Duke Nukem Forever LIVES

I thought Gearbox restarted the technology on Duke Nukem Forever and put it into the Unreal Engine, I didn't think much of the 3D Realms DN:F was physically left in the release?

Anyway I have no interest to play this. Why haven't I bought Dirt 3 yet? Oh yeah I waste way too much time and barely get any music work done as it is.

LOLAWLOL

  On 6/16/2011 at 4:59 AM, Blanket Fort Collapse said:

I thought Gearbox restarted the technology on Duke Nukem Forever and put it into the Unreal Engine, I didn't think much of the 3D Realms DN:F was physically left in the release?

nope, the game that was released this month is the game that 3D Realms left to squalor while they did...whatever it was they were doing.

I wanted to say a few things about this game (spoiler free):

I finally played a few levels of it last night. If anyone cares, I'm at the second or third RC car section.

Engine:

First of all, you can tell the engine is old school and has been patched like crazy. In the first few moments of the game, you are able to look at yourself in the mirror. Instead of seeing a smooth animation of Duke jumping up and down, it appears only his legs animate and his torso stays the same. This is classic Unreal 2 engine. I think they litterally changed this engine to support HD and left it at that. You can see some modern atmospheric effects going on, but its mostly classic engine stuff. Watch the NPC's try to walk away from you. Notice they look weird? Why is that? Oh yeah, no motion capture tech like you see in everything these days. Some animations such as the bosses and things like enemies crawling on the walls look great. Its a mixed bag, this game could have gotten better and better if they kept updating the engine, but at some point make a decision and roll with it.

Interaction:

I don't know how many of you WATMM'ers are older then 14, but there was a time when being able to do things like flush a toilet in an FPS was ground breaking. Infact reviewers of the original DN3D would always comment about how many things you can interact with in the world. This Duke game has way too many things you can interact with. I won't spoil the game, but in one room you can play a real pinball machine with a full functioning game, shoot a basketball through a basketball hoop, work out with a dumbbell, and punch a punching bag. I found all of these things fun to mess around with. They are plentiful, and usually unique. My best guess is that the time sink involved in the development of this game was porting all these small interactive things you can do between the engines. Why does it matter? Its built into a core mechanic of the game. Your overall heatlh increases the more you interact with stuff in the world. This was probably an early design decision that the developers refused to give up on. Of course, MW2 players don't care if they can sit in a chair or turn a light on and off. Pretty sure only old schoolers can appreciate this.

Humor:

I was lol'ing quite a few times as I went thru these levels. There are a bunch of subtle comedic references to internet memes and pop culture in a lot of the sequences. I can see people expecting Brutal Legend style comedy, but the overall light hearted nature of the game matches well with the cheesy jokes. I got to punch Christian Bale in the face, that made my night.

Complaints:

The controls do feel old school. You get so used to auto-aim and acceleration based aiming in other games that rigid linear aiming does feel old school. What makes it worse is even on the easiest difficulties, the enemies barely miss. So you are spending a lot of time making "duke got hit" noises. The enemies don't respond if you hit them in the legs vs chest, so they are basically acting uneffected until they die. Again, old school Unreal 2 engine in effect. I still don't think this breaks the game. We got through all the Doom's with this mechanic.

Conclusion:

I'm not gonna let the reviewers or the haters on watmm effect me. I'm going to continue to enjoy this game. No, its not game of the year because it won't be appreciated by the xbox generation of gamers, but being an original duke fan, I can enjoy this. I wish Gearbox was able to throw an HD remake of DN3D in the box as well since they own the IP. I think if people played the original and then played this version they would appreciate it a lot more.