MS’s d-pads still haven’t caught up to Sony and Nintendo, though, not even with the redesign. Better, yes, but not quite there.
I do find the redesigned 360 gamepad to be the best controller on balance, though.
Keil, didn’t you recommend playing Dark Souls on the PS3 because the triggers made parrying easier, by your reckoning?
It’s a non-point written as part of a series of generic comments, presumably in order to provide a centerpiece for the ads. I don’t know how you can read it and not want to make him eat his whole fucking keyboard in the hope that the ensuing blockage will prevent further review-by-defecation.
In the sense that they have less throw than the 360 ones, the shoulder buttons of the PS3 feel more natural as “use all the time” buttons, and I was used to Demon’s Souls on the PS3, yes. In the end, though, I forced myself to relearn the game on the 360 controller because holy shit the Dual Shock sticks blow.
Budvar
1626
Can barely get past the first few lines.
I like how all the characters are token, which really misses the point of describing something as token.
Is it game journalism if it’s done by a developer? Anyway, this is my favorite argument ever about the “games as art” debate. Great read, I suggest it to everyone.
For the purposes of this thread, why not?
“We’ve had this internal debate,” he revealed. "Would Half-Life today be reviewed as highly as it is, you know, even today? As a new IP coming out with the same sort of mechanics Half-Life had.
“I think we all have a nostalgia and love for that particular brand. Obviously Gearbox got its start working on Opposing Force so we love Half-Life. But is the current gamer, would they have the same love for that? It’d be interesting. I think the same kind of thing happened with Duke.”
Awesome. We all owe Gearbox a giant debt of gratitude for shitting out a mediocre-at-best old-school shooter with a bunch of dick jokes.
sluggo
1630
I think that post from Gearbox is hilarious.
Would Half-Life get the same scores if it was released today? Of course not. It looks and plays like a 13-year old game. It was critically acclaimed for doing a bunch of things we’d never seen before, but of course that wouldn’t be true if it were released today, due in no small part to the fact that developers have spent 13 years trying to imitate and improve on the Half-Life formula.
And if Duke Nukem Forever had been released in 1998 or 1999, it would have gotten far better reviews as well. But it wasn’t. It’s a game that would have been behind the curve in 2004, but was released this year at full price. It got the reviews it did because every aspect of the game was unpolished, and there was nothing in it that we hadn’t seen done better 10 years ago.
I understand that some people were able to shut off their brain and enjoy DNF for some mindless shooting, and I don’t begrudge them that. But that doesn’t mean DNF wasn’t an ugly mess that should never have been released for $60. For one of Gearbox’s founders to come out and say “I don’t know why reviewers were so harsh” and compare DNF to a game from the last century is like flashing a blinking neon sign to any semi-competent game designer that says “you don’t ever want to work for Gearbox.”
JoshV
1631
Ugh, the default fon’t for that link is just awful, the the lower case 'i’s look like 'l’s. It’s messing with my mind! Must Kill!
The last duke was a bad game, the load times alone were just atrociously unforgivable.
Speaking of “atrociously unforgivable”…
We don’t wan’t that fon’t!
Yep, HL1 wouldn’t review as well today than in 1998. But even then, If i compare HL1 to DNF, even dropping the nostalgia, HL1 is still a better game. In 2011.
Even seeing it from a “old school” perspective, DNF was very rough in places, including the action itself, it showed clearly it was rushed and subcontracted to finish it and release it finally.
ZekeDMS
1635
Gearbox completely fails to address that they didn’t even try to make an old-school shooter, of course. DNF was a new school shooter through and through, and a shitty one at that. I enjoyed Alpha Fucking Prime more than DNF. The Half-Life comparison they’ve whipped up is a ridiculous canard.
I actually replayed Half-Life a year ago, and it was still pretty fucking fun. It showed a few cracks from age, but the content still holds up quite nicely. So does Opposing Force, for that matter, which was all Gearbox.
Then again, Duke3D can still be fun. It was then, it still is now.
That can’t be said about Duke Nukem Forever, which was bad from the second you fought the last game’s endboss, before it gave away its terrible secrets of weapon limits, shit checkpoint systems, and being completely offensive without a hint of comedy.
sluggo
1636
And they didn’t even make the game, really. They just stitched up someone else’s work and threw it in a box.
And what Gearbox seems oblivious to is that when you release a game for $60, you don’t get graded on a curve. When your game contains neither innovation nor polish, and can’t even stack up to games released 7 or 8 years ago, you’re going to get awful reviews. It’s amazing to me that they’re still harping about them.
ZekeDMS
1637
It’s certainly possible to be successful and even get reasonable reviews without innovation or polish, Treyarch proves that with every Call of Duty game they make, and I’m sure MW3 will prove just the same with the chimeric beast of IW’s remains combined with Treyarch and fucked if I remember who else.
To have scored as poorly as it deservedly did, DNF had to go well beyond the “We didn’t try hard enough” range into “We didn’t try, and we made really, really bad decisions along the way.”
It’s hard when something you work on gets shit all over, and it’s really easy to curl up into a ball and get defensive, but that just means you’ll repeat the results next time. If Gearbox is actually defending DNF that’s all I need to know to skip their next game.
What I don’t understand is why they don’t just say, “Gearbox was contracted to finish what 3DRealms and others already had started. While the gameplay of DNF may not have been everyone’s cup of tea, we felt it was crucial to respect the integrity of the original vision.” I think most people would understand that Gearbox had a job to do and did the best they could with the stupid game that was there.
Instead, they get all defensive and look dumb.
They do kind of towards the end of the article:
“Is it a Gearbox game? No. When and if another Duke comes out it’s going to be more consistent with what I think people would expect out of a Gearbox product. But this is the vision that 3D Realms had and that’s awesome. It’s just great that the world gets to see it.”
But when you put that together with the unfair review accusations, it just makes it look like they want all of the acclaim, but none of the responsibility.
It’s not our fault it sucks! Also, we like paychecks. plskthx.
