Duke Nukem Forever review controversy

On the other hand, Duke Mario: Losing Control: Part One: Blood-Stained Coin was incredibly unexpected. Apparently no one noticed the AO rating on the box.

Particularly, Peach's nude scene in the opening caused a lot of complaints.

edited 16th Jun '11 10:12:59 AM by Beorc

Well, there's offensive and then there's forever. The complaints seem to be it's not the "Wink wink nudge nudge" tongue-and-cheek offensiveness of 3D and more of a "Everybody worship the Duke. Duke is perfect and can do no wrong. Fuck women." sort of offensiveness.

In other words, it's not politically incorrect. It's just douchey.

He comes off as douchey, but it didn't fail because of that. It failed because it was a shit game that should have never been made.

Duke (well, in Duke 3D anyways, he didn't have that characterization in the platformers) was more of a parody of typical action/sci-fi b movies with disposable and sexualized women. DNF seems more on the "offensive for the sake of offensive".

I stopped caring about any 'official' review after the Kane and Lynch bullcrap.

I agree with this.

edited 16th Jun '11 10:41:03 AM by Thorn14

> The escapist

Now that's a trustworthy source!

> It failed because it was a shit game that should have never been made.

It's average at best.

edited 16th Jun '11 11:01:48 AM by Aminatep

Shit, it's really that bad? And this is the same team that made Borderlands? I hope that wasn't a fluke...

3D realms can be blamed for the vast majority of the game, for good or ill. Gearbox (Who i love and can have my babies.) just finished up the building with what materials they had left.

I suppose they could have started over from scratch, but honestly that may have meant the end of that dev company too.

From what I hear, Its So Okay Its Average, but people are exaggerating because it took 11 years for an average game to come out.

Granted, if it WAS a good game, you'd still get the same response.

Yeah the PC Gamer review says that it's good if you already had low expectations or something along those lines.

Well, what couldn't you say THAT about?

It's a good game if your expecting a shit experience? What praise!

It was better then any COD at least, I wasnt expecting the great thing anyway,

So, is a good job for me

Were there ANY racist jokes in DNF? I thought they were mostly typical sexist jokes...

I mean that if you were expecting something industry-changing, you'd be disappointed.

Ah, here's the PC Gamer review.

Well, they are the honest opinions. They may not be "well written", but they are generally honest about their opinion.

edited 16th Jun '11 2:36:34 PM by deuxhero

Technically true.

edited 16th Jun '11 2:40:07 PM by SpellBlade

Yeah, but also way too extreme. Only people who think the game is the second coming of Jesus or the vile product of Satan himself will be passionate enough to write a review on those sites. And since people think in such extremes are very likely to be idiots, you probably don't want to be influenced by their opinion.

edited 16th Jun '11 2:44:31 PM by Kayeka

And then you have the third group of people who claim to be the only unbiased source or something and give the game a 7/10.

Edit: Scores are pointless - I've seen reviews admit the author scored the game lower because he wanted to lower the overall score to what he agreed with.

edited 16th Jun '11 2:47:40 PM by SpellBlade

All reviews are naturally going to lean to extremes by nature, but if you keep the barrier to entry minimal and don't artificially skew the results with external incentives, you have more than enough to sort through that you can find the happy medium. More importantly, you can read reviews from people who've actually played through a significant part of it and not just rushed through it trying to be the first one to get the scoop.

Scores are a gross simplification of almost any complex product, of course, but people like to see them and they do have their uses, so there's no point in bitching about them.

In my opinion, a lot of the low review scores are based on a feeling that approving of the game's content would "delegitimize" an industry that's trying to become media-accepted (the very term "video game journalist" implies a desire to be taken seriously). Just read the 1up review for a good example of this. Granted, I've only played the demo and watched videos of the playthroughs, but I'd dispute stuff like "poor shooting 'feel'" based on the demo. There are undeniably major problems with the game, but the sheer amount of vitriol in some of those reviews is just over the top.

edited 18th Jun '11 12:00:29 AM by AvistTorch

That is not hyperbole at all, I'm telling you.