You know what? I'm going to come out and say it. I love violent video game shooters. I'm not talking HALO or Call of Duty. Fuck no, I'm talking splatter the guts, if-that-rocket-doesn't-spray-him-on-the-wall-I'm-going-to-return-this-game games. For a long time, I would pick "Bloody Mess" on Fallout 3 and New Vegas because it was so satisfying to get a headshot and watching the rest of the body magically split into pieces.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a deranged maniac. Far from it, although some would beg to differ. Rather, I long ago realized that these are only pixels and not real people, that it's ok to want to splatter their brains out on the wall because doing so has little to no effect on the real world. It would hardly be ok for me to force a shotgun into my boss' mouth before I looted his body for bottlecaps and junk food. This, I realized a long time ago (around the time I played Legend of Zelda: OOT for the first time, which was the beginning of my cognitive awareness stage of gaming) and it's probably a good thing that I didn't turn into a weirdo.
This brings me to my review of Duke Nukem: Forever. Unfortunately, I had work at 7am on launch day, and could not attend the midnight festivities they were hosting. But, after work at 2pm, I did retrieve my game. Since it came out in every other region 4 days earlier, I had a chance to read reviews of the game, and was not optimistic about spending $100 on what seemed to be a campy mashing of halo and Duke Nukem one-liners. Boy was I glad I didn't listen to the reviews.
The starting stuff is best listened to with speakers turned at least halfway up, with the bass about midway. It details some highlights from DN3D in a CG style more appropriate for today. Then the game. Scintillating guitar riffs, lots of explosion noises, and Duke spitting appropriate and side-splitting lines ("My balls, your face" after hitting an alien with a basketball). A lot of the criticism focused on how the game was "stale" or "not stand-out like they said it would be".
Here's my main problem with the reviews/reviewers for this game: They all played DN3D when they were 15-16 and now that they're almost 30, they find this sort of shit mundane and boring, stupid, and "totally uncool bro" (1up.com). I played the game when I was maybe 10. And that was easily years after it was popular. I thought it was a great game but didn't understand most of the humor. Now that I'm 20 and more than capable of understanding the innuendo behind "I've got balls of steel", I found this game not only side-splittingly hilarious, but quite possibly the best game I've played since maybe portal or half life 2. And that's saying a lot. It's not that the game is physically extravagant: the graphics easily belong in 2007 (they look a lot like the textures used for the background of Midnight Club: LA; the focus is not on the background because the main graphical focus is the cars and those textures). It's not mentally taxing: there's no puzzle challenges short of maybe stacking a few barrels in a crane to lift it and go up some pipes. Instead, the game harkens back to a time when games were just violent, gut-ripping blasters. It's a shame that you can only carry 2 guns, because I was a fan of the 1-2-3-4-5-6 interface. Even with this minor change (do you actually need more than 2 guns to beat this game? no, and it's very obvious when you beat insane difficulty), the game is still fun.
Let me explain. I work at the most frustrating place in the world because half of our customers are people who have no manners and no drive to even greet you when you ask them if they had a good shopping experience. After 7 hours of straight annoyance, I found nothing better than to come home, turn my speakers up, pull out a shotgun, and take down waves of pig-cops. My only major flaw with this game is that the load times are a little extravagant: 30-40 seconds is a little unacceptable in this day and age, but I'm willing to let it slide because I didn't die all that much and it was never really an issue unless I was changing zones.
So we come back to the fact that all of these reviewers are out of their early 20's when comedy central is still funny and beer takes up more space than food in the fridge. This is who that game is for. I'm talking college-age dudes and even loners who feel the need to project by using Duke as their persona. I'm talking people who MAYBE played DN, DN2, or DN3D and/or saw the ventrilo harassment in 2007 and thought that was the funniest shit in the world. The NPCs can be zombies, the mechanics can be clunky, but in the end, I can't say I didn't enjoy the 12 year wait for a game like this. To be perfectly honest, I'd wait 20 years. 3D freeze ray and 150% head size after beating the game? Hell yes. Multiplayer? No depth, just like the old Quake/Unreal Tournament. There is no replacement for blood-splattering instagib violent action, no matter how many Grand Theft Auto games come out.
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