Well the arena based combat now makes trip mines actually look fucking useful for a change :p 

entertaining and informative. 

Watched the Giant Bomb Quick Look. Oh lord it looks quite pathetic really...
Should be able to play it myself later since a housemate has a copy. 

And sounds like czg is dead on about the horrible tone and 'humour'. 

It's that bad? Wow. 

Avoiding talking about the style element, and purely looking at mechanics, it feels like a fairly tepid shooter here with irritating nods to modern shooters and a horribly excessive amount of fluff placed on top. This to me makes it actually quite a fascinating design study, in the way it 'spans the eras' of shooters.

You move slowly, you have a tiny FoV, and lowish ammo counts. So avoiding damage without cover is frustrating. The pig-cops with guns can't be dodged at all. The big guys with cluster rockets are bloody annoying as they home in a slow drunken path so again, just dodging round is irritating. And the Octabrains now have splash damage, so again, given how limited space often is, you just keep taking chip damage all the time.

At this point, recharging health is essentially because you are just expected to tank damage a lot of the time.

The weapon limit is utterly retarded, leaving no room for having giggles with gimmicks when YOU want to, and left to wait until the developers have made a little play pen for you to have your silly fun. You also have low ammo counts, and I sodding hate having to constantly run around looking for guns on the floor to pick up or running back to that ammo cache and then using it. Let me just focus on pumping lead into shit and avoiding damage. Oh and I hate sprint buttons too.


Most of all though, the game wants to be Half-Life 2. It's full of puzzles and areas that are completely ripped from Half-Life 2. It's kinda embarressing really. Vehicles were okay though. Turret sequences should be fired into the sun.

Pacing wise I think it really shows how much better Valve are at this sort of thing. DNF feels like it has two modes: No enemies, hopping around trying to find where the hell to go. Or, all out combat with enemy spawning. There's barely any monsters just placed around as you explore, so the pacing just flip-flops constantly. Furthermore, these non-combat sections would be okay but they are soooo long and sooooo many of them and oooooh god it's not so clever that entire levels should be given over to jumping around on kitchen shelves.

Also the digs at other games are just embarressing :p

Weapons:
The Ripper: made a lot of noise, did okay damage and had annoying spread. basically a clone of HL2's SMG.
Shotgun: Probably the most satisfying weapon overall, but has awful damage fall off, meaning the boring ripper wins out in efficiency.
Shrink-ray: I only found this once whilst playing through. Whatever, same as the original really.
Rocket Launcher: Five limit meant blowing up normal enemies a lot isn't much of an option. Feels kind of sluggish, lock on is boring, Half-Life guiding = much better.
Freeze-Ray: Not as powerful as it once was, thought it was arse really.
Devastator: They nerfed it pretty badly really. It used to gib pretty much any enemy with two shots. Now you end up pumping more rockets in just to kill normal enemies. They're slow, has a lower ammo count, yea, really unsatisfying for me.

Trip Mines/Pipe Bombs: Credit where it is due, these work well, and arena based fighting means trip mines are very useful

The holoduke was actually useful, but the steroids were annoying. Several times I activated them by accident in a fight and I'm stuck with my damns fists out for a tedious amount of time.

Finally though, the real cracker is that this game feels like it has nothing really new over Duke 3D. Hell it could pretty much just be a remake. Barely any new weapons, barely any new enemies save headcrabs and those drunken rocket gits. The alien style levels were in Duke 3D, Duke burger was in Duke 3D... fucks sake didn't you think of more weapons more monsters or anything over 12 years? The final boss is the same as the start which is the same as the end of Duke 3D anyway. 

It isn't a good game by all means. But it's not as bad as some review sites put it. If it had been released in its current form some six years earlier, if would have been more acceptable/accepted. At least it's better than FEAR.
Fairly mediocre graphics, but I guess you can't really blame them.

The similarities to HL2 are there, but then again, I'm pretty sure Valve stole the ideas from the DNF team! At least they tried to add some variation to the otherwise generic FPS gameplay. I thought the miniature shrunk jumping sections were a refreshing change.

Story and characters are stupid and pointless at best, and the levels feel kind of random and disconnected. Part of the reason for this might be the fadeout levelchanges. Often I thought "how and why did I get here".
It has a "shit ending" indeed. Please no sequel or DLC.

Oh well, at least it's out. The end of an era. Though you won't miss anything at all if you don't play it.

the real cracker is that this game feels like it has nothing really new over Duke 3D
Unlike Doom 3, or Quake 4, or AvP, or most other 'sequels'? :P 

I thought it was great! Completed it last night also. The game is pretty much epic. Took me a lot longer than I thought it was to complete the game. I found it refreshing - less time wasted on cutscenes, and more action.
The boss fights were my favourite. Good to see a propper FPS with propper boss-fights. I didn't have any problems with the fact you could only carry two guns - it made the game more interesting because you had to do quick thinking sometimes to locate and then grab another gun.

nothing new over Duke 3d

Apart from vehicles, puzzles, NPC's, bigger, better maps/GFX etc - no, er, nothing..... 

Unlike Doom 3, or Quake 4, or AvP, or most other 'sequels'? :P

Doom 3 is is a weird one to drop cause it was arse :p

Doom 3 and Quake 4 weren't so long in development, nor did the game they were based on essentially stand on gimmicks and fluff.

vehicles - omg a vehicle sequence in an FPS, say it ain't so.
NPCs - like every shooter since 1998 :p also duke 3d had NPCs, they just didn't do anything :)

I'd say you've listed other sequels that were pretty meh. An example of a good sequel for me would be, say, Gears of War 2. The basics were the same, but they tweaked weapons, added cool new ones, added some fun monsters and generally expanded the experience.

After so long I'm just stunned that it barely has a single original idea of it's own. Anything new it had was obviously taken from other more polished shooters. It's Duke 3D minus the freedom and with HD graphics! Whoopie. 

TBH. The game couldn't have been more 'on the rails' if it tried. And the post-processing - urgh - "let's make everything the same shit-brown colour". And I find the script and voice acting in Gears of Shit 2 really painful. It's just hard to listen to all of these post-apocalyptic human soldiers of the future talking like they are all teenagers on the footbal team. Poo.

Doom3 is one of my favourite games of all time, I just love the atmosphere and the intensity of some of the later battles. 

Oh yeah, I hate the Gears story, graphics, characters, plot etc. But the gunplay in Gears 2 was smooth. That it was on rails didn't bother me, practically every shooter now is.

I'll clarify my point about Duke 3D/DNF: It has nothing that wasn't either in Duke 3D or from 1998/2004 :p 

So what could DNF have done that wasn't in the original or any other game since then?

It does sound like the level of vulgarity is a first for a FPS, and not in a good way.

But what can ANY FPS bring that hasn't been done before? 

From the sounds of it dnf does not have much of what was in duke3d 

But what can ANY FPS bring that hasn't been done before?

Mirror's Edge, L4D and Portal did new and interesting things. I'm not even asking for stuff that dramatic, but simply that their is what, three new weapons? A laser, a railgun and a drunken rocket thing. Woo. Duke 3D is famous for it's crazy gimmicks. This gives you nothing new, and in fact takes away from how much you could use such stuff.

No weird or wacky monster ideas, no hilarious new weapons or gadgets. It feels lazy. It lacks any real imagination in its gameplay, adding no colour to the FPS experience other than the overlong mini-games, which are completely detached from the actual fighting. 

I remembered it as being bad, but just replayed it and really enjoyed it! The story is stupid, and the 'hallways turn red and bad guy laughs' effect gets old quick but remains til the end.

Strangely, I remembered hell section as being my favourites, but now I feel completely different - also, bosses were kind of off.

I don't give a fuck if shooters are on a rail, if the rail is well made... but the 2 gun thing has me nonplussed. 

Doom 3 is an okay game. It does a few things right, like having a pretty kickass arsenal (even though many of the weapons sound kinda weak), the plasma rifle being my favorite, some interesting monster design and setpieces and at times an intense atmosphere. But when I replayed it a year or so ago, I realised it just drags on for far too long without really presenting any new or interesting mechanics to the player. It should have ended right about after you've been to hell for the first time, but then you're only about two thirds through the game, with about 5-6 hours of monster closets and repetitive combat left. I felt like they couldn't really decide if they wanted an old-school shooter or a horror game.

As for DNF, yeah it looks pretty fucking bad from the streams and youtube videos I've seen. Only two weapons, regenerating health and a degenerated Duke - doesn't fit the gameplay or the character. Top this with some really bland level design and embarrassing character interaction and you've got yourself a turd. Such a shame too, as the 2001 version looked absolutely fantastic and could easily have been one of the best FPS games ever if the trailer was any indication, but I guess Broussard was too far up his own ass to realise that. 

But when I replayed it a year or so ago, I realised it just drags on for far too long without really presenting any new or interesting mechanics to the player.

yeah, there's no escalation in d3. hellknights and mancubi were the strongest thing you meet until the cyberdemon.
there was a distinct lack of monster variety at the upper level of monster strength.
i still love the game though. :) 

I dare you to play Duke Nukem Forever and not enjoy it.

only two weapons at any single time - there are plenty weapons in the game.

regenerating health regenerating EGO is not the same as health.

bland level design How? Bland compared to what exactly?

degenerated Duke Duke is a degenrate. Period. He always was! He swears, makes sexist remarks, and spouts bad one-liners. To cut that part out would be like Sonic The Hedgehog - BALD.

Seriously though - you should play the game before you bash it. It's a really fun game. 

I'll certainly try out DNF at some point, but not when it's at full price. Maybe when (if?) there's a public demo released or something.

I got the impression that it's just a mish-mash of ideas taken from different games without cohesion and putting any thought into how they actually work or if they'd even fit the style of the game. For instance, the two-weapon limit and regenerating health (yeah just because it's named "ego" doesn't hide the fact it functions almost exactly as regen health) - this hurts both level design and gameplay, in my opinion. Gameplay because it's harder to actually stay in combat and get up close to enemies, as after two-three hits you're forced to take cover, which doesn't make any sense when you consider the title character and the previous games - Duke is supposed to be a testosterone filled one-man-army that can slaughter tons upon tons of aliens while carrying 15 weapons with ammo for each, and now he's forced to take cover every few hits like some pansy? It also makes the gameplay less frantic and fast-paced like it was in DN3D, only accentuated by the slow movement speed. And he can bench-press the equivalent of a car, but can't carry more than two weapons at once?

The reason I said this hurts level design is because the two-weapon limit and regenerating health/ego/whatever effectively removes the need for exploration seeing as your healthbar just recharges, so there isn't longer any need to hide powerups like atomic health and portable medkits (oh, and no more jetpack powerup either) in secret areas and thus encouraging exploration. And you'll find most weapons conveniently laid out along your path, especially if there's a boss coming up - I've seen some people say the two weapon limit makes the game more "strategic", but when you get everything served to you on a plate when you need it anyway, it becomes a moot point. And really - is Duke supposed to be strategic? Isn't it more about blowing shit up with tons of creative and insane weapons? Imagine Quake with a slow movement speed (no bunny/trickjumping), limited to holding two weapons, having to constantly take cover, next to no powerups - ugh no.
Seeing as there is less need for exploration due to these two things, the game becomes more linear, which is also reflected in the Half-Life 2-like cutscenes which brings the action to a halt and forces the player to wait it out ("Oh, that game did a thing! We need it too!"). Is Duke about story? Hell no, just let me blow shit up damnit!

As for taking ideas from other games with any cohesion, the weapon limit, health and cutscenes are prime examples of this - Call of Duty and Halo has them, and I guess it works there seeing as they're (especially CoD) strictly linear games depending on cinematic setpieces, but Duke was never about that - forcing the player into situations like the cutscenes just prevents them from doing what I suspect most would like to, and that's to run around like a roid-raging crazy man while hurling pipebombs in one direction, kicking a pigcop in the face and then taking off with your jetpack while firing off your rocket launcher like a maniac. As it is, this sadly doesn't seem possible any longer.

And about Duke's character (besides him becoming a pansy due to cover etc) - the oneliners really aren't funny, clever or witty anymore, and I won't even mention the hive rapce scene thing. Duke used to be about killing aliens while spouting movie quotes and generally being witty, but now he seems more like a permanently pissed off dude - "Douche", "Quit bleedin', pussy" - and the scripted lines just seem to lack any punchline or wit whatsoever. Killing the octaking: "There can be only one king... you fuck", really? There was a few times when watching the runthrough I literally cringed at these. He seems more like a parody of himself now, than a parody of 80-90's action movie heroes/clich�s.

Still, I haven't actually tried the game myself, so maybe I'll change my opinion on some of these things when I do, and if you enjoy it, then I'm glad! More power to you. 

I appreciate the open-mindedness of the post, but you haven't played the game, and this is apparent because a lot of your assumptions are wrong.

The EGO not being health - "ahah!" I cry! It is not the same as health because EGO is regenerated by killing enemies. This doesn't happen in other shooters, and it means that you can effectively go on a rampage, taking damage, but not having to take cover all the time because if you calculate your risks well you can take damage and then complete a kill (or an execution) and continue onwards....

Cutscenes - there really aren't many cutscenes in this game. Infact I am having trouble thinking of any cutscenes.

The hive-rape-humour thing. I must have missed this. There is a part where the girls are talking to duke and he says "you look, er, fucked". And they do - they are impregnated by aliens in the hive. I fail to see how this is a sick joke. Duke Nukem 3D had the same thing in it - girls bonded up in a hive.

Jetpack - there are jetpacks in Duke Forever. Especially in multiplayer...... 

Come on now, EGO is the same as health. It's only regenerated by killing enemies when you execute them, but that doesn't happen every time. Okay, that's something that not all games have, but using this to argue against regenerating health critics seems seems odd.

There are plenty of weapons scattered around so the 2-weapon restriction isn't so extreme. But they all have very limited ammo and sometimes it's just nice to be able to switch to the weapon best suited for a situation without having to look for it first, e.g. rpg. 

I'm no fanboi, this is just a passing thing, a game comes out, I play it, it's good, I'll play it again because it was fun the first time and I haven't tried the harder difficulty yet.

Just annoys me how people can slander it so much when they haven't played it. And slagging a game off because it has cutscenes, when there are no cutscenes - also seems unfair.
And you can execute enemies, and do other things which boost your ego, and this is a combat-gameplay dynamic which is different to just "auto-regen health". And to say otherwise, and go at length to slander a game because of things which aren't true - well this is a bit silly.

I'd hate to play this imaginary version of Duke Nukem Forever, it sounds terrible. I dread to think what it must be like.....

The version which I paid for is great fun! 

yet another worthless, terrible, generic fps game. nothing to advance the genre, nothing redeeming in it's gameplay, horrible design decisions.

and even ignoring it's gameplay, it's childish, disgusting humor is just completely uncalled for. i'm embarrassed to call myself a game developer when shit like this comes out. 

Imagine Quake with a slow movement speed (no bunny/trickjumping), limited to holding two weapons, having to constantly take cover, next to no powerups

Let's not give gb ideas here... 

I never thought of Duke as the kind of character who would pick up feces and fling it at anyone or anything. This is not the Duke Nukem, that as a young boy, I wanted to grow up being.