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So I Was Replaying Duke Nukem 3D...
...since Duke Nukem Forver is coming and all that. And all I can say is it�s really rather crap. I remembered it never feeling as polished as Doom or Quake but boy, I was not prepared for something so annoying. Once you are passed the gimmicks (you can shrink people, he wise-cracks, you can give money to strippers) the game is pretty dire.

Yes I know it�s going on fourteen years after the fact but I had to ask myself why I wasn�t replaying Duke 3D after replaying so much Doom and Quake. They must have some specific qualities in their mechanics that have made them so enjoyable.

The main issue from what I could see comes from two things that both Quake and Doom have that Duke doesn�t. One, diverse monsters, and two, a pain system that allows you to stun things.

The first point only makes the second worse, since it seems most of the enemies that get recycled have insanely annoying hitscan attacks, and little to no reaction time. Pig Cops, Pig Cop tanks, Enforcers, Battle Lords... if you can�t Line of Sight them you are going to lose health, and often they will commence firing the moment you poke your head out to shoot. So you pretty much always lose some health, and it feels like a war of attrition every time you encounter them.

I also lost count of the number of times they put hitscan monsters or even worse those retarded exploding drone things behind doors or round corners by the way. Okay so iD did that quite a bit with Knights and such, but Knights won�t take most of your health off instantly.

Monster variety, Duke 3D has nothing like the Fiend, Ogre, Knight or Hell Knight, nor like Doom�s Demon, Archvile, Revenant or Manacubus. You also take incredible amounts of damage from anything beyond the standard trooper monster.

I would move onto the level design but this post could get really rather long, I�m just wondering what other people�s opinions of Duke 3D are... and yes, I�m prepared for the �but it�s just supposed to be fun� replies :p
Yeah 
I love Duke3d. Back when I was but a wee tween, Duke3d was the funnest, most addictive game out there. It was a bit more twitch than Quake, and you had to be really fast on your reflexes because the game could be unforgiving, but man it was just so progressive at the time. Looking around, jumping, crouching, the interactivity ... it was all pretty damn impressive.

I liked a lot of the level design, because it was sort of a precursor to what Half-Life did. It didn't completely revolve around keycards, but had some cool parts like blowing up certain ports of a map to proceed, or raising/lowering water levels to reach higher areas, etc. It was very inventive, at least it seemed that way to me back then.

And yeah, I prefer the Quake enemies to the Duke3D enemies, but I just prefer Quake in general, despite Duke3D being a tad more creative when it came to its gameplay. It would be cool if the Tarbabies jumped on your head and started sucking it, like the ooze things in D3D, but whatever.

But I'm a total Duke3D fanboy, I have good memories of that game. Which isn't to say I'm excited about Duke4Ever, which I totally got sick of about 5 years into development. I will probably play it but then move on to something else. 
 
Yeah stuff like the Jet pack and scuba gear ment exploring more weird areas was smoother, but then again, Quake being true 3D and more creative with verticality made up for a lot of that.

Duke 3D is also pretty cruel by having really high areas with nasty flying monsters that you can't shoot because you can't look up or down properly :p 
 
"you can't shoot because you can't look up or down properly :p"

you need a modern engine for duke then you can look like in Quake

try eduke32.exe

:) 
Haha 
it wasn't THAT bad. :P

i do agree with you about the hitscan monsters though, that was really annoying.

also, while new engines allow you to look up 90 degrees, back when the game was released that was impossible. i don't like it when games abuse the restrictions of their engines to artificially make the game harder. 
 
"it wasn't THAT bad. :P "

Well, maybe not aye, I have had a rather crap week recently :p

But I still think it is an interesting comparison in game-play. It's no wonder that it seems generally accepted that the second episode is the worst, as it is not set on earth, thus the main element of atmosphere is lost. Directly putting Duke in space removes the charm and makes it Doom with a few sci-fi film references :E

You could argue that it's like comparing Quake 3 to UT99. Stream-lined vs what feels like a mad pot of ideas. I won't be complaining if DNF injects a little fun back into FPS games... 
... 
I wasn't bad - I had a lot of good times playing the game. Up until I can mentally play back some of the ambient sounds.

But it wasn't as good as Quake. Or Doom. 
On First Play 
I liked DN more than Quake, it felt fresher, more innovative etc at the time.

Obviously Quake won out over the long term given that I'm still posting here.

So maybe it was just the gimmicks etc, but maybe it is the fact that the mapping community for Quake took off exponentially and has given me more reason to play that game than most others. 
 
well, individually, they were gimmicks, but taken together, they made the maps feel a little more interactive.
maybe a little unrealistic that there are strippers that continue to dance while there's a gun fight going... 
I Will Say 
That if DNF comes out with a level editor I may have a spin with it. Same goes for Bulletstorm. Oddly, Bulletstorm seems more like a natural evolution from Duke3D, more so than DNF does. 
 
Yea, Bulletstorm looks interesting, although the hype-machine at Epic is pretty embarressing imo...I can't read a preview with the word 'awesome' quoted that many times without starting to cringe :p

I presume some people tried to make more realistic or earth based stuff in Quake. Did anyone pull it off okay? :) 
Jpl 
has, numerous times IMHO. 
Indeed 
I tried this concept several time already.. but the best one is "Fort Driant" IMHO..... 
 
jpl, have you ever tried doing a map with the kingpin textures? i think they might look good with converted q2 soldiers, for some reason... 
Necros 
... link please :) ... 
 
Damn, I'm tempted to whip up a remake of a Duke level now...Since most of the ones from ep3 are so small, and my current Q1 map is a bit bogged down :( 
 
There is that D3D remake being made in the UDK that got Gearbox's blessing. So don't bother remaking one, just make a new one.

http://news.bigdownload.com/2010/10/14/duke-nukem-3d-unreal-engine-3-fan-remake-gets-official-blessing/ 
 
Me want Quake monsters :))) 
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