yes just because you like cod doesnt make you instantly a hater. I like cod too. i hate its single player but its multiplayer is very addictive. something about the competition in it.

If you enjoy gameplay over graphics then you will enjoy it. There is no psychological phenomena around it. I told you the pure facts. It has gameplay with lots of different options and a lot of variety. With all these puzzle games and physics, the destroyable environment and the fun it is in the end a good game.

If you need perfect graphics and you just watched all these E3 trailers, then you might be disappointed about the Unreal2.5 technology behind it. It still offeres ambient occlusion, static and dynamic shadows, normal spec mapping, dof and motion blur, but the models and animations differ in quality in some levels.

There was indeed hype around it. But the hype-infected turned into haters after its release because of their high expectations. People like me who just expected another Duke game love it like it is.

Another problem is: This game is technically not really comparable with these new games. It is from another era. That is the same as if you try to test an old cult car from the 60s or 70s today. It would fail each test because of missing technology and missing security features. But it might be fun to drive it. And fun is actually what this game makes right. But really, the humour is not for everyone, some people feel pissed because of it. Some women in the USA already fight against this game and bring it to the court.

Besides that this game is on number one in sales statistics all over the world, here in Germany, at Steam and in other places. But I think half of them really enjoy it while the other half bought it only because of the hype and will turn into haters. So you will find 2 big emotional groups all over the internet hating and loving it.
While I personally enjoyed it, I still have the guts to admit, that it could be made better with good old health packs, quicksave, more open level design and with more weapons on the hero's shoulders. Because of that it is not a perfect game, but it is still a fun game, better than each rail-shooter out there.

And yes, I was talking about the single-player experience. In terms of multiplayer I prefer Left4Dead 2 anyway

Another sad finding of this DNF debate for me is: When a good game, that is longer than today's shooters and offers more variation than these shooters gets such bad rating then they would rip our small indie games apart. I mean, shooters like Crysis2 are really simple compared to DNF, better looking, but no gameplay and no humour and no fun. And still, these games get better rating.
This shows very clearly that graphics sell games better than gameplay and it probably ends the debate that raises over and over in this forum.

Well I wouldn't phrase it like that. I think that it's just the shooter genre which is very picky about graphics. Think of e.g. Dragon Age 2 - its graphics were semibad for modern standards (compare it to e.g. The Witcher 2 which wasn't even done by a team that big) but it still got great ratings...

I think the problem with shooter reviews most magazines do is that they select some "reference games" like e.g. Crysis or CoD. Any game then has to compare with those and wherever they don't follow the forumla they gather demerits...

Yes, you are right. This probably applies more to shooter games. But it might become a trend for the western mass market.

i think it also is affected by your goal/size. if your intention is to compete with the big dogs, the graphics may be needed, but if you want a successful indie game, good graphics could get you an unfinished game, or complaints about the gameplay, and people arent willing to buy an indie game unless its got some sort of addicting gameplay. (i would guess.)

Hey Frank, kann es ein dass du auf Gamestar.de als Machinary_Joe unterwegs bist?

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I like the game. It could have been so much more (storytelling), but it`s really fun to play. Some ideas are unique (shrinking), it´s rich in variety (rc car, shirinking, monster truck, physics puzzles, interactive world) and very humorous. I also don`t regret to have bought the limited edition. The artbook is very interesting and valuable, the comic strip is nice and the Duke statue is epic, although made in China.
I really waited 14 years for this game. First saw it in a gaming magazine in 1998. Duke 1 and 2 were my first games along with Commander Keen and Duke3D one of my first shooters besides Unreal. The game is fun to me as a retro shooter player and Duke fan.

Now, I haven't played DNF, but I've read reviews, including the RockPaperShotgun-review I linked to earlier. Before we continue, let me make clear that there is no other outlet avaible that I trust more. They have proven several times that they absolutely know how to review and judge games, and they seem among the most fair and enthusiastic among the gaming press.
They didn't like it.
And they are definately not ones that only care about graphics.

Instead, you're phrasing your sentences as absolute truth. Which is dumb, because "liking games" is, by its very nature, something subjective. You can find certain elements in games that make it likely to be enjoyed by more people, just as you can find flaws that will cause people to not like it. This is as "objective" as reviews can get. But so much in games is about "feel" that sentences like "There is no psychological phenomena around it" are unclear at best and plain wrong at worst.

Here's my take on it: "Duke Nukem Forever" introduces several gameplayelements that, so far, haven't been used much. The shrinking, for instance. Such elements are generally well-received, though. But if the gameplay doesn't stray far from "kill-all-enemies-open-door-proceed", then complaints about it being repetitive are justified.

Humor in games is always difficult, and from what I've seen and heard, I'd be embarrassed and ashamed to play this. It sounds dumb and childish, but maybe that is what people want and expect from this. In that case, good for them, but as with everything else, people should be allowed to hold a negative opinion on this.




This is actually a nice analogy, and I feel I understand your point better with it. In other words, you expected and wanted certain "old-school"-elements in your game, and you're glad you got them. And this is fine!
However, some of those "old-school"-elements died a good death for a reason, and some elements, such as quicksave, are now expected standard. If you don't have that, then an argument like "it is supposed to be old school!" shouldn't save you from criticism regarding an obvious oversight. However, you admitted yourself to this, so I think we agree on this point?

Maybe I'm the wrong person to post in this thread, what with my complete lack of interest in this game, but I just wanted to clarify a few things. And I also felt that the nameless "hater"-group was a bit unfairly bashed on in here, and deserved a defense



Wait... what? I don't know what you're trying to say with this. Are you saying .... Duke Nukem gets a bad rating because it is... different than indie games? Huh, what? Longer than indie games? Has higher production values?
Seriously, I don't get it. Can you rephrase this?



Well, it's either that, or maybe people actually enjoyed Crysis 2 more than Duke Nukem Forever.
Come on, let them be entitled to their opinion, just as you are to yours

btw... price tends down. Today you pay on hitmeister for the pc version only 28, for xbox 32Euro. This is less then the half start price. And this only in not a week. I think, that such sales system come very close to the real price of video games.

Error:

First of all I agree with a lot what you wrote. Of course all this is a matter of taste. And I am not against any other taste.

I dont like that you call me dumb, I really always appreciated your postings and this is the first time I see you falling into such cheap behaviour.

You said oldschool gameplay died for good reasons. Yes, you are right, it died because it does not fit well to the consoles. I know from DNF interviews that they integrated auto-healing and restricted number of weapons only because it works better on consoles. Todays linear level design is another result of it, especially in shooters. Games like Stalker show that open level design can still work, but linear and simplified rail shooters just sell better. So in the end it is just a decision to make more money, it does not mean that it is plain better, it just feels better for the standard consoles player.

You have to understand that a consoles player is sitting in his living room on a chair with a small controller in his hand. A fast paced action gameplay is not perfect for this scenario. But a rather slow gameplay with autohealing and a cover system is more relaxing in this case. Actually the Duke was not like that, Unreal was not like that, Doom, Quake, Wolfenstein, they all were not like that, but these games were PC games. That is the difference.

Today you have to pay 100 million to make a decent shooter and this will not work on a PC alone, it has to be cross platform. It is a development for some reasons and does not mean that I, as a PC gamer, like this trend.

Regarding the gameplay elements: The Duke is more than a shooter. You drive through several levels, you control a remote controlled miniature car, you solve physics puzzles, you control a crane, a hoister, moving platforms and more. Compared to the big shooters it is not only more varying it is also much more intelligent gameplay, similar to Half Life 2.

If you feel offended by the humour, then the game is not for you just like Al Bundy might offend some people or Charly Harper or Leslie Nielsen. But this setting is exaggerated and unreal and thus kind of funny. Another part of the jokes is to create some relations to other games and other movies. It does not work if you dont know these games and movies. I mean there are side blows toward movies like Phantom Commando or Predator as an example. Not everybody knows these ones today.

The sentence regarding indie games was just as simple as that: Nice looking simplified shooters sell better than shooters with better gameplay but not so polished graphics. Even Crysis 2 sold weak because it did not become a new graphics revolution but everybody is looking forward to BF3 because of the great graphics. Almost nobody in these forums wrote comments or questions about the gameplay. These shooter games sell by graphics and we cannot compete in this area. So it would be a bad idea to make an indie shooter, we have to restrict to niche markets and casual games.

Crysis2 vs. DNF. Well, almost all people in these forums talked bad about Crysis2, it was too narrow, bad AI, too linear, almost no driving, too much simplified, a consoles game. All people who liked the Duke found Crysis 2 boring and many of them even did not finish it. This tells me something about it.
Of course there will be XBox 360 fans who enjoyed Crysis2, because it is a good consoles shooter, better than others. And also PC gamers played through it. But I dont talk for them, I talk for me and what I have read in several PC gamers forums.

It's okay, no one called you dumb.Sure, they have reasons behind their making the game wussier (regen health, 2 weapons at a time), but that doesn't make those good decisions. Serious Sam for XBox and Serious Sam 2 on XBox were well-received, ridiculous amounts of fun, and offered no such thing as health-regen and weapon limitations. I agree that one can argue in favour of reduced weapons because of the button layout on a controller (and argue against it citing the likes of Serious Sam and other games that didn't make such compromises), but certainly not regenerating health. Console gamers (with the exception of Wii) consider themselves as hardcore as PC gamers (those consoles aren't cheap, and their games cost a small fortune).This is speculative at best. I think you're thinking about the Wii. Here's some speculation of my own: regenerating health came as a means to prevent that a player is forced to continue without enough health to have a reasonable chance at survival; cover systems came about not as a means to sit back and relax, but to simulate real life gun-fights where participants do not run around a corridor dodging projectiles. I know console gamers -- PS3 and 360 gamers -- and they are generally nothing like Wii gamers in terms of tastes and expectations for games.
Really? I got the impression that most of those comments were simply the expectations of users who never played it, with the only exception being alpha strike who bought it and disliked it -- and we all know how specific his shooter tastes are. I'm not saying he has poor taste, but that's hardly a consensus. Alibaba liked it a lot.

Basically, I think the poor reception of DNF is more than just its 12-year-old humour -- it's that it made compromises that cost it some of its all-important fun factor, as well as design choices that made it less fun. There are those who hate it more as a reaction to it being worse than it should have been, but I think your like for it and forgiveness of its (apparently glaring) flaws is a reaction to the extreme haters. There are plenty of us who don't like it because it met our expectations that it was always going to be rubbish.

I think Indie developers normally make games with a much better focus, and their games are more fun for it. I don't think you have to worry about indie FPSs because of a dodgy game that bit off way more than its development team could chew.

Jibb