Duke Nukem Forever (Always bet on Duke!)

[Vincent]

Hey don't complain.It took 13 years but its now officially coming out next year.

1st Feb according to some online shops.

I'll believe it when I see it. But when I do see it I'll be buying it

[BrionIrons]

Hey don't complain.It took 13 years but its now officially coming out next year.

[doomed]

Gameplay: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-97N6jNKb4

[Beanovsky Durst]

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/65514

You've got to also look at the reality of where games were 12 years ago, and who was playing games, and who plays games now, and how to make a successful game. You've got to realize who your audience is. It's a lot different audience now. I'm having a hard time imagining, these days, someone thinking numbers one through twelve of what my weapon is. Try to imagine sitting down with, like, your uncle who hasn't played games before and saying "don't forget, number seven is the rocket launcher, number six is the freeze ray."

Argh that's stupid.

Agreed. Duke's about having a shitload of guns and blasting your way thru alien assholes. Two weapons are not manly enough for the Duke. FAIL.

[doomed]

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/65514

You've got to also look at the reality of where games were 12 years ago, and who was playing games, and who plays games now, and how to make a successful game. You've got to realize who your audience is. It's a lot different audience now. I'm having a hard time imagining, these days, someone thinking numbers one through twelve of what my weapon is. Try to imagine sitting down with, like, your uncle who hasn't played games before and saying "don't forget, number seven is the rocket launcher, number six is the freeze ray."

Argh that's stupid.

[Vincent]

And as far as Health Packs goes; Goldeneye/Perfect Dark/TimeSplitters did it best, if you ask me (Your health can not be refilled, but you "may" acquire body armor/shield that acts as a secondary lifebar). Totally not a fan of the self-refilling solution, and I'm glad F.E.A.R. has yet to join that trend (hopefully the third one wont do it either... though... I'm a bit skeptical to the third one).

Erm... TimeSplitters does have health packs aswell as armour. There's usually only one of each on every level, but they are there, especially in 2 and 3.

[doomed]

There have been shooters on console with arsenals the same size, if not even sometimes larger, than what you find in most "0~9" shooters. They have successfully pulled off instant access to every single weapons in such shooters since all the way back to at least 1998. Seeds of Evil says hi. If a problem that was solved 12 years ago (by more or less tweaking a then 5 year old design) is suddenly now actually an issue again, then the problem isn't the platform/gamepad/excuse, the problem is the developer - I find it hard to believe they hadn't landed on the weapon wheel, had a "full arsenal" really been necessary and a core design aspect. Plenty of games have been using it since its initial introduction, and something that has had a large portion of its design centered around parodying and referencing other content sure as hell better have done its research well enough on various standards and how people have solved certain problems in the past.

See, you didn't understand me. I agree the developers are to blame. I am pissed off because of them, not because of consoles.

Yeah, blame us for it if you want. It may change in the future and I don't know what will happen with it, but it was us. I stand by it too, as you cannot discount designing games for a modern world and part of that world is consoles where the bulk of the sales can be. And on those consoles you have a controller. We tried for a long time to support lots of guns but we simply could not find a nice way to map it to a controller, despite trying 4-5 designs. We gave it enough time and decided to stop swimming against the current and adopt what was basically the "standard". It's not 1996 anymore. ~ George Broussard


Here's why HL2+BioShock are relevant. He's afraid they're going to lose sales on the consoles if the game doesn't adopt the simplified Halo-like only-2-weapons system. How come there are games like the above that I mentioned that have sold very well, Broussard?

I'm all for modern game design, I mean I don't want to be looking for colored keycards to move to the next level, but this shouldn't be changed no matter if they are targeting the consoles or not. It's certainly different from how I always imagined a Duke Nukem title on the PC which will probably make me wait to buy it when the price falls bellow 20 euros.

[DONNIemo]

God I still have my PCGAMER from 1997 stating that it is due out soon. Being that it is now 2010 that is really sad.

Dare I say it does anyone still care about Duke anymore? Don't get me wrong I loved him, but that was so long ago now, Ive just moved on to better characters.

I will be interested in seeing how he stands in 2010.

[Carnivol]

I don't know Eat Lead but all the other games don't have much in common with Duke Nukem. Carrying a shit load of weapons is part of the Duke Nukem experience. Just like Serious Sam. It's part of the fun, part of being a badass action hero. It's also how fans of the previous game expect it to work. Surely if you asked a fan of DN3D "how many weapons do you expect that Duke can carry in DNF?" he's going to reply "all of them", not "2".

Eat Lead: So-so-ish (and horribly linear to boot) third person shooter and pretty much the closest we've been to any actual Duke Nukem-ish parodying this gen. (Main draw is totally its messed up humor and the excellent main char delivery provided by Will Arnett)

I don't see any good reason to compare Duke Nukem 3D to Serious Sam. If anything, Duke Nukem 3D is best put as a "2D Apogee game -> 3D FPS" transition ala the one the Metroid series went through with the first Prime. (Somewhat open-ish platform levels with room for exploration, improvisation and the occasional branching path. If anything, the core of Duke Nukem 3D was less focused on the actual shooting and more about the "How the heck do I get over there and do I want to bother?")

But their intention was always to let the player carry all those weapons. Broussard said that they tried 4-5 different game designs, which means they really really wanted to make it work, but they felt none worked with the gamepad, so they pretty much were forced to drop it. They changed the game's design because it didn't fit consoles, how am I supposed to be happy about such a decision?

There have been shooters on console with arsenals the same size, if not even sometimes larger, than what you find in most "0~9" shooters. They have successfully pulled off instant access to every single weapons in such shooters since all the way back to at least 1998. Seeds of Evil says hi. If a problem that was solved 12 years ago (by more or less tweaking a then 5 year old design) is suddenly now actually an issue again, then the problem isn't the platform/gamepad/excuse, the problem is the developer - I find it hard to believe they hadn't landed on the weapon wheel, had a "full arsenal" really been necessary and a core design aspect. Plenty of games have been using it since its initial introduction, and something that has had a large portion of its design centered around parodying and referencing other content sure as hell better have done its research well enough on various standards and how people have solved certain problems in the past.

Imagine Capcom deciding that they want to release simultaneously RE6 for PC/PS360 AND Wii, but they also believe that on Wii the game works best as a on-rails shooter ala the RE:Chronicles series, which forces them to make all 4 versions of the game a on-rails shooter.

Pretty poor sample. Look at pretty much any multi-platform title from the past 20 years and see how they differ between platforms and spot the recurring patterns. (Though, it's true that the PC and the "power" consoles are closer now than sometimes before)

The majority doesn't though, they love these games. So they are hardly poor or outdated game designs, they work just fine even if they aren't gamepad friendly.

If you have media on your side, manipulating the people's opinion of certain things is very easy. All it really takes are two things: Extra praise and the "less attractive" alternative.

[doomed]

Like F.E.A.R., Mirror's Edge, TimeShift, Eat Lead, etc.
(in fact, usually helped made sure the action always felt a bit more fresh, that you'd use various weapons and improvise a lot more too. Of course, there were some that kicked themselves in the crotch by just trying too hard to save their power weapons for "something good".)

I don't know Eat Lead but all the other games don't have much in common with Duke Nukem. Carrying a shit load of weapons is part of the Duke Nukem experience. Just like Serious Sam. It's part of the fun, part of being a badass action hero. It's also how fans of the previous game expect it to work. Surely if you asked a fan of DN3D "how many weapons do you expect that Duke can carry in DNF?" he's going to reply "all of them", not "2".

Who's to say Duke Nukem Forever's not a game that fits into this "other" group anyway? There hasn't been a proper Duke Nukem game in forever, and they've pretty much all ignored the formula used by the previous release (for better or worse). Also, doing something just 'cause someone else does it doesn't make it good. Seeing as Duke Nukem's been taking shots and parodying a lot of stuff, I don't see the problem with it actually updating itself to be following somewhat recent/popular trends (there might be a joke there...)

But their intention was always to let the player carry all those weapons. Broussard said that they tried 4-5 different game designs, which means they really really wanted to make it work, but they felt none worked with the gamepad, so they pretty much were forced to drop it. They changed the game's design because it didn't fit consoles, how am I supposed to be happy about such a decision?

Imagine Capcom deciding that they want to release simultaneously RE6 for PC/PS360 AND Wii, but they also believe that on Wii the game works best as a on-rails shooter ala the RE:Chronicles series, which forces them to make all 4 versions of the game a on-rails shooter.

(I love on-rail shooters BTW.)

Also, BioShock is a game I think is a poor example of pretty much anything and everything (in a positive context, anyway) - and really not a fan of Half-Life 2 (let's ignore the technicalities) mostly 'cause post-gravity gun acquiring, your weapon arsenal is pretty much just dust collecting extra weight acting as your failsafe when stuff doesn't die via physics, while you save your booms for anything a tad bit larger than a person.)

The majority doesn't though, they love these games. So they are hardly poor or outdated game designs, they work just fine even if they aren't gamepad friendly.

[Carnivol]

How about we mention some games that worked perfectly fine with limited weapons...

Like F.E.A.R., Mirror's Edge, TimeShift, Eat Lead, etc.
(in fact, usually helped made sure the action always felt a bit more fresh, that you'd use various weapons and improvise a lot more too. Of course, there were some that kicked themselves in the crotch by just trying too hard to save their power weapons for "something good".)


Who's to say Duke Nukem Forever's not a game that fits into this "other" group anyway? There hasn't been a proper Duke Nukem game in forever, and they've pretty much all ignored the formula used by the previous release (for better or worse). Also, doing something just 'cause someone else does it doesn't make it good. Seeing as Duke Nukem's been taking shots and parodying a lot of stuff, I don't see the problem with it actually updating itself to be following somewhat recent/popular trends (there might be a joke there...)


Also, BioShock is a game I think is a poor example of pretty much anything and everything (in a positive context, anyway) - and really not a fan of Half-Life 2 (let's ignore the technicalities) mostly 'cause post-gravity gun acquiring, your weapon arsenal is pretty much just dust collecting extra weight acting as your failsafe when stuff doesn't die via physics, while you save your booms for anything a tad bit larger than a person.)


And as far as Health Packs goes; Goldeneye/Perfect Dark/TimeSplitters did it best, if you ask me (Your health can not be refilled, but you "may" acquire body armor/shield that acts as a secondary lifebar). Totally not a fan of the self-refilling solution, and I'm glad F.E.A.R. has yet to join that trend (hopefully the third one wont do it either... though... I'm a bit skeptical to the third one).

[doomed]

Not really, play HL2+episodes+BioShock: Health packs + being able to carry a ton of weapons and no one ever complained, not even consoles gamers, instead these games are considered to be some of the best, if not the very best, of FPSs. They are hardly games of the past, they are very relevant today.

Just because some console gamers find it difficult to change weapons when they carry lots of them, why would I be happy that the designers dumped down this aspect of the game to cater to them?

What's next? Duke turned into a cover shooter? Iron sights gameplay? P2P multiplayer? Because "that's how FPS's work these days"? Hell no they don't for games like DN, perhaps they do for Halo and GoW.

With decisions like these, they'll lose the PC crowd, and they'll be complaining that nobody bought the PC version, instead they pirated it.

Meanwhile Valve will be announcing that their latest game had much stroner sales on PC instead of consoles, just like they did in the past. http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/36...tly-More-On-PC

Gee, I wonder why one game will bomb and the other won't.

[Vector]

^ That's how FPS's work these days. Health packs are a thing of the past.

[doomed]

This isn't DNF. They dumped it down for today's console audiences with health regeneration and the restriction to carry only two weapons. Meh.

[MeanBob]

Here's the story of how Duke Nukem Forever was brought back to life!

http://kotaku.com/5630192/how-duke-nukem-forever-was-brought-back-to-life