FWIW, I put up a fairly extensive review of Duke Nukem Forever[1]
I, much like burgerbrain and others though the general shenanigans and debauchery (bewbs!) would keep me entertained and while they were certainly highlights, the core shooting mechanics and level design in the game (what makes up the other 90% of your time in there) is SO mediocre and uninspired that the game just feels like a drag at parts.
There are absolutely highlights (relative to the rest of the content), a few fun levels, some solid texture work, 1 or 2 cool bosses... those are all fun, but when you average all together, the whole experience is like a 7-10hr experience that drags on.
Had the core mechanics (something I address in the review) been modified a bit and felt better, the game would have been much more solid.
It is sort of like having a cool movie with a great premise, but the two lead characters are TERRIBLE actors and you can't stand them... no matter how cool the topic is or how awesome the CG is, overall you won't enjoy the movie because you can't stand those actors.
Even if something else had sucked in the game, for example the graphics were worse, but the core mechanics were better, the game would have reviewed better. The problem is just that the glue that holds the whole thing together is weak and unenjoyable.
Rent it, you can grab it from RedBox for $2/day now that they are renting games.
There must be something wrong with me. I haven't been a "gamer" for a little over a decade, but the more of these "negative" reviews I read, the more I want to play this game. Not ironicly.
it's better than people are making it out to be. if you enjoyed the first, you'll enjoy the nostalgia. it's a little uneven in terms of fun and pacing (as such a frakenstein'ish project with multiple hands and such a long development cycle will lead to), but i think it's worth playing.
Seriously? I've been watching some playthrough videos and it just looks BORING. Long, long stretches with no enemies, the enemies themselves are canonfodder and in sparse supply. It looks like a sketch of a game that's highly derivative of Half-Life.
Yeah I have to agree - I really thought I was up for a return to the past, a good classic action FPS, a great piece of history that will go back to the classic FPS formula...but it looks and plays like a mod of Hexen or Quake or SIN. A very boring, half assed Hexen mod. It manages to take everything people HATED about FPS games back then (ie. long boring puzzles, long areas with no enemies, confusing jumping puzzles, the "run around the room mashing the use key to figure out what to do" gameplay) and put it in one package. So while it's certainly a return to the past, it's also a return to a style of gameplay that got killed off because it was boring as buggery.
Having finished the game and gone thru all the extras you see that very little has changed at all since the original conception in '97 apart from the engine changes over time.
Ironically the final boss battle is the most Duke3D like gameplay moment of the entire game.
>In the pantheon of artistic endeavors ruined by a combination of hubris, too much money and too little discipline, Duke Nukem Forever now joins the likes of “Ishtar,” “Waterworld,” and “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.”
It's actually funny that the author chose to compare computer game to two movies and a play. There are better (okay, more relevant for gamers) examples that pop into mind, like Daikatana or Doom 3.
P.S. And Waterworld is actually a quite entertaining movie.
>Rape and abuse of women as a plot point? Lost me there.
You were never the target market of the series. Duke Nukem 3D's job was to parody 80s and early 90s action movies and it's not meant to be taken seriously in any way; Forever is, obviously, just like it.
Also, Dragon Age and Duke Nukem aren't even remotely similar games and weren't even made to appeal to the same audiences. I don't intend to sound angry or anything, but few people play games for how progressive they are with depicting gender and sexuality. Games exist for one purpose: fun. If someone likes crude humor, then Duke Nukem is probably fun, but I don't think anybody is going to take any life lessons out of it because they're not supposed to.
I'm a little puzzled by comments such as this. Haven't we been pointing out that "it's just a game" when people point to the unending stream of murder and genocide out of videogames for the past 30 years?
Besides, I'm fairly certain at least the rape in this case is being done by the alien bad guys....
Has the author of that post looked at the distribution of reviews in other cases at all? From everything I've seen a bimodal distribution in reviews is not at all uncommon in the real world, especially for a product that is trying to be edgy.
That article is terrible. The writer takes it as a fait accompli that DNF should score about 65% then proceeds to castigate any reviewer who gave a score out of line with that. Nowhere does he even admit that reviewers might have different, valid takes on a game to himself.
I, much like burgerbrain and others though the general shenanigans and debauchery (bewbs!) would keep me entertained and while they were certainly highlights, the core shooting mechanics and level design in the game (what makes up the other 90% of your time in there) is SO mediocre and uninspired that the game just feels like a drag at parts.
There are absolutely highlights (relative to the rest of the content), a few fun levels, some solid texture work, 1 or 2 cool bosses... those are all fun, but when you average all together, the whole experience is like a 7-10hr experience that drags on.
Had the core mechanics (something I address in the review) been modified a bit and felt better, the game would have been much more solid.
It is sort of like having a cool movie with a great premise, but the two lead characters are TERRIBLE actors and you can't stand them... no matter how cool the topic is or how awesome the CG is, overall you won't enjoy the movie because you can't stand those actors.
Even if something else had sucked in the game, for example the graphics were worse, but the core mechanics were better, the game would have reviewed better. The problem is just that the glue that holds the whole thing together is weak and unenjoyable.
Rent it, you can grab it from RedBox for $2/day now that they are renting games.
[1] http://www.thebuzzmedia.com/duke-nukem-forever-pc-review/