About the Duke.

Okay so, Duke Nukem Forever has finally seen the light of day, and needless to say it's getting a post-launch lashing.

Some justified, some not. I've played it through, I've experienced it. I think that really the summation of the game could be put up as "1998 in 2011's clothing" and really is the victim of itself. There was absoultely no way in hell the game could be what we in 2011 were hoping or dreaming it could be.

In 1996-7 when the game was drafted, this game would have been fresh and innovative, even outstripping Half-Life 1 to interactivity and storytelling within games IF it had come out then. It didn't. So in 1998 when we saw it, it looked awesome, running on the then-shit hot Quake 2 engine. Then a few years went by of psuedo-silence before the 2001 E3 trailer literally blew everyones brains out. Even by today's standards, that was a HELL of a trailer. THAT game would have made game of the year. That didn't happen. By now, the official development time on DNF was 5 years, 3 of those with public interest. then nothing.

Literally NOTHING.

For 6 years.


The entire game industry went through SEVERAL full reiteration cycles in that time. Those who were around playing Duke 3D in thefirst place grew 10 years. If you were 12 when DN3D came out, you were 21 now, if you were 20 then you were 29. A fuckload of things happened.
Then we get a small 15 second teaser saying that Duke isn't dead. Then 3D Realms dries up, thne gets sued, then dries up more. Then in 2009 Gearbox picks up Duke's pieces.

So now we're lookign down the barrel a game that is so loaded on hope and hype that there is no chance that it could be good, lest of all if it stuck to the design docs from 1997. Which for the large part it did. Which is the problem.
not it's, yours.
Through all the development hell, the game didn't change. It's expectations didn't change over the years. Duke's humor didn't change, Duke's approach to the world didn't change. The developers despite fallout and reformation didn't change. You did. Your expectations of the game from 1998 to 2011 have changed so vastly that you're unwilling to even to enjoy this game for what it is-
A monument to the colossal fuck up that was it's development.

The game handles like a FPS from 1998, and if you're expecting anything more than that, your sights are FAR too high. The graphics are somewhat forward of that point, but only to the point where pixel shaders and polycounts are not 1998 level. AO helps the game in this respect, but don't expect Crysis.

While playing, at some point you'll probably ask yourself "Why did this game even get released?"
I have two answers, both likely worked in tandem:
1) 2K Games Recouping development costs for the project
2) Big names who worked on this game having far too much pride of craftmanship to let the game never see light.


Ignoring the lengthy time in the making, I actually didn't mind the game at all. The entire game felt like a game, which was refreshing after playing so many games trying to be movies, or reality, or comic books, or whatever. The game world worked like you would expect it to, with very few invisible wall moments. It made you constantly aware you were playing a game, which is the directly opposite of immersion. But you know what? That's fine. It's not a game to be immersed in character or story. It's game where you play a guy with a gun who's the center of his own world, and you've got shit to kill. End of story.  It's actually refreshing to play a GAME game for once though, where the game knows it's a game, you know it's a game, and nobody's pretending to be otherwise. You can see it's working parts, understand how everything works by simply looking at it.

Really, if I had to pick out any bit that could be picked out for poor implementation,  for certain, it would be a mid-section, romping through the desert on the monster truck. It felt stretched thin, and on average probably was the least aesthetically pleasing section of the game. If it were shorter, it'd probably have been less jarring. But no, it drags on, which is bad.

There's nothing I really can say about this game in deconstructing it that is either fair to expecations of gamers today OR the game itself without stepping on the toes of the other. The mechanics are telegraphed and overt (and apparently the console release is plagued with auto aim issues). The story is simple yet convoluted but is also played to irrelevance. The sound design is actually pretty nice, and is finished off with neat occlusion effects. The graphics are dated, but that's almost to be expected.

If I had to give an opinion on whether to buy or not, I'd say do it with three following caveats for that verdict-
1) You consider the purchase and play of this not as a purchase of a game to fill time, but as a testement to it's own nightmarish development.
2) You take no preconcieved notions about what the game could be like into it.(and play it on PC)
3) You have been waiting for this game for 12 years. You must buy it if only to say that you have it.

Me? I still love me some duke, and this game is the Duke-iest thing I've played in ages.
I'd give it a Duke/10.

OH MY JESUS

Okay so I’m un the interlearns now… it’s a nasty sticky business, but overally I’ve gotta confess I am rather enjoying the experience… except for one unit.

I have to say, I really am not one to like book learning art. I have real issues with it, like diametrically polarized against it. I find that art in the book sense tends to be full of pretentious WANK. Two and a half pages of words to explain that could be easily done in two lines. Sociology fares about the same (which thanks to the nature of my course I must dabble in at least twice more over my 3 years). So you can imagine my chagrin with a unit that is about 50% art history reading, 30% sociology in relation to art, and the final 20% being labwork. It is mountains of unintelligible text, followed by mountains of unintelligble wank text, followed by “now lets use the crop tool”.  So I spent today playing mass catch up with this unit, doing the rather large reading… WHAT IN THE LORD’S FUCK IS GOING ON HERE.

To quote my scribblings on the 10-pages

“Small summary of the Making friends with Jarvis Cocker text:

The Web. 2.0. Despite there being a perceived notion of the music industry decentralising, democratising (more power to the artists and listeners, less to record companies), this is not neccesarily the case. Let's use Jarvis Cocker as a case to sample against. Words. Words words words. Youtube. Wikipedia. More Words. Myspace. Quantifiable numbers validating that Cocker's Myspace is indeed seen. Youtube videos.Convergent Media. Thanks to WEB TWO POINT OH and SNS the artefacts of the pop idol and rockstar are being challenged, are being bridged, bringing people preceptively closer to their idols . All thanks to the web's society of archiving, we can map trends, we can correlate all kinds of social interactions, friends, top books ,etc etc.

The moral of the story-  DICKS and FUCK YOU .“

Sorry, needed to vent. Having NO free time between work and being actually at Uni leaves very little time for study (mostly on weekend), even less for free time, so naturally I’m a little vent-needing.

Please excuse.