Duke Nukem Forever might be a decent purchase for some at $20

[GigaHz]

TL;DR - DNF is not too bad of an experience for $20 if you have an appreciation for old school shooters....

This statement baffles me. How can a person that has an appreciation old school shooters, like a game like DNF?

Good question. The game feels a lot like a twitch shooter which is all but extinct these days (with the exception of Painkiller, Serious Sam and Hard Reset). There's something incredibly simplistic about the experience that reminds me of a game that might have released around the first Half-Life with less emphasis on monster closets and more emphasis on scripted events. Despite all the new elements that were introduced in a piss-poor attempt to modernize the game, several segments of the game have a very retro feel. From circle-strafing enemies to the oddly hyped up turret sections.

It has nothing that makes up the idea that brings about the "term old school shooter".

Can I hold every gun in the game? No, so it isn't old school. The console argument doesn't work, played DN3D on my 360, having 10 weapons at once works fine on consoles.

Is health made of health bar and or health percentage image and the only way to replenish health is to frantically and desperately search the level for health packs? No, so it isn't old school. Hide behind a rock and suck my thumb until my health regens is not old school.

Is each level made up of a vast area that can be explored and one can get lost in because it isn't linear? No, not from what I have seen, so it isn't old school. From what I have seen it is as linear as Halo 3 or Call of Duty.

Can you hold every gun in the game? No. But there was an update released for PC/Mac that allows you to hold up to 4 at once. I turned it on just to see if it made a difference and ended up switching back to the standard inventory. This more or less has to do with the fact that some levels were designed to be completed with weapons you come across if ammo is scarce. So it's a nice feature for some, but it's rather pointless in its current state.

The health bar recharges and there are no health packs. That being said, you can still play it like a twitch shooter. I can only think of a hand full of instances when I had to get behind a wall for cover on Hard. It's not the same as hugging a wall, taking a few shots, and then retreating back to cover which is a major gripe I have with modern shooters. Would I have liked to see the old health bar make a return? Most definitely, but so long as I don't need to chain myself to a wall to progress, I'm a happy camper.

Is each level made up of a vast area that you can explore? This is a mixed bag. There are a few levels that are fairly open but there are others that are fairly linear. Then again, I can only think of a few old school shooters that had truly open levels. DOOM had some, Half-Life had some, Unreal had some, but the majority were fairly linear. But is it as linear as Halo 3 or Call of Duty? Not really, no.

DNF is not old school, I don't even have to touch the thing to know that, there is nothing old school about it, except that it has an old school character. Saying it is old school is like if a company made "Master Chief's Fun Time Family Puzzle Adventure" and saying that it is perfect for Halo shooter fans because it had Master Chief's picture in the left-hand corner of the screen as you solve puzzles.

You have decided not to play the game yet you are confident that it's not old school?

You do bring up a few good points but you are arguing semantics here. Is it old school in it's purest definition? Absolutely not. It couldn't be with all of the development teams that had their hand in trying to release the game. It is, however, a patchwork of design ideas that are by todays standards, dated. If that doesn't at least push it close to old school, I don't know what will.

 

[FreakSheet]

For $20 less, you can get TF2. For $20, you can get The Orange Box, 3 (well... 5, but 2 are free right now) much better games.

 

[Randomperson9999999]

maybe for the humor i thought duke nukem was not good but not bad i made me laugh a couple times its not worth 60 dollars though

 

[xvbones]

Had this game released 10 years ago, it would have probably been regarded as one of the better shooters out there.

Ten years ago, in 2001, the following games were released:

ICO, Silent Hill 2, Devil May Cry, Metal Gear Solid 2, Serious Sam and Halo, six titles that appear on basically every single 'Best Games Ever Made' list.

Even compared to just the shooters of 2001, DNF would not have been fared very well and its competition would have included Red Faction and Return to Castle Wolfenstein, neither of which were very good and both of which were superior to DNF. (YMMV of course, but objectively, both games averaged higher critical scores than DNF.)

Even DNF's attempts to offend would have been compared unfavorably to Conker's Bad Fur Day, also released in 2001.

Seriously, 2001 gave us Serious Sam and DNF contains long sequences where you do not fire a single bullet.
Had I played this game ten years ago, I would still find it bloated, pretentious and dull, dull, unforgivably dull.