Duke Nukem Forever review

I've enjoyed what I've played so far, and even if the rest of the game isn't up to par, the 36 bucks I spent on it won't do me too much damage in the long run.
 
I don't mind the graphics at all and I don't see why people are whining about them. They are very nice looking and there are other games with crappy graphics.
Gameplay is fun and if you spend time looking around and finding all the cool little things dev put in then you will enjoy time.
People have to stop thinking that it should have been the best thing since sliced bread because it took all this time to make. Anything that has been in dev for that long won't live up to the hype. It is just impossible.
I'd rather play it than any CoD game any day.
 
boxterduke said:
I don't mind the graphics at all and I don't see why people are whining about them. They are very nice looking and there are other games with crappy graphics.
Gameplay is fun and if you spend time looking around and finding all the cool little things dev put in then you will enjoy time.
People have to stop thinking that it should have been the best thing since sliced bread because it took all this time to make. Anything that has been in dev for that long won't live up to the hype. It is just impossible.
I'd rather play it than any CoD game any day.
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Glad a couple of you are feeling as though it was money well spent. Kudos.
 
Zero82z said:
Actually, DNF does have dynamic lighting, and it's pretty decent. However, it would be nice if the shadow maps were higher-resolution.
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It's used in a few specific places, generally speaking the lighting is pretty bad, a lot of the older unreal engines suffer from the same thing, they look like they're uniformly lit.
 
F3AR Initial Testing back from Br3nt to see if it can be used for GPU gameplay testing....

Game seems to be running in DX11, with max in-game settings I cannot run above 2560x1600 2X AA on a 6970, when I set it to 4X AA framerates are just too low in Interval 01. Looks like it may be a pretty demanding game. It looks like it enables 8X AF by default, on very high. Need to see If can force higher in control panel. Has some kind of other AA mode also supported need to look into.
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Yikes.. I'm glad I played the Demo first.. This isn't even worth a rent IMO. I guess I'm not a diehard enough Duke fan..
 
As someone who played over 1000 of games (started playing on ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 - moving to Amiga 500, Amiga 1200 and varius PC's starting with 286 all the way to my current rig Intel i920 / gtx 295) I am not sure why there is all this hate about Duke Nukem Forever. Sure, the 2 weapon limit / automatic checkpoint save system can be annoying but this game is way more fun than any COD game I played. I guess everybody has different tastes when it comes to shooters, but I have not had this much fun since Bulletstorm.
 
imsirovic5 said:
As someone who played over 1000 of games (started playing on ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 - moving to Amiga 500, Amiga 1200 and varius PC's starting with 286 all the way to my current rig Intel i920 / gtx 295) I am not sure why there is all this hate about Duke Nukem Forever. Sure, the 2 weapon limit / automatic checkpoint save system can be annoying but this game is way more fun than any COD game I played. I guess everybody has different tastes when it comes to shooters, but I have not had this much fun since Bulletstorm.
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Great first post. DNF is almost as much fun as Bulletstorm.......
 
With a heavy heart and teary eye, we are sad to report, that Duke Nukem Forever sucks big fat Donkey Balls. Some of the worst alien AI I have ever seen. Regen health and weapons carry limitations? WTF Duke? Graphics that even make DX9 seem new? It even makes Crysis 2 look good. And that is just really hard for me to say. Thanks for boning my pooper for $50 Gearbox. If I had known you were going to butt bang me this bad, I would have shot myself up with AIDs first and put us all out of Duke's laughable legacy misery. But you [H] guys already knew all of this.
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Who wrote this? Reads like it was written by a 12-year-old living in the basement with mommy and daddy.
 
My thoughts having now finished the game...

It's a 5 or 6/10. Some reviews that scored lower were far too harsh, full of fake moral indignation and venom that was just either unwarranted or just missing the point.

I'm glad Gearbox got it out, I really did want to play it for a long time. Ultimately I was disappointed, but not surprised. 3D Realms had some huge ambitions for this game, but nowhere near enough focus and ability to realise them. If you've seen the leaked design documents, the finished game that was put out is only about half of what was in the original design. What we're left with feels disjointed and unfinished in parts. It seems pretty apparent that Gearbox just pulled together everything that was ready and filled in a few gaps.

It's quite a bizarre and unique game in some ways. Graphically it's like a painting that has had multiple restorations over the years. A lot of the art is clearly years old, yet it has some relatively modern features like ambient occlusion and depth of field. Some parts look ropey while others look relatively polished. The years of stalled and fractured development are everywhere you look.

I actually had a lot of fun playing it. Some parts were kinda shitty, but it did a lot of things right, even if a lot of it was clearly borrowed from other games. That's what this is really, just a patchwork of stuff that has been done better already, with a few unique things that could only be in a Duke game.

I wasn't at all offended by the content that some people have been outraged by, although it's fair to say there's a lot of stuff that just seems really ill-advised and unintentionally stupid, and shouldn't have made it into the game. A lot of the humour really falls flat. Too many pop culture references that are years out of date, and are really just references for the sake of it. Still, I laughed a few times.

The underwater sections were downright terrible, as was the ending.

Having now seen for myself, it's obvious why it was taking so long. 3D Realms had no idea how to get this game finished. Gearbox did their best with what they had. It really should have been done and dusted about 5 years ago when it would have probably been received well. Indeed, very little seems to have changed when looking at the 2006 video in the extras, so you really have to wonder what they were doing all that time. Sad to think how much work was probably scrapped and wasted since 1997.
 
provoko said:
When the F did HardOCP become a game review site?

I rather play duke nukem forever than crysis or crysis 2 any day.
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That just gives me more reason to take their opinions on game seriously, they aren't paid to review games, so their only interest in offering an opinion on a game is purely personal.

That's much better than these game sites and rags that "review" games and give out scores on the basis of how much advertising dollars were handed out.
 
Ibanezfoo said:
Is it worse than Brink? Brink is pretty bad... its boring as hell after a few rounds.
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I'd say it's about equal to brink.. but at least it had a single player.

It's a shame 2011 has been full of so much fail for PC gaming so far... so many games I was hyped to play, and so many I either didn't buy, or regretted buying.
 
I wonder how many [H] "free trials have expired" over this thread? POOF! This is why I am glad to have been here for the last 10+ years. No nonsense, no bullshit, clear cut honest opinions.

No, it's not a gaming review site... (although there was that brief stint with [H] gaming and the other sectioned parts of the site a few years back... lulz) but I think that frees the gang up to give us the straight dope whenver they feel like it.

Thanks to this thread I'll wait till it hits that much talked about $5 bin... and only then just to say I bought the thing. :D
 
boxterduke said:
I don't mind the graphics at all and I don't see why people are whining about them. They are very nice looking and there are other games with crappy graphics.
Gameplay is fun and if you spend time looking around and finding all the cool little things dev put in then you will enjoy time.
People have to stop thinking that it should have been the best thing since sliced bread because it took all this time to make. Anything that has been in dev for that long won't live up to the hype. It is just impossible.
I'd rather play it than any CoD game any day.
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I HATE CoD, but I like DNF.
 
Kyle, I want to thank you for being as direct as ever. You think the game sucks, but you're not going out and hating on the people that like it. I've seen some pretty stupid arguments on other forums where if someone actually likes the game it becomes a pissing match and flame war. Thanks for demonstrating that some members of the human race can still disagree over opinions without being dicks about it.
 
Harkamus said:
Oh there's more to come.

http://pc.ign.com/articles/117/1177725p1.html
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"If we can take some of our intellectual property and bring it to another medium in an extraordinary high quality way, that delights consumers and represents an interesting commercial opportunity for us, we will," he added.

HAHAHA

This is not the King, this is an impostor!!! :D The Real Duke Nuken is gone FOREVER!
 
Demo runs like total ass on my system listed below. I guess there is no need to buy this game at any price
 
YeuEmMaiMai said:
Demo runs like total ass on my system listed below. I guess there is no need to buy this game at any price
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It ran fine for me, but the fans/temperatures were at metro 2033 with everything turned all the way up levels... Theres definately some inept coding gone on in the last decade+.
 
Yea it's not coded very well . Usally I can fold on my CPU and play any game and not really notice it. On DNF I have to turn off my folding to be able to play it with out it studdering.
 
I downloaded the demo, and didn't finish the first boss fight. (Well, the first fight!) I dont want to spend minute after minute after minute fighting the same boss. The flavor of the old duke seems to be there though, and I enjoyed that part of it. Ill wait until it gets in the bargain bin and pick it up then.
 
I loved it, sad to have already finished it but very happy. If you didn't like DNF and never played Duke3D then you are missing out both on a lot of inside jokes as well as a lot of what the game is supposed to represent. If you didn't like DNF and did play the original Duke3D then you completely missed the point of what this game series stands for. Duke series = tits, crude humor, and guns. If you don't like these in either real life or games then this game is not for you and does not deserve a negative review.
 
daphatgrant said:
I loved it, sad to have already finished it but very happy. If you didn't like DNF and never played Duke3D then you are missing out both on a lot of inside jokes as well as a lot of what the game is supposed to represent. If you didn't like DNF and did play the original Duke3D then you completely missed the point of what this game series stands for. Duke series = tits, crude humor, and guns. If you don't like these in either real life or games then this game is not for you and does not deserve a negative review.
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Funny, I thought Duke was a game meant to be enjoyed, you can find tits, crude humor, and guns in GenMay for a lot less then this piece of crap game.
 
daphatgrant said:
I loved it, sad to have already finished it but very happy. If you didn't like DNF and never played Duke3D then you are missing out both on a lot of inside jokes as well as a lot of what the game is supposed to represent. If you didn't like DNF and did play the original Duke3D then you completely missed the point of what this game series stands for. Duke series = tits, crude humor, and guns. If you don't like these in either real life or games then this game is not for you and does not deserve a negative review.
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DNF may have the duke humor but it definately does not have the duke gameplay.....and that is the deal breaker......

Edit and the 2 levels that you get in the demo hardly show off the game. you can complete the demo in under 15 minutes
 
YeuEmMaiMai said:
DNF may have the duke humor but it definately does not have the duke gameplay.....and that is the deal breaker......
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Well aside from the lack of exploration incentive and total linearity the game does have Duke 3D style game play and that's part of the problem. Circle strafing bosses is really old school.
 
Dan_D said:
Well aside from the lack of exploration incentive and total linearity the game does have Duke 3D style game play and that's part of the problem. Circle strafing bosses is really old school.
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2 weapon limit, regerative health, no level exploration, limited environment interaction requiring use of other keys besides the firebutton, etc.....

Duke IS old school and that is why most of us are dissapointed......
 
YeuEmMaiMai said:
Duke IS old school and that is why most of us are dissapointed......
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If I'm reading you correctly, you're saying Duke [3D] is old school and most are disappointed [because Duke Nukem Forever is not]. I just wonder if anyone's thought of the difficulty in translating an old-school game into the "now". If they made the gameplay the same people would rip on them for not being "innovative" and pushing the "tired, worn out 1990's game play in new packaging". If they changed things up - which they did - they'd get ripped for it not being "the Duke Nukem we remembered from yesteryear". I think no matter what they did there would have been complaints of one kind or another.
 
Phoenix333 said:
If I'm reading you correctly, you're saying Duke [3D] is old school and most are disappointed [because Duke Nukem Forever is not]. I just wonder if anyone's thought of the difficulty in translating an old-school game into the "now". If they made the gameplay the same people would rip on them for not being "innovative" and pushing the "tired, worn out 1990's game play in new packaging". If they changed things up - which they did - they'd get ripped for it not being "the Duke Nukem we remembered from yesteryear". I think no matter what they did there would have been complaints of one kind or another.
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Well I don't mind regenerative health. I know a lot of people bitch about it, but I've never liked the medkit chase. I think a two or three weapon limit is more realistic, but we are talking about Duke Nukem. Realistic shouldn't be one of the major goals of the developer. I think regenerative health combined without a weapon limit and some decent cover would have really gone a long way with the game play. Also they needed some more open areas. The corridors of nothing always opening to a smallish room with a handful of bad guys and no cover wasn't as much fun as the developer envisioned it would be. Also I wanted some jet pack action and I haven't really seen it. Too many vehicle turret sequences and annoying puzzles. The puzzles in Half-Life were always way more thought out and didn't hurt the flow of the game the way they do in DNF.

The game is really sitting as a 6/10 for me. I'm not quite to the end and my interest in finishing it is waning badly.
 
I finally finished it. The end boss fight was OK until the end where the EDF dropped the create, Devastator and infinite ammunition. I was able to keep the bad guy behind the crate and use it for cover. After that it got supremely easy. Not that it was all that difficult before. Though the extra enemies meant you had to keep track of a few things going on. It was still more than manageable. The ending was kind of funny, but honestly I expected more than what I got. Still a 6/10 for me. The game's humor is really the only saving grace it has. Aside from that or rather with that it's a mediocre title at best.
 
Dan_D: As much as I've enjoyed the game personally, those are valid design points and I have to agree with the lack of openness. There are areas with plenty of open space, like around the dam, but much of that space isn't utilized for game play, it's mainly scenery. I think the only real open areas have been in the vehicle sections or where there's a massed fight or boss. Having completed single player, I hate to say this but you never get to use the jetpack. It's only in multiplayer.

Thanks for posting some rational and thought out concerns instead of the usual mindless hate/rage that I've seen elsewhere. You might consider writing Gearbox with your thoughts. The only way to get better Duke games in the future is if the devs hear from people with actual constructive criticism.
 
Whoops, you posted as I was posting. I was actually glad to get the Devastator at the end so I could pound on the SOB and finish him instead of having to kill minions for ammo over and over. Of course, that's playing on Insane where making one wrong step means you have to start all over. First time I played that on Insane I went for the Devastator and got knocked down by the electrical attack, standing back up only to get sucker punched and killed by a berserk pig that I didn't even know was still running around.
 
Im a couple hours into the game and Im semi dissappinted. I find the humor somewhat entertaining, but the game feels like 1990s style, gameplay, and physics with modernized graphics. The bosses repeat the same thing over and over and seem to move in the same pattern. This has been one of the easiest games for being a "modern" FPS which also takes away from the fun. Was expecting way more and not worth $50 maybe $25 max.

Summary = way below todays standards!!
 
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