Topic: Duke Nukem Forever

[oohhboy]

I am waiting on the Mac native version to come out(August) which will be SteamPlay. Even with the summer sale, it was over priced given the AUS/NZ price is normally $80USD, meaning with the sale it only matched the normal price elsewhere. Not much in a mood to get ripped off to be honest.

I tend not bother reading reviews from "Pros" anymore, they tend to be one of three types of reviews.

1# They love the game so much they want to have it's babies, then turn around and intentionally pick on some minor non-flaw in order to "Balance" out the review, while ignoring some pretty obvious serious issues, like the underlying gameplay elements(Mass Effect).

2# Completely apathy. The game could be the best thing since sliced bread or neo ****, but the reviewer just doesn't care. This can easily produce 3 pages text that tells you nothing about the game. A majority of reviews out there.

3# WORSE GAME EVER. Pages on how bad a game is based on a preconceived notion a game they would have made based on infinite dollars and infinite time IE, not reality. See: Duke Nukem Forever.

Special condition 4#: Didn't play the game.

NWR continues to have pretty good editorial control, but most reviews now are lacking a certain creativity that even made the most horrendous game produce an entertaining review. Basically, reviews here are a little on the dry side now days. I used to actually look forward to a review of a rubbish game since it always produced something worth reading (Credit goes to Jeff Shirley for promoting and subjecting himself to the abuse at the time).

[ShyGuy]

Oohhboy nails it. +1

[KDR_11k]

Meh, DNF just wasn't as fun as the budget shooter I dug out of my backlog after it. I liked the small Duke sections and I'm fairly good at first person platforming but after DNF I played Necrovision and was surprised how much more fun that is. To me that's evidence enough that DNF isn't a very good game.


Oohhboy: I usually make a deal with an American online to get the game for the US price if the disparity is large.

[oohhboy]

How do you deal with money transferees without eating a nasty bank fee and don't suggest Paypal, because seriously, if you don't know by now, you deserve the pain.

After that, the next thing to do is find an American, or start looking into proxies....

[KDR_11k]

Well, Paypal worked out for me so far...

As for Americans, they're easy to find if you hang out on IRC or comparable systems. I have people I trust enough to hand money to.

[Stogi]

If I'm going to troll the staff, I need to do it better than this. Unless I'm trolling Crimm, then I can do whatever stupid **** I want.

[ShyGuy]

?

[bustin98]

I think that got lost in translation...

[Stogi]

The subject matter you are discussing is inconsequential, just like reviews for monkey pussy.

[Morari]

I played Necrovision.

Necrovision always reminded me a lot of Painkiller.

[ShyGuy]

But how does Necrovision compare to Halo 3 ODST?

[Morari]

I personally wouldn't know. The first Halo was terrible enough.

[broodwars]

I personally wouldn't know. The first Halo was terrible enough.

Yeah, and I've played Halo Reach recently.  The series certainly hasn't seemed to get any better over the years, either.  Outside of multiplayer that's probably done better in other games, I really don't understand the draw of that series.

[Morari]

Xbox users had never seen any other FPS beforehand? That's about the only reason I can think of.

[Stogi]

I actually think the first Halo was great. The single player sucked, but what else is new. It was polished, expansive and a hell of a lot of fun. Some of my favorite FPS moments came from playing capture the flag on Blood Gulch.

Players didn't die if someone saw them first. They still had a chance to out aim them.
It featured vehicles that didn't suck.
The physics engine was amazing.
And the pistol and shotgun were actually great weapons.

[Morari]

I actually think the first Halo was great.

Eh, to each his own... I suppose. :\

I played the game a little while after it "got big"... once it was ported over to the PC. It was supposed to look even sharper there due to the increased texture size and great resolution... it looked like absolute **** though. Textures were muddy, environments were simplistic, and the art design throughout was painfully bland and generic. The physics were slow and floaty, the vehicles weren't anything groundbreaking (remember Tribes?). I never played multiplayer, but I can't imagine regenerating shields would have been all that much fun. I prefer circle strafing with an opponent over hiding in a corner waiting to charge back up.

For a group of people who had never even heard of the genre before, I suppose Xbox kiddies were probably pretty amazed with the game. Though for anyone with a PC, the game was a laughable attempt at the genre. I suppose there's a reason Microsoft never even bothered releasing anything after Halo2 on the Windows platform.

[Ceric]

I actually think the first Halo was great.

Eh, to each his own... I suppose. :\

I played the game a little while after it "got big"... once it was ported over to the PC. It was supposed to look even sharper there due to the increased texture size and great resolution... it looked like absolute **** though. Textures were muddy, environments were simplistic, and the art design throughout was painfully bland and generic. The physics were slow and floaty, the vehicles weren't anything groundbreaking (remember Tribes?. I never played multiplayer, but I can't imagine regenerating shields would have been all that much fun. I prefer circle strafing with an opponent over hiding in a corner waiting to charge back up.

For a group of people who had never even heard of the genre before, I suppose Xbox kiddies were probably pretty amazed with the game. Though for anyone with a PC, the game was a laughable attempt at the genre. I suppose there's a reason Microsoft never even bothered releasing anything after Halo2 on the Windows platform.

I agree with this.  The funny part is I thought the concept had some potential at the time.

[broodwars]

Yeah, from what I've played of the original Halo and Reach, my whole issue with the series is that it's just boring.  I was struggling to stay awake playing through the first 4 or so missions of the Reach campaign, because everything just felt so generic and phoned-in.  I've heard the overall story is worth following, but I just couldn't get myself to give a damn playing Reach.  To each their own, but when we have FPS franchises on consoles like Bioshock, Timesplitters, GoldenEye, and even the Call of Duty games it's hard for me to find Halo that interesting.

[Stogi]

I must be the only one that played the original online here. You had to rig it through GameSpy, but it was worth it. It was so much more fun with 8 people.

[UltimatePartyBear]

I was always under the impression that Halo became popular because of split-screen multiplayer.  It was its generation's / Nintendo haters' Goldeneye, or maybe Mario Kart 64.

[hairdbeezt8]

I never really understood why people liked Halo. To me it seemed like just another shooter. The graphics weren't that good. Maybe it was the multiplayer but I found Perfect Dark to be a lot funner.

[SixthAngel]

I liked Halo a lot when it came out and just looking around today it should be obvious why it was so popular.

It popularized mechanics that are in every third person and first person shooter made today including Duke.  Regenerating health, whether you like it or hate it has been the dominating design choice in games after Halo.

Carrying a limited number of weapons.  While it was in games before Halo they were generally focusing on realism (CS) and not on weapon balance, changing weapons midgame and having all weapons be useful in the right cicumstances.

Coop campaign and multiplayer in general.  Coop was huge just like it continues to be today and fps just didn't really do it before much less the in the same room console experience.  Vehicles were designed for you and your friend to work together.  Weapon balance in multiplayer was important as well.  Unlike the big pc fps like Unreal, Half Life or Quake the weapons are designed to balance.  While it wasn't perfect (pistol) it made sure that a big part of the game wasn't just running to weapon spawn.  Getting new weapons for the situation was important but nearly every single weapon was supposed to be worthwhile so you could always fight back.


Duke Nukem took regenerating health and limited weapons from the Halo school of shooters, did it take anything else?

[Mop it up]

Halo was (and probably still is) all about the multiplayer, that's the base of its popularity. I was not impressed by it since I had played Perfect Dark, which was and still is a far better game, but I still had some fun playing the multiplayer online.

What I don't really understand is why so many shooters imitate it, yet none of them really tried to imitate Goldeneye and Perfect Dark, which are both multi-million sellers. It's a shame really, shooters these days are all so samey and boring, and I attribute Halo to most of the issues I have with modern shooters. That's mainly why I don't like it.

[Morari]

Unlike the big pc fps like Unreal, Half Life or Quake the weapons are designed to balance.

Never heard of Unreal Tournament or Quake III Arena, aye? Weapon balance was figured out years before Halo. You still can't find a finer example of deathmatch than Quake III Arena to this day.

Coop campaign and multiplayer in general.  Coop was huge just like it continues to be today and fps just didn't really do it before much less the in the same room console experience.

Take a look at Quake, Quake 2, Doom, etc. All offered their full singleplayer campaign as co-op, starting all the way back in 1993. Admitedly, this wasn't done in a split-screen fashion... but really, who wants to play any game in split-screen?

The things Halo popularized (regenerating health and weapon limits) have done little more than hamper the genre as a whole.

Duke Nukem took regenerating health and limited weapons from the Halo school of shooters, did it take anything else?

There is some green power armor in the game. Duke refuses to use it though, stating that it's "for pussies".

[broodwars]

I must be one of the few FPS fans here that really doesn't have a problem with regenerating health.  It encourages the player to keep moving forward with only momentary stops behind cover, rather than spend 2 hours combing small sections of environment scouring for med packs and then being completely screwed by the game's save system when you run out.  Bioshock manages to make that work, but only because of the Vita Chambers and how easy it is to get health packs at any particular time (plus, there's plenty of stuff in the game to explore for beyond health).  As for limiting player weapons, it encourages the player to specialize or learn to make sacrifices on what they can or can't afford to take with them.  It can get problematic, though, in games where you can't just grab ammo for any weapon you have, since it means you just carry weapons with you that you know your enemies will have so you can get the ammo.