Duke Nukem Forever review Hail to the King Baby

[cadaveca]

Not using vsync damages hardware? Since when?

Ask nVidia. Been a couple of times newly launched titles, or bad drivers, caused death from sucking too much juice...

 

[Velvet Wafer]

Ask nVidia. Been a couple of times newly launched titles, or bad drivers, caused death from sucking too much juice...

i lost one 9500gt due to this death driver, they had a while ago
it folds nicely,and works without problems with aero, but if you try to play a game, the game just CTDs... that happens with every game, in every rig i tested it. the card ran pretty long on the driver, maybe quarter a year.

 

[pantherx12]

Not using vsync damages hardware? Since when?

Damaging may be the wrong word.

Reduces the life of the card though, more fps means more heat.

 

[qubit]

Not using vsync damages hardware? Since when?

The extremely high framerates can, as I explained.

That squealing noise you can hear, is the power circuitry getting stressed out. The GPU will draw a varying current depending on what it's doing and that goes in cycles. The biggest cycle is the completion of a frame.

If the frame rate is very high eg 500fps or more perhaps, then that varying current will vibrate the components of the power circuitry and too much and/or too long can burn them out. The effect is called microphony.

Most of my graphics cards squealed like a banshee when run at very high fps, including my GTX 285. My GTX 580 is much more well behaved in this respect. In fact, my 285 could always be heard to make a buzzing noise at the screen refresh frequency when locked to vsync, which wasn't very pleasant. It never failed on me though.

 

[AMDfur]

For me, the game was just awesome. I knew that the expectations were cranked way over the hills, and I settled for my self, only one thing : I want to play more Duke Nukem, like I did back in the good days. And that is what I got, and it was offcourse way better than the old ones. I still smile, I love it and really, this game was intended for those who remember Duke. This is a game for the fans, not the freshly introduced ones.

Call it whatever, it gave me everything I was hoping it would be, and then some. I got the "Balls of Steel edition" and it was worth every penny of it.

Sincerly:

Hardcore Duke Nukem fan. (don't listen to what I say anyway)

 

[qubit]

For me, the game was just awesome. I knew that the expectations were cranked way over the hills, and I settled for my self, only one thing : I want to play more Duke Nukem, like I did back in the good days. And that is what I got, and it was offcourse way better than the old ones. I still smile, I love it and really, this game was intended for those who remember Duke. This is a game for the fans, not the freshly introduced ones.

Call it whatever, it gave me everything I was hoping it would be, and then some. I got the "Balls of Steel edition" and it was worth every penny of it.

Sincerly:

Hardcore Duke Nukem fan. (don't listen to what I say anyway)

Well, there are always exceptions. I never played DN before this one and I really liked it too. Those reviews be damned!

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

I think im gonna go play Duke 3D and get the high res pack and play it again

i miss that game so much DNF made me want to break out the bottle of nostalgia splash it on some strippers and have a good time

 

[qubit]

Where can you get the high res pack?

Here's a handy site for Duke3D: www.3drealms.com/tech/duke3d.html

 

[Damn_Smooth]

It might not seem like much but the Duke's story this time around catches that B Movie vibe seen in old action flicks staring John Campbell.

I think you meant Bruce. Sorry, I'm a fan. Other than that, thanks for the awesome review man.

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

http://hrp.duke4.net/

as for the typo that would probably be cadaveca... messing with me my original copy says Bruce.... oh well typo fixed now thanks for the heads up and who cares... everyone totally knows i was talking about Bruce anyway

wait nvm first copy has Bruce 2nd copy has John wtf was i doing.... ah well again dosent matter its fixed hahaha

and i honestly prefer DNFs gameplay, but i feel like going old school thus Duke 3D

 

[happita]

I think im gonna go play Duke 3D and get the high res pack and play it again

i miss that game so much DNF made me want to break out the bottle of nostalgia splash it on some strippers and have a good time

Same here. In DNF, after I saw the fat flyer shooting missles at me, I wasn't that impressed. The OLD SCHOOL Duke3D fat flyer goes like "suck it....suck it down" ...in a real eerie voice. Maaaaaaan, I'm getting it as soon as I get off work
qubit, you da man for that link I PM'd you about before bro!!!

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

wow i completely forgot DUke 3D dosent do strafe like games we play today... have to hold down a button and slide the mouse left to right... talk about awkward lolz im getting my ass kicked because of it

 

[m4gicfour]

For those of you who may be just entering the Duke universe with DNF, and want to try the nostalgia everyone is talking about:

You can buy Duke3D at GOG.com for $6 USD

and you can run it in an updated engine on Windows, Linux, or Mac with eDuke32. (legally owned copy of D3D required to play - I believe the demo works as well, but then you only get the demo levels)

If you want, you can use fan-made true 3D graphics and enhanced textures by installing the High Resolution Pack into eDuke32 (as Crazyeyes suggested)


Duke3D is one of those games that has an almost DOOM-like following, so if you want some more asses to kick, get out there and GOOGLE! Tons of quality fan-made levels to be had.

 

[qubit]

For Duke Nukem classic fans I've just started The Duke Nukem Classic thread: Hail to the King baby!

 

[m4gicfour]

For Duke Nukem classic fans I've just started The Duke Nukem Classic thread: Hail to the King baby!

Way to steal my thunder, qubit!

Should be a good addition.

 

[qubit]

Way to steal my thunder, qubit!

Should be a good addition.

You have some great links in your post, which I added to the thread.

 

[NC37]

Frame rate drops? Ummm...yeah I'm playing 1650x1080 max everything on a 460 and it's smooth. This isn't a console port. If it was, DNF would be terrible on PC and excellent on console. Right now consoles, specially Xbox is horrid.

The one issue I have is the black boxes around plants and some critters but I've read its a NV issue.

Personally, love the game. I'm glad to have Duke back. Despite the lack of polish caused obviously from 3D Realm's incomplete work. Right now I'm really pissed at a lot of reviewers who obviously have no experience with the franchise. I caught some talking about the cheesy jokes and one liners like they were outright shocked by them and their clear poking fun at other franchises or movies.

Come on guys, play the original game. Thats all Duke is. He is not original at all. Really pisses me off how all these critics are harping on it for being what Duke always has been. Is it a realism title...no. Is it an academy award winning story...no!! But he's freaken fun still. Duke is meant to be that way. Too many toddlers doing reviews these days.

Man, right now I really want to sock the Game Trailers reviewer guy. Worst review I've ever heard him do. He spent time harping on the underwater levels like Duke never had them before. COME ON, DN3D had underwater parts. They sucked then too but seriously, its not game ending. This is worse than Game Informer's original Shenmue review. I've never read their magazine or picked it up again. Having a sports reviewer do the review on a major RPG just made me sick. If I could do the same to GT, I would. But then I gotta do the same for a bunch of other smaller critic sites.

DNF isn't a 100%...but its a solid 70-80% and this is from a fan who grew up on Duke. Its a fun romp through Duke's world which serves a good reboot for the franchise. Duke is still the king of FPS and will remain so even with this. "Power armor is for pussies!"-Duke Nukem

 

[qubit]

Frame rate drops? Ummm...yeah I'm playing 1650x1080 max everything on a 460 and it's smooth. This isn't a console port. If it was, DNF would be terrible on PC and excellent on console. Right now consoles, specially Xbox is horrid.

The one issue I have is the black boxes around plants and some critters but I've read its a NV issue.

Personally, love the game. I'm glad to have Duke back. Despite the lack of polish caused obviously from 3D Realm's incomplete work. Right now I'm really pissed at a lot of reviewers who obviously have no experience with the franchise. I caught some talking about the cheesy jokes and one liners like they were outright shocked by them and their clear poking fun at other franchises or movies.

Come on guys, play the original game. Thats all Duke is. He is not original at all. Really pisses me off how all these critics are harping on it for being what Duke always has been. Is it a realism title...no. Is it an academy award winning story...no!! But he's freaken fun still. Duke is meant to be that way. Too many toddlers doing reviews these days.

Man, right now I really want to sock the Game Trailers reviewer guy. Worst review I've ever heard him do. He spent time harping on the underwater levels like Duke never had them before. COME ON, DN3D had underwater parts. They sucked then too but seriously, its not game ending. This is worse than Game Informer's original Shenmue review. I've never read their magazine or picked it up again. Having a sports reviewer do the review on a major RPG just made me sick. If I could do the same to GT, I would. But then I gotta do the same for a bunch of other smaller critic sites.

DNF isn't a 100%...but its a solid 70-80% and this is from a fan who grew up on Duke. Its a fun romp through Duke's world which serves a good reboot for the franchise. Duke is still the king of FPS and will remain so even with this. "Power armor is for pussies!"-Duke Nukem

Well, those frame rate drops are real. I've got a 4GHz E8500 & a GTX 580 which is pretty powerful and certain spots just start to crawl. If you haven't seen it, then count yourself lucky. I'm running at 1920x1200 and have noticed performance improvements when I tried dropping down to 1680x1050. Considering the dated tech used to draw the game, I'd say that it's not very well optimised, which is why it's doing this. But why is it that the very same section can then pick up and render normally and smoothly a short while later? There has to be a software bug there somewhere. These drops happen even when there's no other characters in the map, so it's not an interaction thing. It's worse when they are on screen though.

Those driver glitches you reported, which driver version are you running? I had to install the latest 275.33, otherwise everything was black in full screen mode, with a few world items dotted around and it was unplayable.

I was waiting for that GT review and I have to say that with a rating of 5.5, he was actually kinder than many other reviewers, who gave it around 2 or 3.

I can imagine that a sequel will be awesome, but all these crap reviews are likely to tank sales, which will likely kill it.

So, none of the 'professional' reviewers enjoyed the game. Well good thing then that I'm not a stuck-up-my-own-ass 'professional' reviewer who fails to understand and appreciate the game and can actually enjoy it.

Let's see then, is it any good? Most games like this, I tend to stop playing part way through for one reason or another and 'keep meaning to come back to it'. I'm still playing this one.

 

[RoutedScripter]

Limited graphics options Obvious console port. I don’t want depth of field. And for that, I have to lose other effects, too. Even instruction booklet lists XBOX 360 controls first

Alt-tabbing out of a running game in full screen mode This seriously disrupts Windows operation, virtually freezing the PC and making the desktop very unresponsive. My dual core CPU is stuck at 100% This can be cured in two ways:

1 Going back into the game and resuming it – plays ok. Quitting the game returns to the desktop normally and everything works fine.

2 Setting DukeForever.exe to lower than normal priority in Task Manager. Note that tabbing back into the game then causes it to freeze and even restoring the priority doesn’t bring it back. It must then be killed off with Task Manager.

Even switching from full screen to windowed mode isn’t glitch free. There are two pointers visible: one inside the game window and the other on the Windows desktop. On top of that, the game one is active. Alt-tab must be used to switch out of DNF. Clicking inside the window makes it work properly though, with only the game pointer visible.

In short, don’t go to the desktop when running DNF in full screen mode. Most games don’t misbehave like this and it should be patched ASAP.

Graphics options are how they made it , this game is not a console port. The lead platform is PC - it was ported to consoles.

Alt-Tab freezing your computer is not a common problem, it has to be a bug with your build, or settings, do you have pagefile enabled and all those vanilla settings in win7 ? Seriously , win7 is meh with vanilla settings, but still better than vista


It might be because you have dual core, i have quad core, i have also seen it it's running at 50% for some reason i didn't gave a thought since nothing was seeming wrong.

This might be a serious problem on dual or less core systems ... time will tell if it's genuine, better test some more.

 

[qubit]

Graphics options are how they made it , this game is not a console port. The lead platform is PC - it was ported to consoles.

Alt-Tab freezing your computer is not a common problem, it has to be a bug with your build, or settings, do you have pagefile enabled and all those vanilla settings in win7 ? Seriously , win7 is meh with vanilla settings, but still better than vista


It might be because you have dual core, i have quad core, i have also seen it it's running at 50% for some reason i didn't gave a thought since nothing was seeming wrong.

This might be a serious problem on dual or less core systems ... time will tell if it's genuine, better test some more.

Well, console port or not, it still has limited graphics options, similar to consoles and that's what counts.

Alt-Tab: well that's weird. I haven't done anything, but it appears to have resolved itself. It's been ok for a couple of days and was ok when I tried it just now. I did install the Patch Tuesday Windows patches, but I can't remember if this resolved itself immediately after, or before.

It shows 100% CPU whether it's hogging resources or not. However, the frame rate was stuck at 30Hz when I first ran it just now. Alt-Tabbing out and back in again resolved that and I then got a smooth 60Hz. This game is buggy.

Alt-Tab should work properly, even if you have a single core system. Basically the game isn't supposed to hog resources when it doesn't have the input focus. Win 7 has the default page file config of Auto, which is fine and is the best way to have it, as you'll never run into virtual memory issues.

BTW, as I'm progressing through the game, the load times are getting horrendous. What was 10-15 seconds is now at least twice that. What gives? I'm at the Queen Bitch chapter, just after you exit the hive into that damaged gym room.

 

[RoutedScripter]

my computer loads a level in 5 seconds

i do have a really seriously tweaked win7 though ...

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

same i never wait more then 6-7 seconds to play a lvl

 

[qubit]

my computer loads a level in 5 seconds

i do have a really seriously tweaked win7 though ...

same i never wait more then 6-7 seconds to play a lvl

Hmmm... must be some interaction with Kaspersky. Turned it off and load times became like yours. Turned it back on and it's still quick.

I did notice that when it took ages previously, there wasn't much disc activity. I think it was just a clash with Kaspersky that has been resolved by restarting it.

 

[TheMailMan78]

Ok I did not write this but I thought it was so well written and informed I would share it with TPU. Basically this guy did a review on the DNF reviews and I think hes spot on.....

God bless IGN for your breadth of content, but your attitude towards DNF is about as historically sensitive as my 3-year old writing FART on the in-game white board.

In the humble days of 1996, when a 100,000 sale-count was something to be proud of by a publisher instead of feared, Duke was never supposed to become "Action Game of the Year" - or get a 93% by the most influential critic at the time. The developers never took the process as seriously as its subsequent accolades might suggest it had today. The game was huge. It had action. It had comedy. And it wasn't even trying. And today, after the longest developmental nightmare in gaming history, that spirit of light-hearted victory, thank the maker, is ALIVE AND WELL in DNF. It is partly why Gearbox would help Duke come full circle, at political risk to itself.

And this spirit is apparently not in IGN's interests to attempt to convey. Which is no surprise. An entity that invests their emotions in trashing a franchise to reap the benefits of popular sentiment, in this instance, does not have the character required to paint an accurate picture of history. I'm talking about this review's complete lack of reference to the critical and commercial success of 1996's Duke Nukem 3D. And what the hell was with DNF's pre-review blurb on June 10? What could have motivated such preemptive criticism? It probably has something to do with appearing a certain way in the industry - a social and economic motivation. Get over yourself, your career pressures, and learn to respect history if you want to be known as a solid reviewer in the games industry, kid. The original Duke 3D was more associated with the coveted 90's phrase "Doom-Killer" than even Descent or Dark Forces - and all 3 games were regarded in a similar sphere of quality. Duke 3D won countless mag awards, and the unprecedented amount of post-release user maps only further speaks to this influence. Hell, Duke even had an official PlayBoy level. The fact is, DNF is so modeled after Duke 3D and that game's spirit of vitality, that by not crediting the original's success and influence, you lose credibility with those that do still know what the hell they're talking about. Not to push your ESRB tolerance too much, but compared to what the Duke games actually stand for? Next to Duke and its team, your motivation as a reviewer honestly looks like that of a jealous pig cop, peeping through the windows of Duke's sex-palace as you wonder why even with a badge you still can't get some.

DNF contains MORE humor, MORE self-references... MORE everything than what Duke 3D had. It is SO over-the-top it is beautiful. In a video game climate where more large companies are taking fewer risks than ever, can't IGN recognize what is happening here? Oh, I think they do.

Speaking of warped definitions on the priorities of game reviews, I'll tell you one thing that really clued me into your bias against Duke, early on. You derived "hypocritical" from Duke having a 2-weapon system, and then Duke making a 5-second joke about one game (but not the 88 others) that uses a similar playing mechanic. Do you honestly think Duke is doing anything other than paying a quick HOMAGE to Halo through its armor suit reference, using Duke's well-established ego as the medium for the humor that fans want? I haven't seen such an overt and poorly-concealed attempt to trash a game by an IGN staff in quite awhile. If Duke had health pick-ups, you would've chastised that as archaic game-play. Because that's how fair your review is. Twit.

Face the facts, IGN. Duke is one of the most recognizable bad-asses of video-gaming history. DNF is not a great game by modern standards, but to subject it to these standards is to miss the point of DNF's release entirely. There's a whole lot more going on here than gameplay. It's called freedom - freedom for a developer to do whatever the hell it wants. And if IGN was familiar with DNF's development, they would know that this game came at an incredible cost. Respect it. IGN, let the adults take in this museum piece - you can play DS in the gift shop. A score of 5.5 is one thing - an unexplained anti-DNF bias is something else.

Let me be clear about that last point. I am not upset because the game cannot be considered elite among modern titles. I am fully aware and accepting of this necessary quantitative measure of justice. What I am not so tolerant of, is IGN's choice of reviewers. The unnecessarily negative attitude taken upon Duke as a franchise in this review, to me, reflects a greater lack of concern for the PC as a platform. "This game can't decide whether it wants to be..." W-wait... WHAT did you just say? Did you just use THE most eye-rolling, arrogant phrase an IGN ignoramus reviewer could say to the Duke development team? Read this: This game decided what it wanted to be WELL before you will.

For a proper review of DNF, flaws and all, there's only one place in town. They might not be the world's best-selling pc games magazine anymore - but they DO know something about history.

http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/06/10/duke-nukem-forever-review/

And more importantly - they recognize heart when they see it.

Heres the source. Its in the comments below.
http://pc.ign.com/articles/117/1176231p1.html

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

lol nice one mailman, to bad my review dosent get more traffic. as i would think im also up there when it comes to understanding what Duke is about. Although I 'am not so good with words.. trailer trash white boy has no thesaurus