Background: Duke3D was my first foray and exposure to FPS's... and from then, I just couldn't care about what John Carmack did with Wolfenstein 3D or Doom I/II. I didn't care about slaughtering demons or nazi's... it was all about hitting up the Red Light District level, going into the club, and making those strippers dance... then taking out your frustrations on the pig cops that hurt them ladies! It was popular enough back then it was even installed on school computers, left as a reward if we finished our homework and classwork ahead of time. There was no question which class we got stuff done in then.
Back to the review...
Packaged arrived adequately protected, nothing harmed. At least till I got my hands on it.
Balls of Steel came with a nice set of goodies. The "Carpe Nukem" bust is well detailed, with the only disappointment being that I thought it was going to be bigger than what it was.
Deck of cards makes sense, and the box they come in has a nice motif; Just wish they could have been Duke Nukem-themed like the dice.
The Artbook is impressive, both for the assets shown, and for having a bit of insight from the creators that finally managed to bring the "unreleasable" to the grubby masses.
The papercraft figure of Duke is idea-wise a riot. Just hoping to get an exacto knife so I could actually assemble it properly. And the postcards are a keeper, too.
Now, to the review of the actual game...
Gearbox has went on and stated how this was basically intent to be a preserving of 3DRealms' original vision for the game, what they were originally going to bring us way back in 199X/200X. That being said, it's sad to see some "modern" features creep in. I get that it was a concession for console players... but I got it for PC. Did we really need a two-weapon limit? That's about my one significant gripe there.
Game looks good. Maxed out the in-game settings and it played liquid smooth on my machine. I too have noticed some of the "late loading" of better textures if I alt-tab out of the game to take care of something and come back for it to reload, but being this seems to be a fault of the Unreal Engine in general (I've lots of UE-based games that do this exact behavior), that's not something I can fault them with. All these people whining about graphics come off as if they were expecting this thing to be the next Crysis or something... which I think to me just means they came to it with the wrong mindset.
I'm aware of the criticisms, and some are indeed true... some just come off as making up excuses. I went into purchasing this game basically expecting a newer Duke3D - lewd and crude humor, killing aliens, babes - with better graphics and capabilities. And it delivered on this just fine. I personally find those that seemed most to be upset about the game fall into either:
- people expecting this to be some kind of "ultra-benchmark" tech demo that would be unplayable on pc's for years after release... Sorry, we already have id and Crytek covering the "tech demo" studio roles just fine. We don't need another.
- Were "modern warfare"/Halo fans that were probably not even born yet when Duke3D was available. And thus have no understanding of why this game is so important to the culture.
- Are based on the console version(s).
Loading times? Only time I notice it here is when I'm first starting up, or entering a new chapter for the first time. If I die and respawn, I'm looking at four seconds max on my machine. And many of the visual bugs I've seen from gameplay footage, seem to only come from the PS3/360 versions because they simply haven't happened ever while playing it here on my PC.
To sum up, if you enjoyed Duke3D back then, you owe it to yourself to play this. But for everything that is holy to you, get it on PC if at all possible. You'll save yourself a lot of frustration and have a much better experience. Duke Nukem Forever: Balls of Steel Edition
While I was much more of an occasional gamer in 1996 I did play Duke Nukem 3D and remember it fondly. Not long ago I played through the game using eDuke, a free engine source port that makes the game control and play at high resolutions and using modern control methods. It's a great game with varied level design and a fun atmosphere, though it definitely suffers from some issues. Jumping forward to Duke Nukem Forever I can say much the same thing... fun but flawed.
Duke Nukem Forever does not play like the 1996 original with it's open levels, key hunting and over-the-top weapon combat. It also does not play like a 2011 game, more scripted and almost painfully linear. Duke Nukem Forever plays like it came from roughly 2004, the era of Halo and Half-Life 2. Like Halo you have an "ego shield" that recharges, you can only use two weapons and the combat is more about moving and knowing which weapon to use. Like Half-Life you have to solve small little physics puzzles, explore the environment for ammo and bonus items and explore non-combat areas for story content and interactivity. If you like the idea of those two games melded together you're off to a good start with Forever, but unfortunately there are deeper hurdles to overcome.
Duke Nukem Forever had a long and almost insane development history as you probably know. The project was started in 1997 and went through multiple complete reboots. Trailers from the 90's and early 2000's show a completely different game than this one is. That fractured stop-start development shows all over the finished project. Levels do not feel naturally linked a lot of the time, design varies from interesting to terrible, the graphics go from pretty good to dreadful and back again. Think of Duke Nukem Forever as a patchwork quilt of ideas and development, never quite cohesively melding into something amazing but often being fun in spite of itself. If you like the Duke character, a parody of 80's action heroes and machismo, and you have a good time with average shooters, you might find yourself having a lot of fun in spite of the flaws, like I did.
That Duke humor is the target of most mainstream reviews. Personally I think a lot of them don't get... I see them complain about his old jokes and his sexism, but that's pretty much the point of the character. Duke is not someone you want to be or even hang out with, Duke is just a big doof who is fun to play ass when kicking alien butt. Your appreciation may vary.
The PC version of Duke Nukem Forever is pretty good compared to the console versions. Framerates are smooth and remain high, mouse control is excellent, keys are fully re-mappable, there are several quality graphics options and native blur anti-aliasing that actually works really well (choose FXAA if you can). One thing you will likely want to do is turn off processing effects which completely blur the image into oblivion. With those off the game looks crisp and detailed, often better looking than you might expect it to be. With most mainstream reviews based on the Xbox version complaining about horrible framerates, long load times, bad aiming and horrible graphics it should make you feel good to be a PC gamer that we got by far the best version of Duke. Steamworks DRM will mar the experience for some gamers, though I pay it no attention since the PC is an open platform with a huge community ready to make sure these games work in the future.
All in all I had a good time playing Duke Nukem Forever, which is the most important thing. The combat could often be really fun, the environments could often be fun to explore and the jokes often made me laugh. Yes the game suffers from feeling slapped together over 14 years and from being conceived at a time when certain limitations were in effect. Yes some of the jokes go too far and others fall flat. Yes it's clearly designed for multiple platforms and not a classic PC style FPS from the 90's. All this is true, but what is also true is that I had a TON of fun playing Duke Nukem Forever. If you're a fan of this style of humor and early 2000's shooter gameplay I think you will too. - Duke Nukem - Orgasmic - Bubblegum - The Duke'
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