patches in years), allows you to re-download at any time as many times as you want, and allows you to play games offline.
This is pretty much how I feel about it. I do hate the “No Saves, Checkpoint Saves only” design decision. If you get stuck on a particularly tough section, you have to keep playing the fisrt part of it over and over and over and over…Plus since I heard it was only about 10 hours of gameplay, I started the campaign on hard (which I don’t normally do with FPS’s) so some areas are really painful. Doesn’t seem I can change it to easier (like you could with BioShock 1/2) without starting over.
Ick. Sounds like a serious steamer. I’ll pass. Thanks for the link.
OK, so I closed it out last night. As I said above, it wasn’t bad. The ending was actually the easiest boss in the entire game. The one before it (the energy leech) was a pain in my ass.
Probably my biggest criticism of the whole game was the controls. They are just different enough from Black Ops that trying to switch is difficult, and there are four established control patterns to choose from, you can’t set the controls yourself for XBox 360, that is). I tried to duck countless times only to melee, and pressing the stick causes you to duck. It’s exactly backwards for me.
No complaints here. It could have been, should have been a better game after such a long time in development, but it was fun and perfectly serviceable as is.
A mod team is working on a free unreal engine remake of duke nukem 3d that will probably end up being more worthwhile to play than DNF.
Fuck jumping puzzles. Just fuck these boring as shit, tedious, and pace-killing waste of map-space. Hippity hopping from one rock to another in a small portion of the game is one thing, but the kitchen is a giant pain in the ass. Figuring out where to go next is one thing (which can/is abused as well), but turning Duke into some sort of pansy-assed skipping pansy-pants is as dull as a vase of monochrome pansies.
The 90s-era lack of save-on-demand means one slip or missed twitch puts you way back across the kitchen again. Fuck it. It’s not going to take me several weeks to actually get across, it’s going to take several weeks of one or two attempts here or there at a game that has lost my interest. I liked the nostalgic humor and Duke-load of references (“I hope they make another season of that show Lightning Bug. The captain is so dreamy”), and wasn’t expecting much game-wise (glad I waited for it to drop to $9.99). But this jumping shit and lack of save sucks Duke’s balls.
I played the Xbox demo and it did indeed suck balls. Not sure if they were Duke’s. Definitely not mine. What an ugly piece of shit.
And yet the Gears of War series has a lot of the same control foibles and save point issues yet it is critically acclaimed.
DNF was definitely a disappointment, but a still believe that a lot of the disappointment comes from the expectation that this thing would give you a handjob after 12 years.
What a pity, after years of waiting it had to turn out like that 
I’m fine with mediocre game play–I wasn’t expecting brilliance in that department, just lots of DN-particularized fun (e.g. the puns, comments, humour). The jumping bullshit and lack of saves blows, but everything else, from his comments to the load-screen quips are scratching that itch; and for ten bucks, it’s worth it.
I guess if the design process hadn’t become such a joke, gameplay expectations would have been higher. If Valve announces HL3 and keeps working and working at it (same company, teams, etc.) I’d expect there to be some relation between development time and kick-assedness. DNF? Hah. Almost a game by committee.
Speaking of HL and games by committee, anyone following the Black Mesamod and know if it’s any closer to release (gee, I guess speaking of handjobs too)?