Duke Nukem Forever - OUT NOW!

[PK]

The 2001 build has been leaked, apparently:

 

 

Or if you're not a fan of Civvie's shtick, this channel has footage of it without commentary:

 

 

 

Not entirely sure it looks "90% finished". It looks it would've been quite good though!

 

[K]

I realise it was a work in progress, but jesus, the combat looked awful. Enemies with hitscan weapons picking you off from miles away, as soon as you step out of cover. The actual fighting seemed to consist of popping out from behind a wall and trying to hit the handful of pixels that represents a SWAT guy's head.

[RubberJohnny]

The 2001 build always looked the most interesting, both because it was early enough in it's development that everyone thought it would be a game that would actually come out and the cynicism hadn't crept into the coverage yet, and also because it did genuinely look very impressive at the time (and you'd see those screenshots and E3 footage a lot because they were the only thing released for nearly a decade).

 

But the video shows the problems we all know, a few highly polished vertical slices exist for showing off false progress and then little else (hi Star Citizen), they spent a huge amount of time on daft interactables like a working pool table that didn't matter in the grand scheme of things before they'd actually built most of the game (ditto). And even in this version you can see there's no real creative vision at play, it's just borrowing a bunch of stuff from Deus Ex (the little hud thing that shows the healthbar of each prop when you mouse over it, hacking to gain access to things) in the same way the final game borrowed from Halo with its two-weapon limit and whatever else. Obviously hacking and Deus Ex immersive sim trappings are a poor fit for the franchise, but this is what you get when your character and identity is just entirely built around borrowing from other popular things you've seen.

 

Also all the teenage porn found in the build that you can set as your loading screen is mad creepy and unprofessional.

[moosegrinder]

Saw this on Twitter yesterday, worth a read.

 

https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjbgbm/why-do-people-still-care-about-duke-nukem-forever-so-much

[K]

That's a decent article. I would love to see a woke Duke Nukem;  he's not a character that's really worth bringing back and his games were largely shit, but I would pay money to see the reaction from the classic gamer types who think even the mildest attempts at making something progressive are going to destroy gaming for all time.

[Qazimod]

It looks messy, but it also looks about right for the era - yes, there were a lot of great shooters in '01 but other games were still trying to get out of that twitchy, scrappy, aim-at-a-distant-cluster-of-pixels format.

 

19 minutes ago, K said:

I would love to see a woke Duke Nukem;  he's not a character that's really worth bringing back and his games were largely shit, but I would pay money to see the reaction from the classic gamer types who think even the mildest attempts at making something progressive are going to destroy gaming for all time.

 

I would have liked Forever with a Duke that's confused and out of touch - the Duke that becomes the butt of the joke and can't adjust to years of cultural advancement.

[Down by Law]

Quote

The reason people cared so much about Duke Nukem Forever was because they cared about Duke Nukem 3D, a game released the same year as Super Mario 64 and Quake, a game that would have a profound influence on the future of games, even if it’s hardly credited as such these days.

 

From the article - this is pretty much it. I was lucky enough to have access to the the holy trinity of 1996 FPS games as a kid - Duke, Quake and of course, Doom II  - but Duke was the one I played the most by far. The interactivity and level design was excellent and being 11 years old, the juvenile humour hit all the right notes. The combat was exciting and stuff like the jetpack and scuba gear really added to the exploration aspect and there are so many secret areas i'm sure theres some I haven't seen to this day. The Saturn port was an absolute banger too,great job by Lobotomy. Also, theres few games with an opening level as good as Hollywood Holocaust. I could play it with my eyes closed by now. 

 

The released DNF was a poorly optimised hack job, though I did have fun with it. There's no question the 2001 trailer looked wildly ambitious and a much, much more interesting game - which is likely the reason all Duke fans thought and why this leak is a relatively big deal.

 

Duke is ripe for a comeback IMO. There's a lot they can do with the character, would love to see him written as progressive type...there's even shades of it in the 2011 game - Duke comes across a pimp slapping arcade game, and even then he quips 'no way am i playing that shit' when you try to interact with it. Shame the next area literally has a wall of used panties in it. Talk about one step foward, three steps back. Lol.

 

 

[Purin]

There's an interview with the voice of Duke Nukem on this week's Retro Hour podcast.

[Nick R]

1 hour ago, moosegrinder said:

Saw this on Twitter yesterday, worth a read.

 

https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjbgbm/why-do-people-still-care-about-duke-nukem-forever-so-much

 

That article has some quotes from the person who runs the Errant Signal YouTube channel; he did a section on Duke Nukem 3D in his Children of Doom video series, which is worth watching (from the 11m to 27m marks in the video below):

 

 

[Alan Stock]

My memories are still strong of me and my mate getting the freeware demo of Duke Nukem 3D and playing through the first glorious level again and again. Full of devious secrets, the strip club and (mindblowing for the time) a mirror which had a realtime reflection! The level design was top notch and the full game, when I eventually got it, didn't disappoint until near the end when the intricate urban environments gave way to more alien/sci-fi focused levels.  

[carlospie]

Giantbomb seem to think a Duke nukem film is in production. They suggested the plots and one was that Duke came back from the past and had to be educated about how times have moved on and how offensive he was and had to adapt. It sounded pretty good. 

[robotattack]

Woke Nukem

[Qazimod]

On 01/06/2022 at 15:50, Qazimod said:

I would have liked Forever with a Duke that's confused and out of touch - the Duke that becomes the butt of the joke and can't adjust to years of cultural advancement.

 

2 hours ago, carlospie said:

They suggested the plots and one was that Duke came back from the past and had to be educated about how times have moved on and how offensive he was and had to adapt. It sounded pretty good. 

 

Gah, so close.  

[Captain Kelsten]

Ash vs Evil Dead did it well in that Ash was a total asshole, wholly out of touch, sexist, racist and everyone knew it, rolled their eyes whenever he said anything etc, but that made him even more of a bumbling idiot than an idol, whilst still bringing enough positive things to the character that you still actually liked him. 

[Mr. Gerbik]

On 02/06/2022 at 09:55, Alan Stock said:

The level design was top notch and the full game, when I eventually got it, didn't disappoint until near the end when the intricate urban environments gave way to more alien/sci-fi focused levels

This is the first game I remember in a line of games making this seemingly obvious and easily avoidable mistake over and over again. First Duke, then Half Life, then Perfect Dark and probably a few more I'm not remembering. Awesome first two thirds in amazing and very enjoyable environments , and then the devs decide to dump you into drab and extremely disappointing alien environments for the remainder of the game. WHY devs WHY??  Someone explain their thinking, especially because the public reaction is always the same.

[Benny]

2 hours ago, Mr. Gerbik said:

This is the first game I remember in a line of games making this seemingly obvious and easily avoidable mistake over and over again. First Duke, then Half Life, then Perfect Dark and probably a few more I'm not remembering. Awesome first two thirds in amazing and very enjoyable environments , and then the devs decide to dump you into drab and extremely disappointing alien environments for the remainder of the game. WHY devs WHY??  Someone explain their thinking, especially because the public reaction is always the same.

 

I think you tended to find this particular phenomenon a lot with games that released a quarter or third of the game as Shareware. Generally the shareware portion would be absolutely top notch, then the final third would have the less successful level designs in it.

 

Considering that was the part reviewers would have the smallest chance of actually playing, the cynic in me thinks that could have been often intentional, or at least a side effect of front loading all the good stuff for a blistering Shareware release that would drive sales.

 

They would then have to fill the remaining two thirds with whatever they have left which might be enough for another third that is as good, and then the dregs.

 

When I played through the Quake remaster recently even that venerable title had less interesting stuff in some of the final levels. Though most of it was gold.

 

I think Apogee Software seemed to have the most "shareware loaded" titles in my experience. Stargunner would be a good example: lots of fun levels in the shareware, of which the full game was just several levels of the same things you've seen in it already copied and stretched out over more chapters.

[Monkeyspill]

Halo 1 had that. Some of the level designs in the second half were just cut-and-paste rooms and corridors. 
 

I think a lot of games from that time were just too long and would have benefited from being shorter and more focused. 
 

I don’t think I ever finished DN3D. I did the first two or three episodes but got bored after that.

[Chosty]

5 hours ago, carlospie said:

Giantbomb seem to think a Duke nukem film is in production. They suggested the plots and one was that Duke came back from the past and had to be educated about how times have moved on and how offensive he was and had to adapt. It sounded pretty good. 

Demolition Man meets Austin Powers

[Captain Kelsten]

Duke 3D actually had a poor middle, the end was fine. The middle chapter (Lunar Apocalypse) saw you in space whereas the final chapter (Shrapnel City) saw you back on earth - the last boss being fought in a football stadium. 

[megamixer]

I feel like playing Forever again for a laugh. It was a bag of shit for sure, but I actually had fun with it for having zero expectations (based on all the negative screeching about the disaster of the final product) and not taking it seriously. Throwing turds around and writing profanities on that kid's autograph book was amusing and the section where you were shrunk was semi-creative at least.

[Fry Crayola]

I found the loading to be the worst part (on 360), because there were times when I would actually be having a bit of fun, then any death meant about a minute of waiting.

 

Maybe the Series consoles have improved that greatly but I don't think I want to go back to it.

[Nick R]

3 hours ago, Monkeyspill said:

Halo 1 had that. Some of the level designs in the second half were just cut-and-paste rooms and corridors. 

 

That's a different issue from the trend @Mr. Gerbik mentioned. With DN3D, Half-Life and Perfect Dark, the complaints were that the drop in quality was associated with a switch in setting from Earth to alien worlds. (I heard that the first Crysis did something similar, though I never played it that far.) Whereas in Halo, people complained about the opposite problem: that the level themes and layouts didn't change enough!

 

As for changes in enemy focus alongside the setting: Half-Life's human military disappears when you go to Xen, and PD's last few levels get rid of the humans in favour of Skedar aliens. But Halo's introduction of the Flood is somewhat different, since they only replace the Covenant for two middle levels, not at the end of the game.

[DeciderVT]

7 hours ago, megamixer said:

I feel like playing Forever again for a laugh. It was a bag of shit for sure, but I actually had fun with it for having zero expectations (based on all the negative screeching about the disaster of the final product) and not taking it seriously. Throwing turds around and writing profanities on that kid's autograph book was amusing and the section where you were shrunk was semi-creative at least.

 

I had a similar experience but went about playing it slightly differently. I'm a big fan of DN3D so I'd bought a copy of DNF and went into a total media blackout about it prior to playing so I didn't have the experience spoiled. My expectations were already low because of the troubled development history but I was pleasantly surprised to play a fairly solid (if unspectacular) single player campaign.

 

Spent about a week with it and checked the games press after finishing- the venom around it was really surprising and didn't really reflect my experience at all. Perhaps it was the weight of expectations but the negative reaction to it in the games press was a bit hysterical.

[megamixer]

11 hours ago, DeciderVT said:

 

I had a similar experience but went about playing it slightly differently. I'm a big fan of DN3D so I'd bought a copy of DNF and went into a total media blackout about it prior to playing so I didn't have the experience spoiled. My expectations were already low because of the troubled development history but I was pleasantly surprised to play a fairly solid (if unspectacular) single player campaign.

 

Spent about a week with it and checked the games press after finishing- the venom around it was really surprising and didn't really reflect my experience at all. Perhaps it was the weight of expectations but the negative reaction to it in the games press was a bit hysterical.

Yeah I found it to be more an average or slightly below average game, not a total travesty. There was fun to be had even if originality and wow factor was lacking.

 

Problem is that people consider 5/10 or 6/10 games (as I'd rate DNF) to be crap but that isn't the case. 

[krenzler]

https://www.moddb.com/mods/dnf2001-restoration-project/downloads/duke-nukem-restoration-first-slice-10

 

 

[krenzler]

Let's see if Gearbox leaves it be. If download is slow choose another mirror and pick Frankfurt DE.

[Siri]

Oh, it's out? awesome, I was a bit concerned that announcing it a few days before would be perfectly enough to get clapped by a C&D, as according to plan.

I'll see if I can get it going on the Steam Deck.

[Stevie]

I hated dnf. I loved DN3D because I was 17 years old and throwing money at strippers was edgy and naughty, and funny, at the time. The same humour wasn’t funny years later when I played dnf. It didn’t take long before I stopped playing it. It was simply revolting. 
 

If Duke were to return I wouldn’t want to see a “woke” Duke, whatever that means. I would simply like to see a non-asshole Duke, with the personality of a professional wrestler. Like a mix between Macho Man and The Rock, or something similar. 

[Qazimod]

Quote

In surprise news for fans still holding a candle for Duke despite his disastrous last outing, a user named x0r_jmp has leaked a 1996 build of Duke Nukem Forever to Archive.org that sees Duke returning to the side-scrolling gameplay of Duke Nukem and Duke Nukem II. The leaked build contains the original game files and a level editor for the prototype, as well as patched versions designed to work on modern hardware.

 

 

https://gamerant.com/duke-nukem-forever-side-scroller-prototype-1996-leak/

https://archive.org/details/duke-nukem-forever-1996-side-scroller