The lights are on
After fifteen* long, long, looonng years, Duke Nukem Forever finally launched to dreadful and mediocre reviews. Suddenly, a game that no reasonable person would expect to be truly great is getting trashed as if it let everybody down, and aged in reverse.
Before you jump to any conclusions, I'll fill you in on some facts so that we can avoid too many asinine assumptions about me for defending this unfortunate game:
So, why am I defending Duke Nukem Forever? Well, someone's gotta do it. And besides, it's actually not that bad. Here's what DNF is: It's essentially a throw-back First-Person Shooter with a few modern amenities. Classic in that it features more than moving through stages from battle to battle, bounding from cover to cover. Classic in that it's run and kill with no consequences. The modern amenities include a recharging health bar and an (asinine) focus on being able to only carry two weapons at once.
I will now list some of the surprising positives about this game that we don't seem to be hearing about in a lot of reviews (I've read quite a few, not the least of which are GameInformer's (with is good), IGN's (which is meh), and Destructiod's (which is shockingly offensive and unprofessional). The good stuff about DNF:
But it wouldn't be getting dismal reviews if it didn't have problems, which it does.
Now, when I rate a game, I think about whether or not I had fun with it overall at the end of the experience. For example, when I finished Ninja Gaiden II, I realized that I had almost no real fun with the game outside some of the regular hack-n-slash gameplay of regular enemies in the first few stages. Did I have fun with Duke Nukem? Actually, I did. I was frustrated a few times watching that lame lifebar slink away to nothing in record time only to face a massive reload. And despite the variety of gameplay, some of the segments can be unnecessarily dull.
Frankly, I would give this game a 7/10.
So what the hell happened that makes everyone hate it so much? I think it's perception. Is this a game everybody wanted to see released, but nobody wanted to like?
Granted, Duke Nukem's callous attitude and low-brow one-liners have totally lost their impact after all these years. Back in the day, they were pretty funny. Many of us gamers were fans of the movies the lines came from, and we were teenagers, and teenagers like crude mouthy crap. Teenagers aren't known for their class, and my friends and I were no different. But Duke wasn't the only game in town that featured one-liners.
Having your player character spout one-liners was pretty popular back then, especially quoted from movies. Such as the game Blood on the PC, which opened with the Army of Darkness line "I live again." Not to mention all the unfortunate Army of Darkness games. Hell, one-liners were spouted a-plenty in Bulletstorm released earlier this year (more on that later).
That was then...
Duke Nukem's sexism offends people!
And these days, it seems as if Duke's crude nihilistic and egotistical one-liners just seem, well, unevolved. I'll admit to being shocked at some of the lines uttered by Duke Nukem, like the "You're f*cked" line when killing a girl held as some kind of gross alien incubator. I mean, I know Duke Nukem is an ass and all, but he loves the ladies. You'd think he'd be a bit more upset to see ladies treated in such a way. Misogynist and all, you'd think he'd still care about the ladies.
This seems to be a point of contention in a lot of reviews and circles reviewing Duke Nukem. Duke's sexism is apparently suddenly offensive. This is one of the things I think needs to be complained about a lot less. For one thing, we all knew Duke Nukem was sexist. We should've expected this all these years. He likes strippers and stripclubs and is obviously a pro-manly manly man (not a typo). If there's one game where crude sexism should be taken with a grain of salt, it's this *** game. Which makes me feel that there's a weird double standard in this industry where reviews are concerned--
If reviewers want the game to be good, they review it as such and overlook things they may complain about elsewhere. I know of truly sexist games that received much better reviews--just because. I bring your attention to Team Ninja's fiascos: Ninja Gaiden II and Metroid: Other M (ignoring the obvious DOA:Extreme Beach Volleyball). You know why it's worse in these games? Because it shouldn't have been there!
Ninja Gaiden II is arguably more sexist than Duke Nukem merely in it's awful portrayal of women. The female characters in NG2 are dressed worse than a Duke Nukem stripper, and are infinitely more useless women. The female protagonist that works alongside Ryu Hyabusa requires saving something like 3 different times in the game--and that's when she isn't wandering around in the worst CIA outfit imaginable uttering mindless nonsense, and adding absolutely nothing to the story except to be a repeat stripper damsel-in-distress.
Then there's Metroid: Other M with garnered often positive if not excellent reviews--and it's sexism was infinitely more offensive than anything uttered by Duke Nukem. At least Duke Nukem didn't take one of the strongest female protagonists in all of gaming and turn her into a pathetic little girl constantly dependent on blind luck and constant supervision from asinine tough-guy male stereotypes. All Duke Nukem does is get oral sex from a bathroom stall and utter a few lines about his sexual awesomeness.
As a matter of fact, there is only one stage in the entirety of DNF that features a stripclub, as it is a stripclub. There isn't much to it, and the sex-based humor of it is hardly to the level of offensiveness as claiming that a strong militarily-trained woman would ever freeze in her tracks facing anything--let alone a foe she'd dispatched a half dozen times before--all by herself (Ridley). I know military. The whole point of military training is to get people used to acting in stressful situations rather than freezing. That Samus would be both military-trained, and the best solitary bounty-hunter, species exterminator in the galaxy--and still suddenly freeze in her tracks facing a foe she'd killed over and over before... That was just dreadful. The whole concept behind Other M was to say that Samus is weak and vulnerable, largely based on her being a woman. Don't believe me? Check out any of the story sequences in which Samus is portrayed with her military cohorts.
She's given an stupid nickname, she's treated like a little girl, her "I'm a big tough girl "attitude is laughed at (an attitude that, in a real military, would be seen as punishable insubordination!), and again--she constantly needs help, guidance, and permission from all the men around her!
So which game features more insulting sexism? Duke Nukem Forever, or Metroid: Other M? The game we all expected some level of sexist nonsense? Or the game we expected would add layers of depth to an inspiring female protagonist?
Preview: This game is awesome and it's going to be awesome!!
I can't be the only person tired of seeing positive game previews for games that launch to crap reviews. I'll hand it to GameInformer in that the previews of many games from E3 seemed very honest about whether or not they were good or crap or needed work. And there were a few of this ilk from IGN. But it has become a dreadful industry standard to talk up a game in a preview build over and over and over again. Then, lo and behold, it launches to crappy reviews.
Just what the hell is going on in gaming journalism these days?
Look at this excerpt from Destructiod's preview**:
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To bring this intensely long-winded preview to an end, I’d like to note that this game has a lot of hype riding on it. It’s jerked everyone around, myself included. A lot of fans at this point either have ridiculously high expectations, or they lost interest a long time ago. The best advice I can give is to approach this game with an open mind. Treat it like something that’s been in the works for three years instead of twelve.
If you want a cutting-edge game that makes headway for video games as an art form, Duke Nukem Forever probably won’t do much for you. If you want a fun game full of titties, beer, and quotes from 90’s action movies... Well, based on what I've seen, I think you're in for a treat.
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That's pretty positive. Now look at this crappy-assed review from the same site***:
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To say Duke Nukem Forever is a relic is redundant. Many people have come to accept this and some are ready to forgive the archaic design and nasty visuals simply based on the game's history. History, however, is no excuse for creative poverty. The game is simply bad by any standard, and if nobody was able to make it good enough, then it should have stayed unfinished and unreleased. The fact DNF demands $60 for such an ugly, boring, malodorous experience is the final insult.
Duke Nukem Forever is a festering irrelevance with nothing to offer the world. It's a game with an odious personality, one that could only endear itself to the sociopathic and mentally maladjusted. There may be life in Duke yet, but not his current incarnation. Not while his developers legitimately think he's cool and hilarious, rather than creepy and nauseating, and not while he's starring in games that can't even compete with budget titles, let alone the AAA experiences that Duke Nukem Forever arrogantly launches alongside.
Holy hell! "Could only endear itself to the sociopathic and mentally maladjusted??" Not only is this essentially the exact opposite of the preview from the same site from four months before, but it goes the extra mile to insult anyone who dares to enjoy the game! And for what? Aged FPS mechanics? Duke Nukem's spouting of dialog that we all expected we'd hear?
And again--as a reminder--Duke Nukem's offensive one-liners do not crowd the speech in this game--in fact, you hear them very, very rarely. Again still--there is one strip-club in the game, and outside of that, any amount of nudity is pretty rare and often more low-res than you might expect.
Now, there are some sexual design aesthetics buried in the game--creatures called "Impregnators," for one. And the alien columns that the captive women are wrapped into look suspiciously like penises. Shocking right? Nah. No more shocking than all the phallic imagery buried in any number of films, TV shows, music or what have you. Let's not forget that H.R. Giger, the designer of the aliens from Aliens buried such phallic and sexual imagery in all of his art, including the design of the Aliens themselves. The Predator's mouth looks suspiciously vaginal, since we're on the subject.
I'm no sociopath, and I'm not mentally maladjusted. I enjoy some graphic movies, but have long felt that video games repeatedly take the safe route. I was surprised as hell to see pubes on the nude female corpses in L.A. Noire. "Finally!" said I, "pubes in a video game! Our little industry is growing up!" The nude women held captive in DNF are only topless while attached to their bizarre alien phallic columns. They're still wearing underwear. You'd think they'd be completely naked.
Duke's quip of "She wasn't human anymore" when killing these women (both seen as a merciful act in the game, and a way to prevent baby enemies from coming after you) hardly plunges the depths of sexual offensiveness that Destrucoid would have you believe is in the game. Sure, Duke also utters "you're f*cked" at times during this--and while that's grossly ill-fitting--it hardly sets the stage for what this game actually is.
Why is it that some games are loved when they aren't out, and hated when they are? It's no longer online (and if it is, it's hard as hell to find), but 1up.com once put up a review of Manhunt 2's Adults-Only version--when it was clear the game was cancelled for an unforeseen amount of time (turned out to be about 5 months or so). What did 1up.com give the game? A freakin' 9/10. For the Adults-Only-rated, unreleased version of Manhunt 2.**** (Yes, this was before they switched to the letter-grade system, and I remember it well.)
Then, months later, the exact same game came out--and 1up.com gave it a 4/10.+ Here's the thing: Almost nothing was different about the game. One fatality move was removed from the game, and the "crazy haze" during executions was darkened. All the control issues, graphical effects, plotting, setting, pacing, and all that stuff were exactly the same. Essentially, Manhunt 2 received a worse review for the same game in it's released form than it did in it's unreleased form. It was at this point that my faith in 1up.com's review process largely vanished. This inconsistency was pretty awful.
Everyone's entitled to their opinion!
Now, I'm not stupid--I know we all have different opinions, and that individual reviewers and previewers will see the same game differently. But as a consumer, and someone who looks to gaming sites for opinions, reviews, and news; I expect both professionalism (which Destructoid failed to provide for Duke Nukem Forever) and consistency (which 1up.com failed to provide during the Manhunt 2 days).
I don't expect everyone to think the same--that would be intolerable. But from a review site or magazine, I expect that each reviewer, while encouraged to have their own opinions and views, be held to a certain level of standards where reviews are concerned. Destructoid has been worthwhile in the past, but they're inconsistent.
Another thing, as a (surprisingly in-depth) study from VGChartz showed, Destructoid (along with Kotaku and Joystiq) as a gaming website features substantial amounts of offensive, aggressive, and sexist content--much of it in "editorials" that aren't game news or reviews. ++ Is Destructoid really the right place for us to get information about sexist or offensive content in a video game? (I don't remember the time frame the measurements were taken in, but it's in there somewhere--it's a huge article.) Look:
I just feel that Duke Nukem Forever isn't quite getting a fair shake these days. Like I said, it's a solid, if old-school style FPS. It features a huge variety of gameplay, even if it doesn't feature a huge variety of weapons (though you'd be hard-pressed to deny how cool the Shrink Gun is!), and it controls and plays well. The FPS platforming segments control fairly easily, and are very forgiving. Jumping to a narrow beam or a corpse in electrified water is much smoother than I expected. (Hell, it was my unnecessary over-correcting from expecting worse platforming control that screwed me over one time.) I won't complain about the underwater segment because, really, I hate underwater segments in pretty much every game.
I say, don't dismiss Duke Nukem Forever without playing it. After all, we're gamers. We play video games and we have our own tastes and flavors. Duke isn't a noble hero--he's no Link or Master Chief (even if he mocks him at one point), but he's also not the most obnoxious, offensive, or annoying hero I've ever seen. I only watched my girlfriend play through Devil May Cry 4 (for several hours for some reason), but that was enough to convince me that Dante and Nero were two of the most obnoxious characters in all of gaming. "Slam dunk! Slam dunk! Slam dunk!" (If you've played it, you know what I mean.)
One True Failing
If there is one failing to DNF that I do have trouble over-looking, it’s that I felt that it wasn’t extreme enough. Duke Nukem has always been ultimate incarnation of the 80’s action hero. Stallone, Swartzenegger, Van Damme, Norris, Willis, etc all rolled into one. Times ten. Duke Nukem Forever doesn’t push its action and scenarios and craziness as far as I believe it could have. I wanted bigger, badder, crazier, more intense action—I wanted a game that would make my house rattle under explosions emanating from my surround sound. I wanted my hand to be constantly jarred by the rumble of the controller. I wanted my eyes and senses overloaded at every other turn. (I respected the calmer segments, platforming, and driving stages for breaking up the game and occasional action.)
But in February, I bought a game I was sure was simply “preparation” for when the Duke hit store shelves: Bulletstorm. Bulletstorm and Prototype featured the kind of over-the-top action and intensity that I’ve long sought in gaming (something stirred in my youth by Contra). Duke Nukem doesn’t quite stand up to the intensity delivered in Bulletstorm. There are some fantastic sequences—like escaping from a dam as it floods and comes to pieces—but compared to Bulletstorm, it wasn’t enough for me.
Duke Nukem is a victim of its own overly long and convoluted history. It’s not as extreme as it could have been. At the same time, though, I think it’s a miracle the game is as good as it is. Only one company can consistently turn massive delays and vaporware into gaming gold—and that’s Nintendo. But they have a history of learning how to turn a delayed calamity into a masterpiece. Duke Nukem Forever could easily have been another Diakatana+++, but it bucked the odds and made its way to retail in a pretty solid state.
Frankly, I enjoyed Duke Nukem Forever. Not as much as Bulletstorm, by any means, but it's a solid game. I liked not having to worry about dealing with idiot computer-controlled partners or their problems. I was happy to be doing something other than shooting from behind cover at enemies that hide behind cover, only to bound ahead to hide behind more cover and repeat the process again. Tactical and squad-based shooters can be fun, but we get too much of that these days. I liked having a straight-forward shooter that I could run around in and just blast the crap out of stuff, mixed up with a variety of other elements. I liked Duke Nukem's old-school FPS mentality.
I know it isn't perfect, but it survived. It survived the longest development cycle ever. The focus may have gotten hazy a few times during those years, and it may feel archaic from time to time, but at the same time--I've played actual bad games. I have Diakatana and Superman64 and E.T. and a fighting game on the SNES so poorly conceived that it has six usable fighters and only a single attack button (imagine that in Street Fighter).
As gamers, I think we at least owe Duke Nukem the benefit of the doubt--and by that I mean, we might as well rent the game and give it a try. After 15 years, this could've been a complete disaster--instead, it's just a little dated and imperfect.
Besides, what kind of crappy gamers would we be if we didn't give even poor games the benefit of the doubt? Splatterhouse garnered mediocre reviews, and I absolutely loved that game--and we all love something that the industry seems to dislike. Just don't b*tch about this without playing it. Duke Nukem was an icon in this industry once, and while he's fallen from his high stature in many ways, I don't think he's entirely irrelevant these days. After all, we still have characters like him (many "extreme ***" anime characters are worse for my money) all over this industry.
I bought it and I'm glad I did. It's a piece of gaming history as far as I'm concerned--and nowhere near as bad as many reviewers want us to believe. After all, many of those same reviewers and gaming journalists that spent ample time telling us how great the game was before it was released.
(This is an opinion piece, you are freely allowed to hate Duke Nukem all you want. At least put ample time into the game before you dismiss it.)
*Development timeline is present in the game and chronicles a 15-year period from original conception to release.**http://www.destructoid.com/hands-on-duke-nukem-forever-194121.phtml***http://www.destructoid.com/review-duke-nukem-forever-203658.phtml ****Unfortunately, I cannot give you this review. This original review seems to have been replaced by the review of the released M-rated game.+Review score is translated to their letter grade system as a D+. ++http://gamrfeed.vgchartz.com/story/82886/how-broken-is-game-journalism-an-analysis-of-three-gaming-sites/+++http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daikatana#Controversy ++++
My secret love game is Brink, and that game has received a lot of *** for reasons that just don't make sense to me.
Stupid team AI - you're supposed to be the star of your game and the game was meant to be played online first and foremost anyways.
Horrible lag - guess what, it was patched so now it runs online with barely any lag.
I don't plan on getting DNF but I can say that it's refreshing to see potentially great games being defended.
To me it's a combination of being released at a time when I couldn't be less interested, and the usual wariness of buying any game that needs a devil's advocate without putting it through the motions myself.
Impressive blog, and a good defense, I must say.
And you know, I agree. I've never played a Duke game (I've only seen the occasional video), but you know what I heard about them (and DNF) before DNF's release? It has a bunch of one liners and lots of sexual stuff. It's a pure product of the 90's. Basically everything people are mocking now.
What did they expect? The jokes to fall flat like on some TV Land sitcom? For it to magically not be offensive in person? It's like people (like Destructoid) went in knowing what to expect...then turned around and complained about it. It's odd.
And, what ever happened to nostalgia factors? I mean really. What is this, 1996 when everyone was hating on 2D games?
popped it into the ps3, played it for a total of 2.5 hours.
I don't really care about shooting alien-impregnated women in the domepiece to put them out of their misery....it's a video game. A Duke Nukem game, at that. Everyone should've known what they were getting into when they fired up the disc.
I disliked the game because it feels very, very dated. FPS have come a long way since Duke's day, and DNF just felt like a step backward. Best I can put it.
Nice blog, if more people were as passionate about gaming as you obviously are the conversations would be even better than they are already when compared to other gaming websites
We've had our stuff in the past, but I have to agree with this entire blog. Very well thought out, and pretty much exactly what I thought about the game.
I appreciate the guys that took the time to read this and understood my point (evidently, I got it across fairly clearly). I'm glad this didn't create some kind of childish flamewar.
@ eyros2k I'm not going to argue with you. We're of vastly differing opinions and you clearly ran into worse issues than I had with the game. I felt the movement was generally smooth (I get hung up on more crap in Gears of War), and the only weapon I truly took issue with was the shotgun. You're entitled to your opinion, and at least you actually tried the game.
Gotta say i honestly loved this game. My final score is a 7.5 not perfect but i enjoyed the hell outta it.