Duke Nukem Forever: barely playable, not funny, rampantly offensive

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/reviews/2011/06/duke-nukem-forever-review-barely-playable-unfunny-and-rampantly-offensive.ars/

by xyzzyrz • 15 years ago

285 74 15 years ago

arstechnica.com

andrewvc2• 15 years ago

Its hard to trust a humorless judgement of humor.

While I haven't played the game myself, I'd like to point out to the author of the article that if attempting to describe why a something isn't funny, the best weapon in your arsenal would be humor, not simply sticking up your nose in disgust (though one could mix that in).

That said, a lot of the jokes in the game sound pretty straightforwardly shitty and weird. However I'm trying to imagine the author describing a Louis CK comedy set, a dirty comic I find hilarious, and I'm fairly sure he could ruin that in short order, so I'll hold off on my judgements.

ineedtosleep2• 15 years ago

I'd suggest you play the demo before sticking with how you're describing the article.

I'm a fan of nearly all types of comedy and don't mind the mindless, 'tasteless' humor types. That said, the demo was tasteless AND unfunny. Considering Gearbox and 2K's recent track record, it's not too surprising -- they've been relatively mediocre at best lately.

andrewvc2• 15 years ago

Hey, I can believe that the game sucks in a painfully humorless way, never said it didn't. I'm just talking about the writing style of the article. If it was that unfunny, there should have been plenty of material in the article for the author to riff on.

As is, he sounds like a straight laced bore.

kinghajj• 15 years ago

Gearbox didn't make the game, just took the existing almost-finished version that 3D Realms abandoned and polished it as much as they could.

cburgas• 15 years ago

The "Quick"look on Giant Bomb is a nice overview over some of the levels for people who want to see more than the demo. http://www.giantbomb.com/quick-look-duke-nukem-forever/17-43...

For those who don't have the 50min to watch it. Both of the guys commentating don't like the game at all. It's supposed to be boring and archaic, and then there's the lazy humor...

Splines• 15 years ago

Considering Gearbox and 2K's recent track record, it's not too surprising -- they've been relatively mediocre at best lately

I thought Borderlands was fantastic. It can be a grind at times, but it's a really well done FPS-as-RPG. The four-player co-op was icing on the cake.

daeken• 15 years ago

I think that people who played Duke3d remember one of two things: badass non-stop action and a lack of bubblegum, or fantastically misogynistic humor. He clearly falls into the former category. However, even with this I fail to see how he can think it's that far off Duke3d in its humor. It was always toilet humor, we're all just older now...

aw3c2• 15 years ago

I am currently playing Duke3D and no, it is not a game reduced to that. It has varied explorative(!) levels with humor tacked on, eg a poster here, a monster on the toilet there, a vocal sample by Duke later. There were strippers in the first map but not anymore so far (5th map now).

syaz1• 15 years ago

> we're all just older now

This is it. I think people don't realize they've grown up and what they found funny when playing DN as a child is simply not funny anymore. After all kids are easily amused.

andywood• 15 years ago

I totally agree with this. The article really put me off by beginning with outright moralizing. By all means, tell me the game isn't fun to play. Tell me it's all corridors and cutscenes. Tell me it's slow and buggy. Those are things I care about. I definitely don't need to hear anybody's opinion about whether the tasteless humor is the acceptable kind of tasteless humor, or the unacceptable kind that makes fans of it "wrong". And you can clearly see that the author knows he shouldn't be doing this, since he doth spend an entire paragraph protesting too much about how it's totally his place to do this.

WettowelReactor• 15 years ago

Speaking of the morality in DNF this strip sums it up nicely. http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2011/3/23/

redthrowaway2• 15 years ago

I'm waiting for Yahtzee to rip into it. He has a knack for separating the merely pedestrian from the truly terrible. If he can't laugh at DNF, there's a good chance I won't be able to, either.

zecg• 15 years ago

There's nothing to laugh at. It's just bad. Offensive is besides the point, that's how bad it is. Humour used to be ancillary, now the shooting is so bad, the design feels haphazard and the whole thing is so linear that self-references and unfunny shit are front and center. It's rather embarrassing.

GeneralWaste• 15 years ago

Quite. My reaction to reading the Ars Tech article was 'I need a second opinion' followed by checking Zero Punctuation to see if a video was up yet.

If you are looking for a ZP review a genuine one isn't up as of this exact minute - there is a review of DNF on the site but it's a 'tribute' of sorts from September 2010. I look forward to Yahtzee's take on the real thing.

gamble• 15 years ago

How about this?

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/reviews/3541-Top...

The game has a 50% on Metacritic, so I'm personally reluctant to give it the benefit of the doubt.

JanezStupar• 15 years ago

I still like it. I think that authors were a bit too "politically correct) if anything. I actually like the scripted nature of the game and on PC its atmosphere is awesome (to me OFC).

I also liked the fact that this is one of few FPS's that actually got me killed a couple of times lately.

jaquis• 15 years ago

I think you're really missing out the second paragraph from that review.

krschultz2• 15 years ago

There's a difference between witty but offensive, and just offensive for offensive sake. Just being offensive is juvenile humor, and isn't all that funny. I can watch some comedians stand on stage and say a bunch of things that make me think, 'I can't believe he just said that', but I'll be laughing the entire time. Or I can watch a movie that just plays one poop joke after another and not laugh once. His review sounds like he thinks the game is the latter. I don't see how you can extropolate from that to 'the reviewer has no sense of humor'.

hugh32• 15 years ago

What gives me the impression of "humourlessness" is that he condemns jokes based on what they're about rather than whether they're funny.

For instance, he tells us that Duke blows up some pregnant women and then makes a joke about abortion. And I agree, that's pretty darn offensive. But is it funny? We don't know, the reviewer doesn't tell us the punchline.

I've watched a couple of videos and it looks like there's a few funny bits. Heck, even Duke signing a copy of his book "Why I'm So Great" to get extra health seems like it could be chuckle-worthy.

dclowd9901• 15 years ago

Well said. Matt Stone and Trey Parker have mastered this offensive-yet-witty thing (this last season of South Park, notwithstanding). They should've taken a cue from those two on how to put together the humor.

bxr• 15 years ago

Ugh, I hate it when people ignore their comedic ineptitude just because they happen to be discussing involving comedy. I much rather this article over an unintentional cringe-fest because they author decided to venture into comedy.

boh• 15 years ago

Most judgements of humor are humorless. You don't say something isn't funny to get a laugh.

DarkShikari• 15 years ago

A game is in development hell for years. It "officially dies", then in a matter of a year or two, a sequel is whipped up by another studio using the inherited rights to the name.

Did anyone really expect this to be anything besides a cheap cash-in on the last gasp of the Duke Nukem franchise?

potatolicious• 15 years ago

I think everyone expected an underwhelming "meh" game that would at least be worth some nostalgia value.

I'm not sure how many people expected just plain Daikatana bad.

halo• 15 years ago

>It "officially dies", then in a matter of a year or two, a sequel is whipped up by another studio using the inherited rights to the name.

That doesn't seem to have been the case.

The game seems to have been mostly complete in 2009 when 3D Realms ran out of cash. Gearbox negotiated with Take Two for the assets and worked with Triptych Games, made up of former 3DR employees, to finish it off.

A showreel containing art that appears in the final game was floating around the Internet in 2009, and the finished game contains an internal trailer by Triptych from 2009 which is very similar to the final game.

I really do think the released game is polished up version of the game from 2009. A half-hearted sequel would use more modern technology, and the mishmash of assets does suggest a protracted development cycle.

I suspect what Gearbox was really after was the rights to the Duke Nukem character and getting involved with DNF was just a means to that end. I suspect we'll be seeing another Duke game relatively quickly.

While the game is far from great, I don't think the game is anywhere near as bad as some reviewers would have you believe. It's just dated and disjointed. I suspect some of the overwhelming negativity is due to the continued creep of sensationalism; you simply don't get many hits for calling something a bit crap, only calling it the worst thing ever.

psykotic2• 15 years ago

> It "officially dies", then in a matter of a year or two, a sequel is whipped up by another studio using the inherited rights to the name.

This is not what happened. Please don't spread lies. The single player game is exactly what 3D Realms had developed and Triptych finished following 3DR's demise. Triptych consisted of a bunch of 3DR guys who wouldn't let the game die and spent close to a year working out of someone's house with no compensation. The work done by non-3DR/Triptych people was mainly the multiplayer and the console porting.

ordinary• 15 years ago

There's no reason to call someone a liar when it could just as easily be a simple mistake. Don't attribute to malice, etc.

zoul2• 15 years ago

I'm not really comfortable about the fact that dozens of adult people have spent several years of their work and milions of dollars so that other people can run in virtual environment and throw shit around.

drivebyacct2• 15 years ago

Cheap attack is cheap.

How big is entertainment sports business? How many millions of dollars do we pay individual players?

zoul2• 15 years ago

Tautologies are also very cheap these days :) It wasn’t meant to be an attack, I’m mostly wondering about the motivations.

It takes a huge amount of work to make such a game, even if everything goes perfectly well. I know there are interesting technical challenges in the game and there’s potentially a lot of money and other motivation, but I simply can’t image myself working hard several years to create a virtual environment where you can throw shit around and watch women explode because of alien insemination. (This is a simplification indeed, but the point should be clear.)

Would you invest the time and effort? If yes, why do you feel it’s worth it?

bryne• 15 years ago

"Did everyone really forget that Duke Nukem c1996 was also 'barely playable, not funny, rampantly offensive?'"

https://twitter.com/#!/ibogost/status/80475033998327808

ineedtosleep2• 15 years ago

Short answer: No. D3D was never like that.

Long answer: If you were offended by a game where you get pixelated peeing, some strippers with streamer pasties on their boobs and a few cuss words, yes it was offensive. This is hardly comparable, though, as at the time there was nothing like it, unless you include the idiotic outrage from Mortal Kombat.

mahrain• 15 years ago

I bought the game the day of the release (having waited for it for twelve years!) and I must say it's good to be back. I agree with some points, the loading times are terrible (especially when you're killed and want to get back in the action sooner) and "boss" levels are hard with the loading times when you're dead too, but guys, it's Duke Nukem!

A point this author didn't make is that it actually feels like different teams in different era's worked on the game, some levels have very blurry low-res textures, other levels are crisp and well-designed.

And as for the "feces"? Picking it up is optional and it dind't cross my mind. You can interact with the environment 1000 times more than Halo (for instance) allows you to which is great.

It's a game for people who've waited 12 years for Duke Nukem.

reitzensteinm• 15 years ago

I was on the fence before, but I'm definitely going to play it now.

zemaj• 15 years ago

Clearly there is something wrong with me as I found the game throughly enjoyable. I did go in with low expectations after reading a few reviews.

However I also HATE God of War for its violence and misogyny. quite strange.

Joakal• 15 years ago

For those interested in why it took over a decade to develop it before it crashed: Learn to Let Go: How Success Killed Duke Nukem http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/fail_duke_nukem/

The downfall was perfectionism.

shaggyfrog• 15 years ago

Perfectionism doesn't necessarily result in death marches and a crap product. Look no further to Valve to see what perfectionism can mean in the games industry (can I have my HL2:E3 now... please?), and of course let's not forget the obligatory reference to the master of perfectionism, Apple.

The difference between these two companies and the making of DNF? As Steve job said, "Real artists ship".

whalesalad• 15 years ago

I went to high school with a lot of people who weirded me out. This one particular breed was a combination of a lack of social skills, misogyny, and self pity. I always wondered what would happen to people like them... now I know they're making video games for Gearbox.

hessenwolf• 15 years ago

The first paragraph of the article made me laugh at my desk. The rape is not funny, though.

hugh32• 15 years ago

Unless you're raping a clown.

mcorrientes• 15 years ago

I just finished DNF and I actually liked it.

It's not a game I would like to play more than once but in my opinion, it was worth his pre order price. I was entertained about 8-10 hours with mini games, some jokes and first person action.

There're parts which appear unfinished and can't be missed, but DNF can be a entertaining game if you can look over it.

trevorgerhardt• 15 years ago

Is anyone really that surprised?

trotsky• 15 years ago

I think the lesson here is sometimes when a publisher shuts down a studio instead of letting the game get finished they actually know what they're doing.

pyre• 15 years ago

I thought that they ran out of money. That's a little different than voluntarily shutting down.

b0rsuk• 15 years ago

Much like stories or novels published after the author's death are generally bad. More often than not there's a reason why they weren't published. There are rare exceptions where the novel/story was interrupted by author's death, but otherwise - beware.

int3rnaut• 15 years ago

Nostalgia Forever. I remember playing the older Duke games as a kid (strip bars anyone?!) and thinking it was an amazing game. Like many people here, I carried that nostalgia with me for many years to the point where I bought (I didn't pre-order) DNF--and well... all I can say is, when you grow up your taste in things change. I wouldn't call DNF a bad game, it's just not something the adult me wants to play. I know though, if I handed this to my younger self, I would be quoting the stupid one liners all day at school. Gearbox made a decent game, they just didn't realize their main demographic grew up.

saint-loup• 15 years ago

I found this review interesting and more balanced: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/06/13/wot-i-think-duke-...

KeyBoardG• 15 years ago

I've only played through the first 20 minutes or so and had a blast. Sure its not cutting edge at all but you can see the old 3dRealms touch of being able to interact with a lot of things.

Users should set their expectations of the world's greatest game aside and just taking Duke Nukem Forever with a grain of salt. To me its like an 80's or 90's action movie.

I would have payed to play this even if it was a 2 hour tech demo just to see what they were working on all this time.

dkarl• 15 years ago

I found the review persuasive. The points about misogyny resonated with me, but everything he criticized about the gameplay resonated as well.

Linear gameplay with cutscenes, bleah. Regenerating health, meh, not in this kind of game. You can only carry two guns and they aren't fun to shoot -- what are they THINKING? This is DUKE. I don't know what era they grew up in, but my action heroes can carry at least six guns, maybe eight, and at least half a ton of ammo.

Nothing as fresh and silly as the shrink gun was? It was little novelties like that made Duke fun to play. If you want to make penis jokes, make a penis gun. If you want to make a joke about homophobia, make a leather gun that decks a bad guy out in a leather outfit with assless chaps, temporarily incapacitating his friends as they laugh at him. Blammo -- joke's on them! It wouldn't have any point against the big bosses since they work alone, but it would be fun to use anyway -- what is this big blob of alien going to look like in leather? It would also add some sexual interest without being too misogynistic, since you could shoot women to give them a bad-ass leather and sunglasses look, which would give them a lot more class and dignity and real sex appeal than they usually have in Duke games. Maybe they'd grab a gun and fight on your side for a while.

How did I just think up a major improvement to the game while writing an HN comment, and they couldn't do it in... how many years?

megamark16• 15 years ago

Please, create this game, I will buy it. You had me at the assless chaps gun.

mdaniel• 15 years ago

Was it only Quake that had such extensive modding capabilities, or was it Duke also?

In short, if they stick to the spirit of games from that time, then user content will show up and you'll both get your wish.

artmageddon2• 15 years ago

I just bought this game thinking I'd give it a chance, knowing not to expect a polished title like the Modern Warfare iterations of Call of Duty... but after reading the review and your comment, how could they get that so so wrong? Exploring the maps was half the fun, but if they just made them all be linear successions of duck and cover / shoot from chest-high walls... no thanks. Duke was all about taking bullets to the face till you were almost a bloody pulp and then drinking your health back to 100% from a fire hydrant that you busted open with a rocket launcher.

Thankfully, I still have my receipt and will probably return it this afternoon. I'll get the PC demo or borrow it from a friend in the future.

gcr• 15 years ago

You just bought it and you aren't even going to play it?

But why?

sbochins• 15 years ago

Not sure I agree with the rampantly offensive part. If I remember in Duke Nukem 3D there is a strip club level. I wouldn't call that the best way to represent the empowerment of women. Of course, that was never the intention of the series. The game is very conservative through and through. Duke even sounds kind of like Ronald Reagan.

On the issue of the gameplay, this game is really bad. It plays like a cheaper version of Doom 3(another poorly delivered, over hyped game). They really should have taken a look at Serious Sam if they want to know how to make an old school shooter nowadays. By the way Serious Sam 3 is going to kick some serious ass, unlike this game.

sorbus• 15 years ago

I've been watching a playthrough of Duke Nukem Forever (because I don't want to play the actual game). Firstly, it looks really, really fun. Not smart, not something that I would play through multiple times, even if I did play it - it doesn't compare to Fallout 3 in the least - but fun, in the same way that watching a mindless action movie can be fun. Secondly, picking up feces from the toilet is entirely optional, and reflects upon the reviewer as well as the game. One of the major selling points of the game was that everything can be interacted with, so what did you expect?

mirkules• 15 years ago

Talking about the joy of exploring the levels, I remember when I first discovered the hidden room in the first level in DN3D with the jetpack. A JETPACK! How awesome and novel was that in 1995??

And to think the game was not even true 3D! (You could aim straight ahead, shoot and hit your friend that was flying in the air). Despite that technical shortcoming, the game was FUN. I wasted many hours during summer in 1995 playing this game with a friend, and we even made our own levels to play in deathmatch, figured out novel ways to place laser tripmines, and used teleporters for nefarious purposes. Sounds like a classic case of "we made it 'cause we can" not because it was fun.

athst• 15 years ago

There's probably a lesson in here somewhere about letting development on any software drag on for so long. At a certain point you have to just kill it and move on with your life. I hope we at least get a case study out of it.

rkalla• 15 years ago

Not that it will change anyone's mind, but given that I'm more than half way through DNF on the PC, here are my thoughts:

- Graphics on the PC are decent when maxed out on good hardware.

- Load-times are unbearably long. 25-45seconds on a Dual-core 3.0Ghz machine (SATA drives, no SSD here) and an Radeon HD 6950.

- Did I mention load-times?

- Nudity is abundant and enjoyably breasty (I sincerely doubt MOST of the people looking down their nose while playing this game don't actually enjoy this aspect).

- Level design is boring and feels very "last gen shooter". Not much detail (although the Vegas back drop during the first 1/4 of the game is decent) and movement through a level is primarily linear.

- Guns are boring and feel VERY uninspired. There is nothing "fun" about the weapons. There isn't a single gun I enjoy shooting. I'm a gun connoisseur when it comes to FPS; for example, the Turok remake was an OK game (annoying terrible at parts) but the weapon design and sound work was fantastic.

- Enemies are not fun to fight or kill. Some of the bosses are interesting, but the enemies you fight the other 97% of the time are either overly aggressive and beat you down, making you frantic to take them out at the expense of "having fun" with them (e.g. freeze ray, shrink ray, etc... you are just panic'ed to kill them) or they have some annoying stupid AI routines (like flashing in/out of position as their health gets low) that does nothing for the gameplay and just artificially extends the boring-ass battle.

- The game isn't funny -- it's not that they don't try, it's just a bunch of humor that isn't enjoyable anymore. Sort of like popping Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure in and not laughing once and trying to remember why you were rolling on the floor laughing when that movie came out. Or popping in Wayne's World and trying to remember why you EVER though Dana Carvey talking strange and both of them stay "SCHWING!" ad nauseum was enjoyable.

- Monster-truck/mini-car-driving scenes are the most enjoyable so far.

- Difficulty is not balanced well at all. With 3 or more pig-gorillas on screen you can get your ass handed to you very quickly on Easy and on Hard you can take down a boss just as quickly. I don't understand what the difficulty settings do exactly. Regardless, Easy doesn't feel "Easy" and Hard doesn't always feel "Hard".

- For as much time/money/marketing Broussard put behind the "interactivity" of the world -- it feels really flat. There are a few simulated things (like pin-ball machines and poker machines) that are fully implemented and a total waste of effort IMO, at the expensive of plenty of other things being non-inter-actable. This is a perfect example of "depth" not "breadth" design in all the wrong places.

- The game is written/designed around the idea that you care at all about the fan-fare that is Duke. I don't and I imagine most people playing this game honestly don't care at all about the Duke character -- given that, a lot of the enjoyability of being in this all-duke world, being this over-the-top-character that is super-flat... just means nothing. So what little "umph" being Duke was going to breath into this just isn't there at all. As a comparison, it was intoxicating to be Shepard in Mass Effect 2 with all the characters in the world reacting to seeing you for the first time after what happened (avoiding a spoiler here) -- in Duke, I am just not entertained by all the things Duke in this world. IN FAIRNESS, I might have cared in 2004, so maybe all this stuff was applicable and funny at some point.

You can't slap a single tag on this game like "Offensive" or "Unfunny" or "Uninspired" and point at that single thing as it's failing... it's all of them to some degree.

The game is not a glaring flop, it's just mostly boring to play (it feels like a chore to me), has a few high-light moments (bewbs) and is totally forgettable.

For $5 rental? Sure pick it up and play it. For $39-49-59? No freaking way. I can literally think of 100 better games to put your money on depending on your preferences.

Duke Nukem Forever: barely playable, not funny, rampantly offensive

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