Gearbox Asks Why You Hated Duke Nukem Forever

The mediocre graphics and animation, it's too repetitive and becomes just plain boring after a couple hours

It's nice that they realized that their latest release sucked and now they WANT to correct their mistakes. More game developers should learn from this.

I played a ltl of ol duke the other day and made many comparisons to the new one........I have to say I was not surprised why people were displeased w the recent installment...but I do have to say that it wasnt that bad...at least it wasnt like the recent remake of wolfenstien

After waiting 14 years, it should be worth buying, not just renting.

If they have to ask you wonder how in touch they really are with what makes a good game.

I get where they are coming from but DNF's problems should be quite apparent without asking for feedback on why it sucked.

"...its fate sealed by game franchises like Gears of War and Call of Duty which injected unique elements of gameplay into the FPS genre that's become standard over the years..."

Is it just me, or does there seem to be some distance between author's opinions here at Tom's? Don't get me wrong, I still love the site. However, when I see things like this, which imply that only large console shooters have changed the genre, or how PC gaming is "dieing" (soon to be followed up with articles on how it's not dieing), I begin to wonder.

I understand where this statement was going, I just don't entirely agree with it's implications.

It wasn't a bad game, but it was more like a sliced version of several different games stuck together. The rain effect in the beginning was never used again. It's like alot of work that was done was just for small parts of different levels rather than making something better that could be reused, well except for the enemies. Those were pretty repetitive.

Gearbox, if you have to ask, you'll never know.

the game was fine, people were expecting the jesus of games, or already decided they weren't going to love it before they even played it.

It was an average shooter, overhyped so it got bad ratings, what's to know?

Any game dev will have a natural bias towards the games they make. It's not like they purposely wanted to release a shitty game. Those who are bashing gearbox for asking the brutally honest quest of "WTF went wrong?" are jackasses. This is EXACTLY what we need game developers asking.

i didint hate DNF - it was awesome - - i loved it - it was a fun, rude, and naughty romp that was a good break from the clinical and cold FPS's we have today - and i cant wait for the next one!

For a game that's been in development for this long, released in 2011, and with a price tag of a AAA game ($60), poor misogynistic humor, outdated graphics, and outdated gameplay, it is bad. If this game was released as a $20 game on steam, PSN, or XBLA nobody would be complaining. All would be good. Gearbox is a top game developer and lost a whole lot of reputation releasing that pile of trash with their name on it.

It was so bad i wouldn't even pirate it. Once i saw the shrunken duke in that little car jumping the carpet, that was a deal breaker. Then the part where you kill that cyclops on the football field... no matter where you killed it, it would reappear at center field for the kickoff. That was all i needed to see to avoid this game like the plague.

THEY were contracted to put the game together, NOT make the game. THEY barely touched it.




duke 3d came out in 96, 15 years later... forever.

this isnt like a normal game franchise, it didnt evolve over time, it was a 15 year gap, and the fan base of duke is mostly from 15 years ago. what they are looking for is this.

do you want a good throw back game
or
do you want duke completely modernized in every facet of the game.

now with this game its a valid point to bring up, should it be modernized, because it would most likely become a military fps with weird weapons, or a gears of war style cover game.




what games, sense half life, change the shooter...
they were all console games. halo brought regenerating health, which i despise. it also brought the small load out outside of realistic military games. there are others, but i cant recall them by name due to not playing fpses on consoles.




do not send the game out to feminists next time.
or anyone who cant take realy crude humor
dont spend more than 4 years on the next game
focus on single player, as thats the main selling point of the duke
and don't lock out mods, duke could easily have long legs if you allow for total conversion mods in multiplayer.




lets be clear, gear box put it together, and are asking what people want, a throw back or a modern game out of it for the next one.

... agree... DNF is simple fun... and simple is not always bad...

i just took the survey twice. once as a person who "played it" and once as a non played it.

the played it survey hits the MAJOR flaws in the game, but these are things that... are open to debate if they are flawed, and you do not need to play the game to have an opinion on them.

and the non played it, its a bit different asking you what kind of fps you like and what elements that you like in fpses.

Loved DNF actually. Graphics could have used some work though. All the people were well shiny for lack of a better term. The enemies died too easy as well. I played through on the hardest diff and this 8ft tall pig comes up to me shooting at me with a laser cannon and I punch him once and he dies. Then I pick up his cannon and shoot another guy with it and he dies in 1 hit too. Now Im not saying it should be like mass effect where on the higher difficulties the game gives the enemies shields that you have to chip away at before hurting them but maybe give me more guys to shoot at (ala serious sam) that are just as easy or maybe a little harder to kill. Also it was really short I finished it in 1 day about 8 hours of play. There was nothing to make you slow down and hunt through the game for items to clear your way (well except for that whole scissor lift part that was cool)... you just plow over the obstacles in your monster truck instead.

So in short more levels, slower pace with harder to kill or more numerous enemies, possibly more weapons (hard to enjoy a game where I expect to be able to carry more than 24 spare rounds of ammo and 2 weapons at a time and I cant), and while hot, sweaty, naked women are usually shiny it would be nice if not everyone was... Would also be nice if I could rescue the hot naked women who are being encased (?) in the walls of the alien ship you know? Like have some that are too far gone to save but others that are just arms and legs tied down and you can break them free and they thank you and go running by to safety totally nude.

Also Loved the naked breasts that was actually my favorite part. Too many games shy away from full nudity to appease walmart and the ESRB so that they dont get the dreaded nc17 rating. I say screw them! If its fine for me to use a shotgun or a knife on a guy and stab him or blow his head off at point blank range and that game isnt an nc17 rating then seeing some digital boobs or butts shouldnt be either! Besides what's worse murder or strippers shaking their boobs in your face? We are programming kids to believe that violence is right and sex is wrong just to sell more games! And the ESRB and walmart are helping! I'd rather play a game with full violence and full nudity where I can go to duke nukem's titty city and see a stripper rendered in 50,000+ polys and mocaped with an actual stripper's dance routine (rather than harley quinn who was mocapped by a dude for batman arkam asylum)and then step outside and get attacked by aliens who I can dismember than play a game like Mass effect where you can headshot a guy with an anti material rifle designed to take out shields and armor on a gunship in 1 hit and all it does is make the guy fall over with a splatter of blood on wall behind him. Then there's the "sex" scenes where yes your character is in bed with someone but they are fully clothed (save for jack and miranda) and you see next to nothing for all the hard work you put in to cultivating the relationship over the course of the game... That's not a climax (pardon the pun) that's a rip off! I just spent ~48 hours playing this game total play time and get to finally consummate my relationship with this character right before the big final battle and I cant even see them naked? I ought to be able to whip out my pistol and force them to get naked in front of me at that rate! THAT is why I loved DNF... it made no qualms or excuses about stuff like that. True they didnt show actual sex either but there were actual bare breasts and more than one location that involved oral sex even if you didnt see anything.

So to summarize... keep the nudity and sex that was awesome, make the game a bit slower or add more levels so it doesnt take me 8 hours to finish it, allow me to carry more than 2 guns at once sort of like the old FPS games where you had 10 guns (even though I always joked about where they put them all and were still able to run and jump while carrying a rocket launcher AND a minigun), DX11 level graphics with tessellation (unreal engine 3 or 4 maybe) and actual women doing the female mocap, more enemies that are harder to kill (also if the game is longer and slower the higher number of enemies will make it seem like you are facing a never ending horde), lastly dont rush it. No one expected this game to ever get made so if you had taken the time to get everything looking good and added a few more levels it would have taken you what? another year or so? Everyone had such low expectations of DNF that you could have taken that extra time with no impact on your credentials. We all know it takes 3-5 years to put out a great game so rushing to put out a mediocre or crappy game doesnt make sense. Especially if people have already been waiting for 12 or 14 years.. another 1 wont kill them to make sure the game is done right.

Overall though I give DNF an 7.5/10. It was fun but too easy and too short and the graphics looked kinda dated.

Why a survey? The net is full of professional and amateur text & video reviews & rants.

Every developer shuold be read the feedback from gaming mags and websites to get feedback on their resleased games.

it really didn't give me the chance to say what i didn't like about it. It let me rank several things, but none of the things that it allowed me to rank were the reasons why i hated it.

I think the issue with the game was that it was so over hyped it went to the skies, its impossible to deliver a godlike experience to everyone without drugs!

That what went wrong, its nothing wrong with the game itself. It was marketing + trying to live up to the old game that was the fault! Don't flame GearBox for asking, the devs should be able to ask in order to improve their titles without the crybabies lashing out like spoiled kids. We all want better titles and they want to know what we want - Its a win-win to answer them!

My 2 cents

It just sucked you want any more from the Nukem?

Im quite sure they know already, and they do this only to make it look like they care .

Was never interested. Maybe work harder to capture some of the newer generations that did not have access to a gaming computer in the 90's.

You just described Counterstrike, Command & Conquer, Medal Of Honour, Battlefield, Rainbow 6, the list goes on and on.

It looks like 2003...

But those games came out then and not recently...you sir a r-word.org. =)

I liked DNF, but if you want some feedback I think my suggestions could really help.

1. FPS gamers like high end graphics so amp it up as much as possible without alienating those with high end cards that are only a little bit older. Today I think a game should be playable on an HD4870 or better.

2. Sure, Duke is cool but he needs to not say so. He needs to just act cool and have the attitude like "eh, it was nothing" or "no, big deal". He needs to be cool and modest like "that's just how I roll". And if you want the player to see how cool he is have other people in the game talk about his accoplishments or say they think he is so awesome/cool.

3. Although I enjoyed it, there was too much of the truck driving and not enough action.

4. I hate puzzles, trying to figure out where to go, jump here, now jump over there and other obsticle courses it's total BS, once again more action, less B.S.

5. I want to carry a full on arsenel not just 1 or two guns at a time.

6. A wider veriety of enimies would be nice. It always seemed I was killing either a pig or alien and if not one of those then I was fighting a HUGE boss.

7. Don't make a boaring gun one of the most powerful. Rocket launchers and grenade launchers are fun! OR even better than that are more imaginative guns like those in wrachet and clank games

What I liked:
1. Nudity (get rid of the alien boobs on the wall though)
2. Driving the truck was fun but don't overkill it, action is the most important aspect
3. The action sequences although rare, were good.

Other ideas/thoughts:
1. Keep the nudity but only on the ladies don't just put some alien boobs on the wall.
2. Crazy new guns
3. Allow mods
4. I think the game was waaay over hyped and was destined for failure. It's as if game reviewers were bitter about it taking so long.

i dont know what went wrong,, it still gave me fun. but, maybe, i dont like the story, and less adventureous feeling (the same feeling as the original game,, so what can you expect more?).

Mythbusters proved you can polish a turd, so they can't use that excuse. More outside alpha and beta testers, especially people who can produce a receipt for their purchase of the original.

Um it was kinda slow, repetitive, not very challenging, the graphics sucked. the gameplay WAS very 90s. If I wanted to play something from that era, I'd just use an emulator.

just read the "Ars-techinica" review... everythibg is in it!... now move along, nothing to see here... LOL

Cause reviewers don't know a damn thing, just cause they say the game sux because it doesn't do what another game does, doesn't mean it is bad. The actual player base are the ones who decide whether it is good or not, not the reviewers, they are the ones you have to ask what went wrong and what they want. More game companies should figure this out.