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Duke Nukem Critical Mass Longplay  "I pity this poor bastard."

User is offline   OpenMaw 

  • Judge Mental

#1

Someone actually did a "long play" of Critical Mass on the DS.




Dear Jesus this game is a buggy mess. Proton sounds completely unimposing. Duke, sad to say, sounds mostly phoned in. Two stand out jokes? Duke spotting a fridge and saying "Even in the movies that wouldn't work" and a very shitty Jar Jar impersonation getting shot (off screen).

I get what happend here. Really. It's just a bit insane. The game clearly was never actually finished. They just dumped the last build they had and had it produced. With that said, holy shit...
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User is offline   Hool 

#2

The compression of the babe's voices reminds me of this video:


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User is offline   OpenMaw 

  • Judge Mental

#3

There are some neat ideas that would/could have been great for a Duke game. I rather like the idea of an almost Mega Man style level select across the whole planet, but the execution is lacking. I also like the idea of Duke fighting near the Hollywood Hills, something I actually had written into a script sometime ago. It's a great, iconic locale that i'm shocked had yet to be tapped in a Duke game.




Just about every cutscene in the game feels awkward, rushed. Which really really hurts the presentation. There are some really odd transitions, "name" bad guys and bosses just seem to appear without any real introduction. There's some really confusing references to "Morphix" which I assume is referring to Mech Morphix from DNMP, but we never see or hear from him. It's implied Proton has convinced him to join forces. That would have been a nifty bit of story to actually play around with... But there's fuck all. Is Morphix supposed to be the big black cyber-spider thing you fight early on in the game? I have no idea. Also, the battlelord (which you fight near the Hollywood sign) looks absolutely terrible. Just awful.

Another thing that sticks out, story wise, is watching this really shows me that all the talk of having a cohesive storyverse backing up the Duke universe back in 2008 was all BS. Why? Well, let's just examine Proton. Granted, he's a walking cliche, and never meant to be taken to seriously, but the one thing that strikes me rather odd is that he's apparently working with the aliens here. Now if I could direct your attention to the DNF DLC for a moment. Proton was preparing to fight the alien menace using his tech bots, remember? That was his motivation for using Duke, among other things. Then again this version of Proton doesn't really feel like he's related to the one seen in DNF at all. Indeed, the DNF one seems closer in tone to the original Proton than this one... There's something really strange about the design and feel of this version of Proton.... I just don't like it.




Oh, and there was something about the arsenal that kept bothering me. Not the obvious glitchy/janky behavior of the sound/VFX. No no. Then I realized what it was. It's generic. None of the iconic weapons are there. None of them. It's just generic human guns, plus a slew of generic alien guns. The only real "Duke" weapon on display are the pipe bombs, but everything else is just generic. No flavor, no attitude. I'm not saying every Duke game needs the same guns, but coming up with some interesting toys that are not just a set of different machine guns would be nice. Manhattan Project managed to do this with a fairly new set of weapons compared to the other releases around the same time, but it kept some of that Duke charm, with the GLOPP Gun standing in for the shrinker. MP's arsenal is lean and mean. Each gun has a purpose, and they all feel good to use.

The top down jetpack sequences are just atrocious. The first person sniper bits are laughably awkward. (I actually played the first portion of the game, the part set in New York) and... Those sniper bits shouldn't even be in the game.



If this had been my project, I would have made both the DS and PSP versions the same kind of over-the-shoulder experience. The DS can clearly do this justice, the 3D boss battle segments aren't that bad visually. The whole game needs polish, honestly. and dropped the gimmicky "multi-mode" nonsense. With the exception of having areas where a jetpack could come into play. This would have saved the developers a lot of time and energy having to develop different play styles. Just make a well designed TPS.

My redesigns DNCM would have really embraced the Mega Man style level select feature. The game would drop you into the first level as a bit of a trial-by-fire getting-to-know the basics. You'd have a little story set up to bookend the level, and then you could choose to handle the missions in any order you like, with little story at the beginning and end of each mission (basically Duke and the boss for the episode having words in typical Duke style.) Once you beat all the levels on Earth you'd unlock a moon base map, and go to fight Proton. After defeating him you'd return home and find out the sequel bait for the second game. I'd axe all the generic weapons, and build a smaller arsenal of interesting weapons mixing both the classics and exotic stuff. Why are the Alien guns in both this and DNF so damn generic? The "cum gun" from DNF DLC was the only standout Alien weapon in either game. What about some weird shit like the living Alien grenades from Prey? Or a laser gun that cuts bad guys in half? Just something to give the weapons decent player feedback.

I know the DS is a bit of a humble little console, but i've seen games infinitely better than this on there. There's just no excuse for a Duke game to come out this sloppy. At least DNF felt functional, it annoyed me, but it wasn't this grossly incompetent.
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#4

View PostCommando Nukem, on 15 August 2014 - 02:05 AM, said:

Well, let's just examine Proton. Granted, he's a walking cliche, and never meant to be taken to seriously, but the one thing that strikes me rather odd is that he's apparently working with the aliens here. Now if I could direct your attention to the DNF DLC for a moment. Proton was preparing to fight the alien menace using his tech bots, remember? That was his motivation for using Duke, among other things. Then again this version of Proton doesn't really feel like he's related to the one seen in DNF at all. Indeed, the DNF one seems closer in tone to the original Proton than this one... There's something really strange about the design and feel of this version of Proton.... I just don't like it.

And guess who we have to blame for that? I'll give you a clue: he's fat, he has a gambling problem and he was unable to release the game he worked on for 12 years. Yes, that's right, it's our old friend GEORGE BROUSSARD!

And he is responsible for that because he always refused to divulge anything about the plot of DNF. Remember back in the day, in the 3DRealms forum, when someone asked information about the plot of DNF, and George's lackey Joe Siegler inevitably appeared saying "Area 51 rules apply"? Evidently, George also did the same thing with third party developers (which goes without saying that it's absolutely idiotic), so Deep Silver had to resort to the closest thing it could find to a summary of the plot of DNF: the November 1997 issue of PC Gamer.
They must have thought: "It's written right here that Doctor Proton contacted the aliens and he was the actual responsible for the invasion in Duke3D, so let's go for that! And how should we characterize him? It says right here that Duke games are parodies of the action movie genre, and you know what that means, right? Innovation is forbidden! Let's just make Doctor Proton as trite as possible!"

This would have been avoided had George told them: "Guys, Proton is smart and competent, he acts like a genuine threat and he wants to exploit Duke's popularity for himself". But of course, it's George we're talking about.

This post has been edited by Altered Reality: 15 August 2014 - 04:04 PM

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User is offline   Mr. Tibbs 

#5

Dat Terry Nagy polish.
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#6

View PostCommando Nukem, on 15 August 2014 - 02:05 AM, said:

There's some really confusing references to "Morphix" which I assume is referring to Mech Morphix from DNMP, but we never see or hear from him. It's implied Proton has convinced him to join forces. That would have been a nifty bit of story to actually play around with... But there's fuck all. Is Morphix supposed to be the big black cyber-spider thing you fight early on in the game? I have no idea.

It's much more likely that the truth is sadder than that. Remember, Mech Morphix is just an expy of Doctor Proton, who was supposed to be the original antagonist in Duke Nukem Manhattan Project, but could not be used because the plot required an expendable antagonist, who could be killed off at the end.
Plotwise, it makes no sense for Mech Morphix to be alive again. In addition, this game borrows a lot of sounds from DNMP, so it's much more probable that all references to Mech Morphix are just placeholder sounds, which were kept in because Apogee could not afford to pay Jon St. John to record additional lines.

This post has been edited by Altered Reality: 16 August 2014 - 04:14 AM

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#7

View PostAltered Reality, on 16 August 2014 - 04:14 AM, said:

Plotwise, it makes no sense for Mech Morphix to be alive again. In addition, this game borrows a lot of sounds from DNMP, so it's much more probable that all references to Mech Morphix are just placeholder sounds, which were kept in because Apogee could not afford to pay Jon St. John to record additional lines.

The lines referring to Morphix are all new. I only skimmed through the longplay, but I believe this is most every mention of his name:
- Duke: Time for you to die, Morphix.
- Mechanical Babe: Master, Morphix was defeated in combat.
- Mechanical Babe: No Master, but Morphix was able to transmit this image before he was killed.
- Temporal Agent Guy: They use them to power Morphix's other mechs
- Duke: Somehow he [Proton] was able to unite Morphix, the Alien Queen and the Cycloid Emperor.

It's probably somewhat of a lost cause trying to decipher the plot, but I think this is the gist regarding Morphix in particular: he was intended to appear in this game, and the recorded dialog still assumes he does. However, he clearly did not make the cut, and the flying crab and spider robots that Duke defeats, originally intended to be his creations, are instead referred to as Morphix himself (despite being two distinct entities) as they simply kept using the existing lines rather then record new ones. Duke's final mention of the Alien Queen and the Cycloid Emperor at the end suggests a lot more was cut as I'm certain none of the depicted bosses are meant to be either of those two.

Of course, it doesn't make sense for Morphix to be back, but I'm assuming this was supposed to be an all-star cast of villains from the entirety of Duke's history. Seemed like it could have been a fun idea if they had managed to complete the intended trilogy in a competent manner. No love the Rigelatins or the Overlord as usual, though.
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User is offline   DarkDuke 

#8

Well, there. Now I know that there are two Duke games I don't care a singular lick for.
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User is offline   Jimmy 

  • Let's go Brandon!

#9

Holy shit. I can't believe this exists.
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User is offline   ReaperMan 

#10

Critical Ass.
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User is offline   Idiotska 

#11

You know you're on YouTube when you see a comment claiming this is better than Manhattan Project.
3

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