Balls of Fail

Oh noes, he lives!

The joke is over – 15 years in the making, Duke Nukem Forever has been released. I held little hope that the game would be any good after being in development hell for so long, but I bought the Balls of Steel Edition regardless – figuring that the collectibles would be a nice throwback to my childhood as well as simply being one of the better Collector's Editions I've seen for a game of late. (As an aside, what's with “Collector's Editions” that simply provide an extra weapon and a tin box? There's nothing to collect there!)

It is a functional game, with a beginning and an end. It didn't bug out on me, apart from one time the subtitles and all other on-screen text refused to show me the center of each letter, rendering it quite difficult to read. Annoying, but not game breaking – and all it took was a reload to fix (happily provided by a pipebomb to my face).

I Liked:

• One liners

Occasionally, when Duke does something interesting (like exploding a pigcop, or interacting with the environment) he will make a one liner. This attempts to bring some character into the game – and to a degree it succeeds. It works some of the time – for example, earlyish in the game there is a sequence where you are offered power armour by a soldier. The power armour is an exact replica of Master Chief's armour (of Halo fame). Duke responds with “Armour is for pussies”, which I found mildly amusing. The problem I find with these is that they are not frequent enough, they get old very quickly (particularly when the same five kill phrases are repeated ad nauseam). A little more variety in these would be great.

• Interaction with some world elements

There are some elements in the world you can interact with. I found this to be nice. For example, you can draw on the whiteboards which have battle plans (probably a bad idea since most people who buy this will just draw genitalia), you can eat the donuts, you can play the pinball machine, etc. This was kind of cool, particularly since you get rewarded for “performing Duke-like actions”, because apparently using the toilet is something that Duke Nukem would do, and others wouldn't (great logic there, 3D Realms). The problem here is that not enough of the world is interactable, so it becomes fairly obvious when an object you can interact with is placed. Compare this with HalfLife 2 – where almost anything is interactable due to the use of a proper physics engine. While not everything is interactable, it feels like the objects in DNF that you can do things with were placed there purely to give you something to do.

I hated:

• It's Halo All Over Again

While it makes fun of Master Chief's need to wear ridiculously heavy armour, the game actually takes a lot from Halo. Even though its on the Unreal Engine, it felt like I was playing the original Halo game again. Only being allowed to hold 2 weapons at a time is a limitation that should not apply to Duke Nukem – particularly since the game just prior allowed him to hold everything all at once. Not to mention the regenerative health/armour (creatively renamed Ego), the jump animation (or lack thereof), and the need to constantly flip your monster truck back over because it handles like shit (and the ability to simply flip the truck effortlessly). Which leads me to...

• The Goddamn Monster Truck Level

This level was terribly designed. It seemed like it was trying to do what HalfLife 2 did with the driving section. However, they couldn't think of anything interesting to do to make Duke stop, to break up the tedium of driving (and the truck doesn't have a gun). Their final solution? To make the vehicle constantly run out of fuel, so you're forced to get out of the car, walk down a hallway or two of death, get a fuel canister, then return to refuel and continue driving. Seriously. Why are they suddenly trying to make Duke realistic? THIS IS NOT RIGHT.

• As Linear as a Line

Normally, I don't have a problem with linear games. They give you a clear goal, occasionally hold some secrets, though also give you the illusion of freedom by scripting interesting events, or placing you in a city where things block your path but you can see beyond. Duke does this to a degree, though it also falls into the JRPG trapping of placing treasure at the end of very short alternate dead end paths. To compare apples to oranges, Final Fantasy 13 is one of the most linear games I've ever played (until you reach the late game, where you are suddenly given a lot of exploration space). Duke Nukem Forever is, to me, more linear than that. Think about that for a few minutes.

• Duke is Suddenly a Wuss

There is a cutscene where the President speaks to Duke through his BatCave like communications center. The President flat-out tells Duke to stay out of it, and that the aliens are there peacefully. This is after power has been shut down to multiple buildings – seemingly by the aliens. Duke remains silent.

There is a cutscene where the President screams at Duke for a few minutes over all the destruction caused during the alien invasion (the President blames Duke for it all). Duke remains silent. This isn't Duke Nukem!

Seeing a trend here? Duke does not speak when he should, and never says anything relevant to the plot – he speaks entirely in quips and one-liners. If your character is going to talk, they should not suddenly get silent when the plot is being moved forward.

• The Guns Feel Weak

The only gun which feels like it could kill anything is the shotgun. The railgun is also quite good, but the other guns feel like they're toys. I can't quite pick why, perhaps their firing sound isn't loud enough, perhaps there's not enough kickback (if any), but it feels like it's impossible to kill anything. Even the explosive weapons feel unsatisfying. The freeze ray is the most pathetically weak weapon I have seen – even though it was ridiculously cool back in Duke3D.

The crux of the problem with this game is outdated design wrapped in current tech, it seems. The game feels like its taken the worst of current games, wrapped it up with Duke's universe, and then been thrown against the wall a few times for good measure. While not completely a mess – I enjoyed the game for the first hour or two – it felt like a chore to finish – and that's exactly the opposite of what a game should be!

To sum it up – if you remove all references to Duke Nukem as a character or a universe from DNF, you get Halo 1. And this is a terrible thing.

I don't blame Gearbox – they just finished what 3D Realms started. The lack of fun in the new Duke Nukem rests entirely on 3D Realms' shoulders. There is hope left for a new Duke game to not suck – if Gearbox can do it right.

E3 Impressions

As any gamer with even a passing interest in keeping up with new games would know, E3 is this week, and the main press conferences have all finished. And so, I will post my impressions of what I've seen. What impressed me, what was meh, and what made me utterly rage and want to throw things at people.

Let's start (much like the big 3 did) with Microsoft. While I did not catch any of their press conference yet (I plan on watching some of the trailers and things when I get a chance), I did read the cliffnotes. It seems that they brought a lot of "meh" to the table this year, as well as a lot of Kinect. I'm still not entirely sure how I feel about the Kinect. There's no question that it is impressive technology, and I do want to have a play with it. However, my wanting to have a play with it stems more through development tendencies, rather than finding any games that I want to play on it!
Microsoft have, of course, unleashed information about the first thing that made me rage. The promise of four more Halo games. One being simply a remastering of the original, which I can deal with. The first Halo game was decent. However, from there it began a decent in mediocrity punctuated by the fact that the game didn't actually change at all from there, with the exception of pretty graphics. The announcement that there is going to be a new Halo trilogy, while not altogether unexpected (it did, after all, make extraordinarily stupid amounts of money for Microsoft and Bungie) it also did not assure me in the slightest that it would be trying anything new either.

The Vita. I want one so, so badly

Sony released some interesting information. I only caught bits and pieces of their press release, so there is probably a lot I've missed, but what really caught my eye is the Playstation Vita. This would be the NGP (Next Generation Portable) that they have been talking about. It looks just like a PSP with a second thumb stick, no UMD drive (it reportedly uses flash cartridges for games), and a touch pad on the back of the console.
I have been asked repeatedly why a touch screen on the back. I can wholeheartedly answer this question with a "Why the hell would I know? Do I work for Sony all of a sudden?" I would assume that this is for things like noncritical functions. The guy demoing the latest iteration of Modnation Racers demonstrated this to great effect when he used it to raise and lower terrain surrounding the track, in the track creation mode. It was also quite quick to load and test the new track he created, which I liked.
By far, the thing I liked the most about Vita is its connectivity. It connects to a Sony PSN cloud, allowing someone playing games on the Vita to play multiplayer with people who are on the PS3. And not just in the same room or anything - this works via wifi and 3g as well! Aside from this, the fact that you can stop playing a game on the Vita and load up from exactly where you were up to on the PS3 was also quite awesome. They demonstrated this using some random action-rpg, which I cannot recall the title of.
That said, when they showed Street Fighter X Tekken I began to rage. Not because I dislike Street Fighter or Tekken - I quite like them. No, the problem is that they've decided to do another one of those stupid bad cameos I raged about on Monday - this time adding the guy from Infamous to the game. Why would you do that? It wasn't necessary! It's not even cool! It's a game based almost entirely on cameos (being a crossover title and all), so why add more. He doesn't fit into either universe!

The Wii U

Nintendo talked a LOT about the 3DS. I was excited about the new Kid Icarus game, until it was revealed to be on the 3DS. I have posted at length already about how 3D is retarded and should be set on fire, so I won't bother repeating this.
What was interesting was the Wii U - the new console. Sporting a controller that seems to me a cross of the Playstation Vita, the Wiimote and an iPad, it promises to retain the accessibility for the "casual gamer" peon hordes, as well as provide depth for the hardcore gamers. I consider myself to be far far beyond the casual gamer, so a little added depth fron Nintendo is exactly what I wanted.
As for how I like the new console... I'm very undecided. They were able to do some interesting things with the demo, for example someone changing channel on the TV, and the game being simply moved onto the controller is a great addition. The AR meets Wiimote functionality seemed kind of interesting too, though it has to be done well. I plan on trading in my Wii for the Wii U, if only for the HDMI input (with my TV-less monitor-centric setup, it makes the Wii much easier / more appealing to use) to use in conjunction with the backwards compatibility.
When it comes down to it, the fate of the Wii U is in the developer's hands. If they do good thigns with it, then it will fit in quite well to my gaming collection. If not, then it'll be an expensive paperweight.

On another note, its The Legend of Zelda's 25th anniversary this year. To celebrate, they're doing a world orchestral tour for the music of Zelda.
Also, the insane people who bought a 3DS can get a free AR based Pokedex. This was really cool, but completely inaccessible to people who are like me and can't actually look at 3D without their brain haemorrhaging.

As for game trailers, I finally caught up with Devil May Cry. The new Dante design is epic fail on every level, though the game itself looks to be as much demon-annihilating fun as it's always been (except for DMC 2). Final Fantasy XIII-2 confuses me with its lack of most of the main party, and focusing on Serah and newcomer Noel (which will anger me GREATLY if they try to hamshoe in a love subplot between Serah and Noel, since she was engaged to Snow for the entirety of the first one - the ending even including the line "we've got a wedding to plan!"). I could care less that Hope disappeared, but Snow and Sazh need to reappear!