Gamersnewsbits.com

I was late on getting my 100.00 Balls of Steel edition due to travel, but finally unwrapped it and put it in the PS3. I had, all week long, read many negative and some supportive reviews of the game in the meantime, and I have to say, it’s not as bad as many reviewers have stated. It’s definitely not a 60.00 (or 100.oo) buy. Had I played it before purchase, I would have waited for the magic 30.00 drop, which will probably happen sooner than later. Is it a bad game? No. Is it very offensive, and disgusting? Yes. Are the graphics sub-par (as reported)? Yes and No. You can definitely see the development time that spanned years, and the possibility that textures were reused and “updated”, but much of the game looks like it was made in 2007, early Xbox 360 graphics. Not BAD, per se, just not smooth, and given Gearbox’s last big game, sub-par in comparison. The characters, especially the scantily-clad women are not as smooth as they should be, and tend to be mannequin-ish. The death animations of the enemies seem to have been left out, they just die. That was acceptable in the old DN games, but with modern tech, limbs can (and SHOULD) be blown off, and should be interesting to see.

The gameplay is there, control is not an issue, the audio, at least in my case, was just right. Nothing spectacular, but it’s a run and gun shooter. One sore spot, especially having played DN 3D, is that you can only have 2 weapons, instead of the arsenal of old. The weapons are great, and fun to play with, but to limit the fun to 2 is worse than being told you can only have 2 pieces of the 30 different pieces of cheesecake in front of you.

I have seen worse games get better reviews. I would have to rate this as a mid-grade game. C on a letter scale. 2.5 on a 5 scale. Whatever. I hate scales. You have to take this game for what it is. 15 years of development and ideas that were never implemented, then a process of taking leftovers and making meatloaf. I commend Gearbox on trying, but I really would have hoped they scrapped all of the old and started from scratch. If you read the reviews, and I would always recommend you do, take into account a few things. How old is the reviewer? Did they actually PLAY DN3D, when it came out, not later on? Do they have a sense of humor? Are they easily offended? Are they basing the review on their personal bias (many do), or on technical merit?

I go for personal on my end, but try to keep the other things in mind. In all I would call DNF a rental for now, and if you love crass humor, some pixelated T&A, and cheesy 1-liners, wait for the price drop before adding to your collection. The way I see it, Gearbox bought a franchise, and to get a start on that, they had to take DNF with it. They finished a project that may not have been their original groundwork to the best of their ability within expected guidelines (even with one push-back). Hopefully they do more justice to the Duke and update his gameplay, graphics, and yes, his one-liners into modern times. Bulletstorm did just this, and proved there is still a market for over-the-top, foul-mouthed, babe-chasing protagonists.

Well, that turned out to be a bigger review than I thought. I have NOT finished the game yet, nowhere close, but it’s not the trash that some reviewers *cough1UPcough* have said it is. But I wanted to throw out my opinion to counter exactly what those reviews say. They’re right that it’s dated, they’re correct that they have issues, but apparently some of the people in the community have no sense of humor and are prude, and that hurt their view of the game. It’s rated M people. If it weren’t for the crude humor and sexuality, it would probably have received a T rating due to the lack of over-the-top gore and blood.

-e

Tags: 2K Games, 360, Duke Nukem, PC, PS3

This entry was posted on Friday, June 17th, 2011 at 5:59 am and is filed under Microsoft Xbox360, PC (Win, Mac, Linux), Sony PS3. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.