Pitchford: People Love Duke; St. John: Clueless Critics
While Jon St John defends Duke Nukem Forever against the negative "clueless" reviewers, Randy Pitchford claims that consumers are wanting greasy hamburgers instead of caviar.
Now that Duke Nukem is out and about and strutting his stuff on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Windows PC, the drama surrounding the iconic hero and his fourteen-year journey through developmental hell just won't quit, and for good reason. A lot was riding on the release of Duke Nukem Forever: a lot of time, a lot of money, and a ton of emotions. For some, the harsh criticism against the game is something personal.
“I have no comments regarding bad reviews by clueless critics," said the voice behind Duke Nukem, Jon St John. "They seem to want to compare Duke Nukem Forever to Call Of Duty and other FPS’s and they are missing the point. My thoughts about Duke Nukem Forever: It freakin ROCKS! Lots of action, lots of fun, sexy, funny, irreverent… It’s everything I hoped it would be.”
Reviewers disagree. Duke Nukem Forever's Metacritic score for the PC version is an underwhelming 57 out of 100, followed by the PlayStation 3 version at 55 out of 100 and the Xbox 360 version at 49 out of 100. "The shooting is bland, the level design is uninspired, the jokes and ideas are old and tired, and the synthesis between old-school PC shooter and modern console shooter has resulted in a hideous chimera that rarely works as either," said IncGamers who gave the PC version a 42 out of 100.
But despite all the negativity Duke Nukem Forever is generating, the game is apparently also generating some hard cash for Gearbox and 2K Games. Gearbox Bossman Randy Pitchford, who became the game's sole promotional voice from the time it was brought out of limbo until the game hit the streets, has remained surprisingly quiet until now.
"With sales data, it seems like *customers* love Duke," he said on Twitter. "I guess sometimes we want greasy hamburgers instead of caviar..."
Analysts predict that Duke Nukem Forever will sell around 1.5 to 2 million units worldwide although first day sales of the game in the U.S. were "mediocre." Even more, Take Two shares took a beating on Tuesday as the negative reviews began to roll out, plunging more than 4-percent to $14.80. Doug Creutz of Cowen & Co. believes the possibility of the company achieving its full-year earnings target "has been significantly reduced."
Yes I do find it funny and no I don't care what you think
-Duke was never meant to be revolutionary.
-Duke was never meant to be "the best game ever made."
-Duke was never meant to be politically correct.
What was it meant to be?
-Humorous.
-An old school throwback.
-Silly.
-Just plain fun.
I played the game begining to end. Graphics were dated, levels were ok, mechanics were solid. But I can't tell you folks how many times I LOLed and even just plain laughed my ass off at how silly-retarded some of the skits and one-liners were. THAT is what Duke is.....just plain stupid fun.
Hopefully the money rolls in enough from this one and the studio can make another, more advanced one. They can make this one revolutionary, or even "the best game ever"....but sure as hell can't make it "politically correct"....cause then it wouldn't be Duke.
And to every single individual out there that gets offended by this game I say to you one thing...."Balls of FAIL."
From that comment I can tell that you're one of those pansies who support gay people and hate it when people bash on women. And that's why this is being reviewed so badly. Society back in the 1990s didnt consist entirely of little bitches who whine because they're afraid of a little "base" humor. And until people start to grow their backbones back, this is the way it's gonna go for anything similar to DNF.
EFF YOU GEORGE BROUSSARD!
Please Release a revamp pack/patch, i'll even pay more the idea of the game is good. need more gore, bullet damage specific to body part with random ragdol deaths or half deaths with more then a couple execution techniques. YES i love the idea of executing the injured.... but not the same way a thousand times!
I don't think people who were disappointed were expecting MW2 or anything, but they were expecting something more than "meh." Look at where 10+ years of development got Starcraft 2... 2k Games could have done better than "meh." Of course I am sure all of the hype and expectation isn't helping. If it didn't completely blow people away it was bound to disappoint (kinda like U.S. presidents).
If you don't like the humor then its obviously not for you and the critics can go back to watching the paint dry in LA Noire.
reference to the duke burger?
It's a shame they didn't just finish up the version they were making with id Tech 2 back in 2001 or whenever, rather than switching to the Unreal engine. From the trailers and footage it looks like it would have been pretty good for its time.
Yes I do find it funny and no I don't care what you think
From that comment I can tell that you're one of those pansies who support gay people and hate it when people bash on women. And that's why this is being reviewed so badly. Society back in the 1990s didnt consist entirely of little bitches who whine because they're afraid of a little "base" humor. And until people start to grow their backbones back, this is the way it's gonna go for anything similar to DNF.
(Perhaps they waiting for a 14 years developpement to be polish as a jewel...)(perhaps they became gay playing too much on their i*Thing.)
DNF is not the game of the year (meh is allow) but it's should have at least 75-80 on 100. Even bad game get 70 on 100 so I can't really understand 49 on 100.
Game scores like that are nonsense and always have been though, if you're doing a scale from 0-100 then 50 should be an average mediocre game, with varying levels of badness/goodness either side of that, instead it works like 90+ for good games, 80+ for OK games and 70+ for bad games, with the rest of the scale being redundant.
Where did 10+ years of dev get SC2?
The worst DRM in existence. Better graphics. Game engine (game logic, not graphics) on par with their previous release 6 years earlier (lacks functional water that WC3 has, 3 cliff-heights (WC3=16), 1/4 tile height resolution (compared to WC3)). Editor is an order of magnitude more complex when doing the same things compared to WC3.
SC2 has not become what they wanted, the ultimate eSport. And that's down simply to it not really being very good.
How is SC2 the worst DRM in existence? Have you ever had issues with installing or running it? Are you an idiot? Better graphics, better game engine (both graphics and logic), no reason to have more than 4 "real" terrain levels and you have just as much height to work with. It is a bit more complex, but you can do WAY more, and they are constantly making improvements and have a big editor release coming with HotS to simplify many things.
Also, SC2 HAS become the ultimate eSport. It is doing fantastically amazingly well. I reference you to MLG columbus from just about a week ago... which pulled in 16k attendees and another 450k+ people watching the stream online. And the amazing thing is... this was in AMERICA. Also, IGN has a SC2 league as well as numerous other leagues that are popping up. An equal number are around in europe and of course korea has the GSL.
Watch this and tell me you dont get excited watching it: http://tv.majorleaguegaming.com/video/mlg-video/977857427001-idra-vs-mc-pool-play
Basically, no... you're wrong.
PS: Duke wouldve been way better if it werent for the 2 gun-at-a-time limit and no duke boot.
people only really want to play good games, so people only really make good games.
when a game is bad, its REALLY BAD. and there are a few.
i personally think that a 1-10 rating system, that is weighted, and a final precent would be the best way to go.
like a fps gets a 30-40% of its rating from graphics alone (not realism, but how well it all flows, because its one of the few games thats selling point IS graphics) but a survival horror game would get weighted 30-40% on sound, and racing would get 50-70% on game play (good or bad graphics, good or bad sound, racing games live and die on game play alone, where others can get compensated from other aspects)
duke i believe (not haveing played it) is about
7/10 graphics
8/10 game play (personal taste)
10/10 music (if they dont fuck up the sound track, which i dont think they did)
and a 5/10 over all presentation (from what i hear of later levels.
coming in somewhere around a 7-7.5/10