Duke Nukem Forever Review

[Callate]

I still think they missed a trick with the ego health system.

He could have had to do something cool to get his ego back. Like shooting a dude in the dick or something.

The more zaney stuff you do, the bigger your ego bar gets. And when it's low. You have to do something like benchpress an enemy carcase to boost it back up.

The rest of it looks pretty much how I imagined though.

Theres an idea. You could still have had "healthpacks" as well, like autograph books or dvds of Duke around to collect. Salvagable system. Grunting and flying backwards when hit by a shrunken enemy like its a freightrain is just broken.

Or have a "taunt" button to spout one-liners about the local enemies... Or have hostages to rescue who cheer Duke on once they're rescued, increasing his regeneration rate... Yeah, sounds like they missed a ton of opportunities to riff on the whole "ego" idea.

It sounds like with another month of work they could make the game into something a lot more playable, if they were willing to release a patch that made the health system and weapons inventory back into something old-school. Whether they would actually do such a thing is another question.

It's kind of a shame. As I've said before, I don't have any pity left in my heart for 3DRealms, but it's a shame to drag Gearbox down. There was no real reason this couldn't have been a good game.

I guess I'll wait for the Steam sale to check this one out for myself.

The review does beg the question what would require a 1-star review, short of a disk that managed to damage the system that tried to play it to inoperability.

 

[V8 Ninja]

And so Duke Nukem Forever is terrible...would this be a tragedy or absolutely hilarious?

 

[funguy2121]

"...because I'm not 12. And this game sucks."

Perfect description. Also?

"But it's satire!" Why is it that people who claim <this< always think I'm talking about relationships when I say "Platonic?"

 

[DarkhoIlow]

Well after 14 years we should of expected that it was going to suck so no big deal anyway.

Kinda feel bad for the people that bought the CE,the only worthy thing being the Duke statue.

 

[Doktor Sleepless]

Aren't we a gwown-up, aren't we?
So he drank beer, went to strip-clubs and was slapping wall-tits when he was 12 is what I got out of this and now he's so manly and has outgrown all those things

This would actually make me want to buy the game even more if I didn't know that it was a console-port with 2 weapons at any given time lacking "fun gameplay".

He called that part of the review things he'd love about dnf if he was 12, not stuff he did then and grew out of.

 

[Blind0bserver]

I'm not going to lie, Russ, part of me really wanted this game to be decent. If only so it could metaphorically spit in the faces of everyone that had ever made jokes about it during it's development time. It would've been the greatest comeback in gaming history.

... but no, I think we all knew that wasn't going to happen. Not after that whackjob who was running 3D Realms kept holding back the release to gradually make the game an unholy chimera offspring of every "modern" shooter mechanic in the industry these days. It's a shame, really.

I'm going to my local Gamestop tonight for their Duke Nukum midnight launch event, not to pick up this game, but to pick up my pre-order of Alice: Madness Returns. I don't think I'm even going to be able to make eye contact with some of these people as I walk out of the store with the game I've been waiting to be made for a decade knowing that, odds are, only one of us is truly going to be happy with our purchase.

 

[Milo Windby]

"I'm not 12 so this game sucks"
Do we really need to act our age all the time? Being adults we are expected to act our age all the time, at work, in public, ect... Acting anything other then as an adult is frowned upon so really... a game that does not take its self seriously and allows you to toss shit at the wall, get drunk and burp and slap wall tits just because you can really lets you just have a small amount of fun time that you can not normally do because... its just not mature to do.

For myself, I am going to play this and I am going to enjoy it because sometimes I just get tired of having to be mature all the time.

 

[GeorgW]

Beat you to it Hypnotic reviews: Duke Nukem Forever [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.291283-Hypnotic-reviews-Duke-Nukem-Forever#11573975]
You can read my thoughts on the game there, but in short, I liked it. That boss you mentioned was annoying, but I saw it as more of a challenge, and while I agree with you on basically every point, I saw a lot of positive stuff as well that you apparently didn't. You may want to check it out if you want a more positive view.

The game also has multiplayer if you care. I didn't. While the multiplayer was not yet available as of the time of this writing, there's simply no conceivable way it would have influenced this review in any way other than to lower our already pitifully low score. Your mileage, of course, may vary.

It would have lowered your score. It's absolutely horrid.

 

[Lord_Gremlin]

Let's be honest here - Queen, at least on second difficulty, is not really hard. There is an obvious safe spot on the left near the ammo crate where she can't hit you at all. Supporting monsters come in 2 ways: a pregnator egg thrown towards you - shoot it with a rocket - or an octobrain. There is always only 1 egg or 1 octobrain, and there is significant time before new spawns so you just sit in the safe spot, kill those 2 monsters, then shoot Queen. In fact, once you realize what you are supposed to do this battle is piss easy, requires 0 effort and therefore becomes almost dull. On my first run I've killed Queen in about 7 minutes on my first try. On my second run I knew exactly what to do and how and it took me about 4 minutes. I play on PS3, if it matters.
Well, there are unfair moments - for example, to reliably beat Battlelord on the Dam you must bring a beer and a holoduke with you for his second phase, then it will take 2 minutes, otherwise it'll be a horrible chore.
I've completed the game and I'd give it 7/10. Really appreciate the gore.
There is 1 alarming fact in the whole review. Only one, but it's important. Reviewer actually spent an hour trying to beat alien Queen. Really? You never even tried to think it seems. It's a disgrace. I can see someone spending maybe 15 minutes - figuring the right spot and minion spawn pattern - but an hour? Sorry, but reviewer sucks at this game. And that is a fact said reviewer basically admitted. It's all right to criticize the flaws, and God knows DNF has them aplenty, BUT if player sucks that bad himself... The criticism becomes largely irrelevant.
DNF - 7/10
Escapist review of DNF - 3/10

 

[Russ Pitts]

The review does beg the question what would require a 1-star review, short of a disk that managed to damage the system that tried to play it to inoperability.

That is exactly what our one-star score means: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/7149-What-Our-Review-Scores-Mean

 

[smithy1234]

Go damnit, I pre-ordered this game and now I've decided that there's no way I'm going to buy it. Oh well, Gamestop can keep my damn 5 dollars...

 

[Living Contradiction]

I'm not one to beef about scores too much, but what would a game have to do get a 1-star rating, I mean Jesus Christ xD

Seconded. If a game causes physical nausea and still warrants two stars, I'd hate to think what would be required to make that second star go away. Maybe a boot reaching out of the screen to give the player a swift kick in the groin...

Oh and speaking of immature humour, Mr. Pitts, were you expecting something else here? The trailers and early gameplay demos didn't really leave much to the imagination as to where this game was going to be drawing its jokes from. I'll give you the frustration at the game mechanics, the poorly thought out health recovery scheme (if they wanted to make it a bit more reasonable, they could've had Duke carry around a pocket mirror for looking into when his ego ran low. Maybe even tacked on a few lines of silly to get old after being repeated umpteen times, "Dammit. Almost broke my shades there."), and the slapdash level design, but really, nobody picking up this game should be expecting anything but open, honest, antagonistic, male machismo.

And tits.

 

[josh797]

2 stars? as woodsey said

"Recommendation: If you are stuck on a deserted island with only this game to play, go fishing instead. Worth playing so that you may be able to say that you did, but otherwise imminently forgettable and not worth your time."

I'm not one to beef about scores too much, but what would a game have to do get a 1-star rating, I mean Jesus Christ xD

no kidding. i cant imagine a worse review of a game. this is why the scoring system sucks. it introduces confusion into the system due to discrepancies between the rating and the review.

as for the duke, its a shame the game is so bad since i quite appreciate the humor and the self referential-ness of it.

 

[Sonicron]

Well, there's always Bulletstorm.

If you're disappointed with DNF, get it instead. Captures the 90s run and gun fun much better.

Amen to that.

OT:
I also didn't manage to play DNF all the way through, though (amazingly) my patience lasted until "Underground: Part 2", where an underwater section with horrible controls had me in a room with a giant, rotating killer turbine, a whole swarm of small, face-raping critters and no effective method of crowd control. After the 8th consecutive death and subsequent (ridiculously long) loading sequence, my frustration finally overpowered my academic interest in this piece of shit, and I returned it to the rental store.
I think this is the first time I've actually felt ripped off for paying 5 Euros to play a game.

 

[The Bandit]

And yet... two stars.

Hm. Very conflicted now. I was all set to get this game even if it was a piece of shit, just because it's practically an urban legend.

But... I don't know. I just don't know.

You should probably go by what the review actually says instead of an arbitrary number. Every reviewer on the planet is incapable of giving a game its lowest possible score, and when you have a 5 point review system, you're going to get quite a few twos for really, really shitty games.

 

[Jabberwock xeno]

What I want to know is; were any of the other Duke Nukem games really any better?

If you had to go back and play them, without bias or bieng influenced with nostalgia, does it really seem like that much worse of a game then?

DNF is video game version of a lving fossil: an example of what the industry was like years ago.

By modern standreds, many of the games back then would be viewed much like this one if they came out today.

 

[Imbechile]

The king is dead! Long live the king!

Quoted for(unfortunate) truth. Ahhh, well, we still got Serious sam 3 coming out this summer.

 

[wolf_isthebest]

Sometimes acting like at 12 year old in a game is not a bad thing

 

[Not G. Ivingname]

Snip

NO! YOU LIE! THE LAST 14 YEARS OF MY LIFE WAITING FOR THIS MUST BE TOTALLY WORTH it... it...

Why did I bet on Duke? :'(

 

[Furioso]

"Recommendation: If you are stuck on a deserted island with only this game to play, go fishing instead. Worth playing so that you may be able to say that you did, but otherwise imminently forgettable and not worth your time."

I'm not one to beef about scores too much, but what would a game have to do get a 1-star rating, I mean Jesus Christ xD

The game would have to literally kill your entire family

OT: The real question is, who will the blame ultimately fall on, regardless of who deserves it, will history record Gearbox or 3D Realms as the ultimate doom for Duke?