Wow, that’s a damn shame. I guess this means we’re living in the dystopian timeline.
I hope Broussard writes a book about the whole project. He must have quite a story.
BaconTastesGood, you are a braver man than I. Brave for taking on the DNF project when you did, and even braver for coming here to discuss your knowledge. But I thank you for sharing them.
There’s something you said a while back, I think; something about how it’s a very different thing to ship a game in the 20xx’s vs. the 1990’s. After I played the demo on the 360, that comment haunted me. It felt like a game that someone had thrown together just so they could say it was shipped, even as a demo, but even more, it felt out of its place in time; this game, 10 years ago, would’ve been great. (I didn’t see enough in the demo to see some of the other criticisms people have made.)
The mistakes 3DR made were not new. They’re not the first company afraid to pull the trigger on a moving target, and they’re not the first company to have so much funding that they could never ship. (Heck, I worked for another different company just like that.) And they won’t be the last, either. The best we can hope for at this point is that people see this, learn the right lessons from it, learn that these are not new lessons, and hopefully make the same mistakes less often.
Well, I downloaded the demo. Now to see if it was worth the wait.
And it wasn’t.
The first indicator was the whiteboard that was just a whiteboard. Nothing you did to it would alter anything in the game world, including the NPC reactions. Felt like a tech demo or a basis for something potentially cool that never materialized.
So what? Random interaction with the environment is a hallmark of Duke3D. That’s not why the game sucks.
Indicator does not mean complete explanation.
You can draw dicks on it. Its functionality within a Duke game is complete.
If anyone didn’t draw a dick on the whiteboards I’m stunned. I’m more surprised it’s not a fucking achievement.
I drew a smiley.
Smileys are for pussies.
My local newspaper had a syndicated review of DNF in it last weekend and the guy hated it. An F. He hated just about everything about it. It had to be one of the most negative reviews I have ever seen.
I wouldn’t waste my money on it, but it can’t be THAT bad…
Why not? If it’s objectively the worst game he’s ever played and he disliked everything about it, a failing grade seems reasonable. The demo didn’t seem quite as big a pile of feces as Alpha Protocol to me but I can see where he’s coming from.
It’s getting released on Mac to rip off unsuspecting Mac owners too.
Alpha protocol was a pretty fun game though.
“What ended up changing the game was when Brian Hook came on.”
:) :) :)
I ended up getting this game gifted to me so I took a stab at playing it. I played the single player for about 3 hours. It isn’t good however I’ve been enjoying the multiplayer quite a bit. I guess because most skilled FPS players are avoid it and I’m finding I can hold my own.
I liked Alpha Protocol, I can see what they attempted…and failed, but I can totally play it with rose colored glasses and see the game it could have been.
Duke’s demo was about as underwhelming as a game can be. Great poop drawing on the wall tech tho. Ug.
Just surreal going from L.A.Noire-which showed me hope that the industry can make a AAA that violence is not always the answer-to Duke which…yeah. I got nothing. I love those guys, G.B. has always been solid to me, and other devs that have bounced off that game, but I admit…I don’t even know what they were going for. The game could have been great–really. But playing it straight with Duke was just the wrong call, and it taints the whole experience. There is nothing worse than poorly done parody.
With the High Resolution Texture Pack + eDuke Duke Nukem 3d looks tolerable and is still pretty fun in that mid-1990s ammo-management-FPS way. It even supports internet coop!
Some of the design decisions are interesting in archaeological retrospect. You have to reload the pistol, but it only happens on multiples of 12 bullets, and there’s no way to control it other than wasting bullets.