Duke Nukem Forever demo...

Well, the actual game's out. If anyone wants to purchase it and has not yet done so, Newegg currently has it for 40 bucks w/ code: EMCKDJF85.

Quite a few bad reviews out and about however.

The reviews dont make any sense. Lots of people giving very low scores like 3/10 even though the game is nowhere near that bad. Its like a wave of protest-reviews.

I'll skip it. Some reviewers mention the presence of many QTE, sorry, but that's not what I want.

Som say the console versions are really awful:

those sites who gave Duke a low score must have been played a console versions, because differences between pc and consoles are night and day.

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Drithius said:

Well, the actual game's out. If anyone wants to purchase it and has not yet done so, Newegg currently has it for 40 bucks w/ code: EMCKDJF85.

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Thanks for that. I'm in the process right now of calling all the Gamestop stores near me to see if one has an extra Balls of Steel edition. If not, then I'll order from Newegg.

*Edit* Holy crap, Newegg is already sold out of the PC version.

I'd wait a couple of weeks. With the generally awful reviews from most sites (think the max I've seen is like 6/10), it'll hit bargain bin prices very soon

Beat it had fun playing it and all I can say as everybody on the internet says haters gonna hate. Brought fond memories when I played the first as a teenager. Buy the PC version though from reports the console version has graphic problems.

So far on Metacritic, DNF has an average score of 57 from 20 game critics, and an average user score of 5.2

Ouch...

Too bad. I was hoping for a good new shooter.

The game is nowhere near as bad as all the reviews so far say. Its only real weakness is truly horrible level design. You could argue, that this was THE one thing that made Duke 3D so special all those years ago and they completely botched it.

Maybe people are just showing their anger over having to wait too long for a game that doesn't meet the expectations they've held ...

tolknaz said:

The game is nowhere near as bad as all the reviews so far say. Its only real weakness is truly horrible level design. You could argue, that this was THE one thing that made Duke 3D so special all those years ago and they completely botched it.

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I wouldn't say that level design was the only thing that made Duke 3D special, but I agree it was certainly one of its strong points. I'm really enjoying my current replay, and I'm still impressed by those levels after all these years.

I had a bad feeling about the level design of DNF from playing the demo though.

Thrasher said:

Maybe people are just showing their anger over having to wait too long for a game that doesn't meet the expectations they've held …

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I don't think that's it. If the game had been released in this state by 3D Realms then, yes, you'd be totally right, but I got the impression that the end of 3DR and the subsequent cancellation of DN4ever put an end to the ever smoldering hype that kept surrounding this game.
Then when Gearbox picked it up and when it was announced that the game would be shipping in just a few months it seemed to me like expectations went from formerly over the top to extremely low because everyone knew that Gearbox wouldn't be able to work wonders in such a short time span.

So all in all I believe that people/reviewers actually went in with pretty low expectations (which the game apparently managed to live up to).
It probably still received a penalty for legacy though (Duke3D was innovative and this game is not).
And then there's also the lemming effect, of course. If one big/popular site (like GameSpot/IGN/PC Gamer) "dares" to slap a 5/10 on it, then you instantly have dozens of lemming sites following suit who would have also been fine with a 7/10 or 8/10 score if the popular site had chosen to give it that score instead.
My gut feeling tells me that under regular circumstances DN4ever would be a typical ~7/10 game => Not too great, not too shabby either, fun while it lasts and... next!

Well, the game would get more notorious reputation after this news, and kills the chance of further sequel

The publisher of Duke Nukem Forever has announced that it has fired a third party public relations company that made threats earlier this week to media outlets that posted poor reviews of the newly released first person shooter. The company, The Redner Group, and its head Jim Redner used its Twitter page earlier this week to post this now deleted message, " … too many went too far with their reviews…we r reviewing who gets games next time and who doesn't based on today's venom."

….Meanwhile the poor reviews of Duke Nukem Forever are blamed in part for a downturn in the stock price for 2K Games' parent company Take Two Interactive. Marketwatch reports that the stock price for the company went down 4 percent on Tuesday when the reviews started pouring in.

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http://www.neowin.net/news/duke-nukem-forever-publisher-fires-its-third-party-pr-rep

Poor Duke...

Whoa! Some hard evidence of corporate blackmail? I hope someone captured this.

As a response to this incident, the PR firm has already been fired by 2K Games.

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica]2K Games does not endorse the comments made by Jim Redner and we can confirm that The Redner Group no longer represents our products. We have always maintained a mutually-respectful working relationship with the press and do not condone his actions in any way.[/FONT]

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I think people who work on a game of were invoked in the production have a right to get pissed off with the reviews lambasting them. Screw political correctness and goodwill. Maybe the reviewers should apologize for there trashing.

The game is very, very poor - and has little but nostalgia and denial going for it.

You don't work on something for so long without releasing it, unless there's a VERY good reason.

It's a cheap tasteless cash-grab, and people expecting something great from it, are simply not using their heads.

Jaz said:

*sigh*
Used to be a regular t-shirt, but after all those years it looks rather … antique, so I just don't wear it by day. - Yeah, I know it's not quite what you expected.

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Jaz didn't really expect anything other than make a joke (I try those joke thingies from time to time ), but your killing me with these clothes…I….must……resist…….urge…..to…..make a mushroom joke………..

Seriously though, awesome. Wish I could buy that for my girlfriend, but she'd look at me and say no way in hell....well I'm assuming that's what she say because she'll say it in Chinese and then tell me that's what it meant.

I just finished the game. I quite liked it actually. It's not a great game but I would call it a good game. It's main problems are the two weapon limit and some poor level design, which is really a symptom of a half-done game being scrambled together.

The reviews baffle me. Most of them seem to think Duke is supposed to be taken seriously. I watched the giantbomb quicklook and they complain about him calling women babes, saying no one says that anymore. THAT'S THE POINT! Duke is supposed to be satire of stupid 80's action movie heroes, he's not supposed to be some guy you want to be like. Several reviews also mention the "rape" scene being terrible, but if it's terrible here surely ever Alien movie and game were worse? It's a parody of Alien in other words.

Similarly the gameplay is fine. When you see 2's and 3's everywhere it makes you think the game is broken but honestly it's a fun shooter. It does have the style of something from 2004 or so rather than now, but so? 2004 shooters were mostly better than today's anyway. Most of the things I see them bashing Duke for were in Half-Life, all be it done better. They seem to be angry about even the existence of these things though, not their quality.

Anyway I had fun with it.