Duke Nukem Forever Demo Released 188
uslinux.net writes "Gearbox Software released the demo for Duke Nukem Forever today, though it's only available to preorders and other promotions for the time being. After more than a decade, it looks like this game will actually hit stores this month. After 12 years in development, will it live up to the hype?"
Included with the linked article is DNF's launch trailer. This should go without saying, but just in case: NSFW. Seriously.
I've played it... (Score:2, Interesting)
Main focus of the game developers (Score:3, Interesting)
Played it. (Score:5, Interesting)
Incredibly Mediocre (Score:4, Interesting)
The demo is very mediocre. It feels like a fan project that was given some time at a major studio. Which I guess is kind of what it is. The production values are uneven, the graphics are uneven, and the pacing is odd. The flow of the environments in the demo were not up to modern standards. The AI is rudimentary at best, the animations look all funky.
Unless a lot has changed since this demo was put together, I imagine the game will be a very bland, linear FPS with small, barren environments and stale gameplay.
One of the worst demos, ever. (Score:5, Interesting)
I pre-ordered Duke Nukem Forever quite awhile ago. I hoped for a lot, but didn't expect it. I mostly just wanted to buy a copy so I could play through it and have it on my shelf for purposes of nostalgia. The hope was just that maybe after all that time, Gearbox's intervention to save the title last year might have done some amazing magic on it. After all, they do have a good record and a lot of love for the franchise (Randy Pitchford originally worked on Duke back in the day).
Some of the videos out there promoting the game made it look like a very competent modern shooter. Lots of stuff going on, nice graphics, big destroyed cities with enormous monsters and all that. Pretty much everything you'd expect, in 2011.
The demo? It's like they made it with the intention of making you cancel your pre-order (which I did -- I'll buy it again for the shelf when it's $20 or less).
First, the loading times are awful. They're about 75 seconds and you have to sit through a load screen even if all you did was die.
Second, the framerate is bad. It is sometimes smooth and looks fine, but then it'll suddenly hitch for half a second. And more times than not, you hitch again when you are hit (melee or a bullet) by an enemy. Sometimes it's enough that you'll die before you can respond to what's going on. Or even be knocked off a cliff and die before you can react to being hit.
Third, the graphics. The best of the demo is in the beginning, when it looks competent. Not setting new standards, but not a turn off. Unfortunately, everything after that is flat and fairly simple. The interface is pretty boring and uninspired, too.
Fourth, the audio. Man, the audio is a disappointment. The sounds of the weapons. The repetitive sayings of Duke. The grunt every time he jumps. It sounds like they haven't recorded anything new since 1999.
Fifth, it is SHORT. And BORING. Like I said above, the videos make it look like you'll be engaged in these huge fights with massive monsters in big bustling destroyed cities with all sorts of things going on in the sky and the background. But what was the demo? The following is the demo:
The game opens on you pissing in a urinal (press RT to piss). Then you leave the urinal and find you're in a locker room at a stadium. You go out to the playing field and fight a giant monster. After killing him, the camera pulls out and you find out that you are actually Duke playing Duke in one of Duke's games on a console. Two chicks are blowing you and sit back to converse with you. Then, you're in a shitty looking 4x4 driving through a bland canyon dodging rocks for about 90 seconds. Then you shoot your way through a bland canyon for about two minutes, until you reach a cave that you walk around fir about two minutes to find some gas for your truck. You fight a ship by shooting it about 20 times with a weapon handily placed nearby. Then you run back to your truck and fill it up with the gas that you found. Then the demo is over.
Re:Played it. (Score:3, Interesting)
Calling it a "boys game" because of the Duke character and his sense of self and humor is like calling Idiocracy a movie for idiots, because the movie itself is filled with idiots. Duke Nukem is a parody of its time (though it hardly really fits into the pop-culture of this century). The Duke Nukem humor itself has never particularly done anything for me, though it occasionally gets a slight chuckle. In 2011, it's only really relevant in the sense of "oh man, remember when all the action movies and stars were really like this back in the 80s?".
The problem is that this game could have done something with itself using the same style of humor and retarded juvenile style, if the mechanics and look (and performance) of the game matched other modern games. Instead, it feels like an XBLA title that someone would release for $15. It feels every bit like a game that would have been made and released in 1999, but with a graphical update (that makes it look perhaps around 2005-ish).
It's really unfortunate that Gearbox's good intentions didn't pan out, here. I guess there's only so much you could have expected from their attempt to rescue the title. I hope that Pritchford's spending of good karma (built up from the success of Borderlands) wasn't entirely wasted on convincing the company to let him at DNF. There are a lot of better ways, in retrospect, that he could have burned that karma.
Re:Daikatana was worth the wait too (Score:5, Interesting)
The only way in which Duke 3d compares poorly is its technical execution, the Build engine just wasn't as advanced as Quake and especially Quake 2 of course. You're free to dislike it certainly, but just declaring that it wasn't fun isn't really fair either. There are, simply, some things that make it more fun than other contemporary games, such as the highly interactive environments which, variety in weapons, enemies, and level design, and even the cheesy one liners.
I don't think it's rose colored glasses, I played the game back when it was reasonably new, and I liked it at the time, not just in my memories. I also played it very recently again, and it was a blast. And I'm talking original textures and models, none of the new HD textures and 3D models. Despite of this, the outdated graphics definitely didn't distract from the actual enjoyment
Regarding Mass Effect, never played it, but the recent CoD games just shit over everything that was good about shooters. Sadly, early reports are even that Duke was affected by its influence - there's the ridiculous regenerating health, much more linear levels, and, most bizarrely, a limit on how many weapons you can carry. It makes no sense in an unrealistic aracdy game like this, but apparently since CoD does that now, Duke has to follow the convention.