Gearbox CEO: Duke Nukem Forever Is "Exactly Like Half-Life 2"

[kasperbbs]

I see his point, both games have guns and both are in first person, seems legit. Actually i was too lazy to read the article, i'm just glad i had the sense not to get anywhere near this pile of shit while most people were hyped for some reason.

 

[Snotnarok]

I thought the game was shit because it went and turned around using all the crappy cliche things that other shooters used. Regenerating health, 2 (now 4) guns at a time. It's not even that the humor was 'low brow' that's fine, it's that he was using these lines less as a parody like the way it is and more that he said them first, which he didn't every line is a from a movie as Duke3D was a parody of action movies at the time (and shadow warrior was spoofing Asian flicks and Blood parodied horror films.)

So while the puzzles may be interesting, the other nonsense is amusing it still comes down to being a crappy hide behind cover modern shooter with limited gun capasity. When DNF came out I bought Duke 3D instead, why? Because there was bloody more to it and having never gotten the chance to play through it fully I got to enjoy a real game.

 

[Lt._nefarious]

Don't laugh.
Don't laugh.
Don't laugh.
Don't laugh.
Don't laugh.
Don't laugh.
Don't laugh.
Don't laugh.

You know what other game is like DNF... Silent Hill 2... And you wanna know why? Well, because they both have blonde protagonists and make me sad. Of course Silent Hill 2 makes me sad because of the tragic story and brilliant ending where DNF makes me sad because I paid money for an experience as enjoyable as being the cup of the "2 Girls 1" variety...

 

[Bestival]

It's absolutely nothing alike! The Duke talks ffs!

 

[bz316]

I'm impressed by his ability to somehow make such a statement with a straight face...

 

[MortisLegio]

Incidentally, from a mechanical perspective, masturbating with one's own hand is very similar to masturbating with a glove made of sandpaper.

apparently, Mr. Pitchford is a masochist.

OT: if he is saying they are both shooters with graphics from the mid 2000's, then yes they are the same. Any other comparison can be summed up with...

 

[Darkmantle]

Yeah, you and Romero can get together and talk about how under appreciated your 'masterpieces" are.

 

[Dylalanine]

Screw Half-Life 2 and screw the Valvangelest Church. Don't get me wrong; Half-Life 2 is a very good game. I think most of us can all agree on that. But I have two severe objections here, to two ugly trends that mold the online community into an amorphous blob of like-minded nerds guffawing like a bunch of buck-toothed donkeys.

Valve is not a God-sent company and everything they touch does not turn to gold, despite what its rabid superfans may say. Valve has a wide variety of well-made games, but I fail to see the impact that Half-Life 2 and Portal have had on the gaming landscape other than silent protagonists, see-saw puzzles, and obnoxious cake memes. Steam's good, though.

The other ugly trend that I see to this day is the sustained group hatred for a game that was released over a year ago. It released, the critics panned it, and it didn't sell that well. It is disappointing that it had a horrendous 14-year development hell, but people still treat this old news like a cataclysm the size of Mass Effect 3's ending, Street Fighter X Tekken's On-Disc DLC, and Diablo 3's online-only single-player combined. Even all those are old news by now.

TL;DR, to each his own and shut up with old news. You're not a douche if you only "like" Half-Life 2 and you're not a pariah if you actually liked DNF.

 

[BehattedWanderer]

Well that's the most lol-worthy statement I've heard in awhile. Pretty sure someone slipped him a different game, to get such a positive opinion. Maybe even a Half-Life mod with DNF textures, or something.

 

[dobahci]

I fail to see the impact that Half-Life 2 and Portal have had on the gaming landscape other than silent protagonists, see-saw puzzles, and obnoxious cake memes.

Really?

Half-Life 2 set an example for game developers and gamers as to how to weave a compelling narrative into a first-person shooter, how to create likable and believable characters, how to create relationships between those characters without having it feel forced, how to pace gameplay challenges and enemy encounters, how to artistically design an environment so as to create a certain tone, how to allow players to interact with objects in that environment, and how to create a moddable, modular, extensible engine that doesn't need to be swapped out for a completely new engine every couple of years. It's everything a game could and should be.

HL2 was released in 2004 and people still study it to learn what good game design is.

I don't expect everyone to love that game or be a fan of it, but saying that it hasn't had much of an impact on the gaming landscape is... well, it's crazy.

 

[GAunderrated]

Anyone else just think he's saying this to get some publicity (even bad) because the next game is going to be detailed soon?

I guess the good news is that DNF set the bar so low that even if the new DN is mediocre he can tout it being better than DNF.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

Dear Randy Pitchford, good comedy is hard, really really hard. I have played DNF, so I know you have no idea how hard comedy is, or ideed, what good comedy is. I don't remember Duke3d being a funny game, I remember it beong fun...but not funny. Leave comedy in games to funny people who know what they are doing, you just stick to what ever it is you are good at. Which is ruining classic IPs I guess.



Seriously what the fuck are you thinking using the Brothers in Arms IP for borderlands WW2?

I completely disagree if he keeps coming out with stuff like the game did itself an injustice by not having him write the jokes.

 

[ThunderCavalier]

I can only assume he means it plays like a game that should have been released eight years ago. And in that case I'd have to agree with him.

This I'd sort of agree with, if it wasn't for the fact that I've played games that old that weren't nearly as garbage.

 

[Baron von Blitztank]

Randy, baby! Come on... You can admit that you cocked up. Duke Nukem Forever was the result of a lobotomized Dr. Frankenstein re-animating the dead remnants of 3D Realms and the result was a frothing abomination with leprosy that smacked its head on the wall repeatedly and shat on the floor. Randy, we know you can do better. Your previous works of Borderlands and Half Life: Opposing Force are evidence of that. I know you love Duke Nukem, I do to but it's OK to admit you cocked up his recent chance to be re-introduced to the world. If you can make another Duke Nukem title that recaptures the essence of what made Duke Nukem 3D so great then we will forgive you but the more you stand by the shat carpet and compare it favourably to the golden idol of Half Life 2, the further down you'll be digging your own grave.

With Love

-BvB

P.S- I still have your underwear. I don't know what to do with it so for now it's my balaclava

 

[-|-]

I agree with him - they are both equally shit imo. I played HL2 for a while and got so bored I couldn't finish it. I'll never understand the love that game gets here.

 

[Delsana]

Sales seem to disagree...

 

[Matt King]

well i really don't like either game, but even if it is awesome 15 years? the only acceptable outcome would be if it ended as yhatzee joke reviewed it as

 

[Dylalanine]

Half-Life 2 set an example for game developers and gamers as to how to weave a compelling narrative into a first-person shooter, how to create likable and believable characters, how to create relationships between those characters without having it feel forced, how to pace gameplay challenges and enemy encounters, how to artistically design an environment so as to create a certain tone, how to allow players to interact with objects in that environment, and how to create a moddable, modular, extensible engine that doesn't need to be swapped out for a completely new engine every couple of years. It's everything a game could and should be.

HL2 was released in 2004 and people still study it to learn what good game design is.

The orignal Half-Life did most of this already, and Half-Life 2 was a tangible evolution of many of its concepts and the concepts of other games, but it wasn't a revolution. No game uses the Source Engine that's not under the Valve francise. TF2 and L4D2 use the Source Engine, but those were mods of pre-existing games traceable back to Half-Life 1 and the Quake franchise. Epic Games uses the Unreal engine, and that's been around for far longer (albeit being a radically more complex beast than the original Unreal).

You're saying is that Half-Life 2 is a great game, which is what I already said. People use Half-Life 2 as an example of great game design? Super, but it stands on the shoulders of giants while being unrealistically singled out for all these accomplishments. It blended many great concepts together and Valve should be thanked for being such good mixologists--but not inventors.

Back to Pitchford's argument about DNF, I would agree with him. Many of the elements in HL2, such as well-paced encounters and dedicated puzzle roadblocks, are there. They're just mixed in different amounts.

 

[Cid Silverwing]

This guy is a drug addict. There's no other explanation.

Either that or he works at a hospital and smuggles nitrous oxide out the backdoor to huff before going to the press.