So how exactly WAS the Duke Nukem Forever demo?

[Agayek]

Cause there are several threads talking about it but all any one off them seems to say is

WAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH TWO WEAPON LIMIT WAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

WAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH REGENERATING HEALTH WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH

neither of these things matter to me, and I'm not really seeing much discussion beyond those 2 aspects. I've seen footage of the demo and the humor seems to be workng, but how does it PLAY?

Personally, I found the actual gameplay to be fairly solid. It's your standard shooter fare, and most of the emphasis is on being there and killing shit.

I have some issues with the demo, but those are almost purely issues that exist because the demo itself is poorly put together (specifically, there's a few rather jarring transitions that don't fit together well). The final game should have those issues solved, so I expect it will be a decent game. It's definitely not "12 years" good, but it's fairly solid.

 

[Agayek]

And worst of all Duke is a pussy who dies in 2-3 hits now which slows the pace down.

You sure about that? When I played through it, it felt a lot more like I literally could not die. I'd be at basically no health in 2-3 hits yea, but I wouldn't die even if I kept getting hit. It actually kinda felt like the demo I had downloaded had one of those presentation demo things in, where the player can't actually fail.

 

[Elamdri]

Nothing wrong with regeneration health, it's probably a good balance decision.

The reason devs do regenerating health now is that they can balance every encounter assuming all players will start it with the same health: 100%.

The problem is that in order to make the game challenging, the player can't take as many hits, otherwise they would just demolish everything and heal to full. '

Thus, the player has to slow down and hide behind cover to succeed at the game. This slows down the shooting.

Duke Nukem, an old 90's shooter, was the anti-thesis to this design, and I think that's what people wanted. It's certainly what I wanted. There are tons of shooters on the market that give slow, cover based, regenerating health, 2 gun shooters.

I mean, if you want something other than that, you're choice is pretty much Half-Life, and that's starting to really show it's age.

 

[MiracleOfSound]

And worst of all Duke is a pussy who dies in 2-3 hits now which slows the pace down.

You sure about that? When I played through it, it felt a lot more like I literally could not die. I'd be at basically no health in 2-3 hits yea, but I wouldn't die even if I kept getting hit. It actually kinda felt like the demo I had downloaded had one of those presentation demo things in, where the player can't actually fail.

Were you playing on default difficulty? I think the default is 'easy'.

 

[Stavros Dimou]

The demo sucked in the technical department.
Gamecube - Ps2 quality textures,low quality polygon models,badly mixed audio.

In the gameplay department it just wasn't as much like Duke Nukem 3d as many fans expected.

In no way it is what 3d realms was promising us,"The best game of all time"

 

[Triforceformer]

I had a lot of fun with it. The opening is basically meant to be one big joke about how Duke has been waiting for the game as well. The driving segment handles just fine, though that may have been because I was playing on PC. The game looks fine. Some textures were a little muddy, but nothing made me think it was "Ugly as sin". The weapons feel and sound satisfying. Hell, even the pistol wasn't something to scoff at.

The mines in the latter part of the demo looked alot better, too. It also showed that Duke Nukem Forever hasn't forgotten that if an FPS is all action with no puzzles, it's boring as fuck. You get to step on baby Octa-brains and punch Demon Spiders With Ballsack Backs From Hell off of your face. That and you can plant trip-mines onto enemies now. That was a stroke of fucking genius. My absolute favorite part had to be when I stepped on a shrunken enemy and Duke said "Oops" in the most dickish way possible. That was just hilarious.

Really, I could go on about what I loved about the demo, but I can tell that my kind aren't welcome around these parts. But one thing I did hate about the demo was that was almost definitely an outdated build. There were plenty of glitches that would have never gotten past bug testers. That and console performance really does give the impression that the demo is at least a few months old.

 

[Agayek]

Were you playing on default difficulty? I think the default is 'easy'.

I was playing the "normal" difficulty, I forget what it's called. When I started it up, there were 3 difficulty options and I grabbed the middle one.

 

[NinjaDeathSlap]

This being Duke Nukem we're talking about I honestly wouldn't be surprised if the demo was just showing the first few minutes just to bait the fans some more, and when the full game comes out it will turn out that that first level is just a satire of modern FPS's and the multiple weapons and health bar will return just after what's seen in the demo ends.

 

[Triforceformer]

This being Duke Nukem we're talking about I honestly wouldn't be surprised if the demo was just showing the first few minutes just to bait the fans some more, and when the full game comes out it will turn out that that first level is just a satire of modern FPS's and the multiple weapons and health bar will return just after what's seen in the demo ends.

Except the second half of the demo is from halfway through the game.

 

[RedEyesBlackGamer]

WOW. People are really taking an old E3 Demo from quite a while ago, seriously.

People - it isn't a new demo. It is old. Quite old. Before the polish. Before most of it was done. So don't judge the game until you have ACTUALLY PLAYED THE RETAIL GAME. I don't give a shit if it was a demo or what your idea of a demo is: The point still stands - it is old, not a very good indicator of what the finished product will be. Hell - GoW3 beta was not a good indicator of what the game will be, they have tweaked maps and shooting and guns... seriously just wait till the retail game and rent the fucker before you start judging it.

Then the blame falls on Gearbox for releasing the demo a week before release. Surely they could have presented the game in a better way then?

 

[CardinalPiggles]

It was pretty short and linear... Judging by the trailers though I am not sure how much of the game it really shows you. Still my impression was that for nostalgia's sake it will get purchased, but prolly not until it costs considerably less at a Steam Xmas sale or something...

Also FYI If you bought Borderlands GOY you can also join the Duke Nukem first access club... Apparently we even get the first DLC for free... If you have steam right click your Borderlands Icon and then show CD key and you should get a code that you can then enter here:

http://www.dukenukemforever.com/access/

Have fun!

just to add to your post which is very helpful by the way.

if you bought borderlands at all on steam, this will still work no GOTY edition required, im downloading the demo right now, and am now part of the 'first access club'.

 

[JoshFTL]

I loved it! The way the game played, as in the shooting, reminded me of Timesplitters: Future Perfect, which was an awesome game.

 

[Tzekelkan]

The dumber people expected it to be a direct sequel to 3D circa 2001 with the same gameplay systems and stuff, when it was clearly not going to be the case.

Well, duh. Of course they did. The ONLY reason Duke Nukem can be made to hold any relevance today is to be almost the exactly opposite of what most shooters are today.

Not that I wanted it in the first place, but I at least understand the reasons for wanting it.

What the hell kind if backwards ass logic is hat? The only way for it to be relevant today is for it to be an irrelevant relic of a bygone age, what the hells that supposed to mean?

It's very sound logic. In a time where a thousand bland, boring, samey shooters that work as hard as they can to be completely identical to each other, Duke Nukem would have to stand out as completely different for it to matter at all.

Yeah, to fail copmpletely and remind everyone why we moved on from the sorts of games Duke Nukem was emblematic of.You're asking the game to agree to suck just to prove that those sorts of games suck compared to the present FPS's.

I only explained to you the logic of how Duke Nukem needs to stand out. Whether you like today's types of shooters or the shooters of yesteryear is very subjective. There are (many) people in both camps: some that think like you and think realistic shooters are the way to go, a reason for why we've moved on, and others that think the realistic shooter of today is inadequate and would wish to return to a sillier time.

It's a matter of opinion, really.

 

[MiracleOfSound]

Were you playing on default difficulty? I think the default is 'easy'.

I was playing the "normal" difficulty, I forget what it's called. When I started it up, there were 3 difficulty options and I grabbed the middle one.

That's odd. I found that Duke was barely able to survive 2-3 shotgun blasts before biting the dust.

 

[Tzekelkan]

WOW. People are really taking an old E3 Demo from quite a while ago, seriously.

People - it isn't a new demo. It is old. Quite old. Before the polish. Before most of it was done. So don't judge the game until you have ACTUALLY PLAYED THE RETAIL GAME. I don't give a shit if it was a demo or what your idea of a demo is: The point still stands - it is old, not a very good indicator of what the finished product will be. Hell - GoW3 beta was not a good indicator of what the game will be, they have tweaked maps and shooting and guns... seriously just wait till the retail game and rent the fucker before you start judging it.

Then the blame falls on Gearbox for releasing the demo a week before release. Surely they could have presented the game in a better way then?

What this man says is true. If you're going to release a demo, it would better be very indicative of the final game's quality. When there's a trailer coming out for a film, they don't put the absolute worst parts of the film in it, do they? They have to try to impress.

In this case, it would be better to not release a demo at all than release one that is tenfold inferior to the finished product. The Gearbox guys know this, which is why I believe the game will be exactly as the demo is showing it to be.

And forget the bullshit about "only judging the game after you pay money for it". That bullshit is bullshit. That's what the demo is for. The demo is for judging the gamefor making an informed purchasing decision.

 

[Cyrax987]

I didn't enjoy it at all, maybe its because I had such high hopes after how long I've waited for the game but I don't know. The shooting felt weak and most of the guns didn't feel powerful at all except for the shotgun. The gore seemed toned down and I heard this was on the Unreal engine which is great at that stuff.

Graphics didn't bug me, they weren't terrible but the depth of field was a bit over the top.

An example:

Spoiler

(The blur in the distance was a bit extreme for my tastes in honesty.)

I don't know playing the demo made me reconsider wanting to buy the game. My main reason was all nostalgia but after actually playing it I'm just not digging it.

 

[Katana314]

The game just didn't feel at all "action-packed". I might even say it was pretty slow-paced, with lots of walking between destinations, more focus on its own tongue-in-cheek humor, and not really such interesting combat (plus, with regenerating health, it relies on sitting behind rocks waiting)

It felt quite a bit like Serious Sam, which I didn't think so great of. It's like they took ideas from two different fields of design that don't fit with each other. (Halo / Call of Duty - regen health, 2 weapons, vs Serious Sam / Half Life - aliens, exploration, simplistic unrealistic combat, sciencey guns)