Duke4.net Forums: Why am I supposed to hate Duke Nukem's Bulletstorm Tour? - Duke4.net Forums

First, a premise. I had never heard of Bulletstorm before the announcement of Duke Nukem's Bulletstorm Tour. This forum reacted to said announcement with lots of rage and hate, as usual. Then I tried it, and what I liked of it abundantly outweighs what I don't like.
Sure, it was an adaptation of an existing game, it lacks a level editor, it's less interactive than Duke Nukem Forever and you can't jump... but look at what it does right! It's chock full of over-the-top moments that aren't a parody of anything! They don't need the crutch of referring to something else to be amusing, they are so on their own!
The weapons... OF COURSE they are not the same as Duke Nukem 3D, but they capture the spirit of Duke Nukem perfectly (which is even more impressive considering they weren't originally designed for a Duke Nukem game)! There's an energy leash that pulls enemies toward you (even out of helicopters) or generates a shockwave that launches them around! A chaingun you can charge to burn enemies down to their skeleton! A sniper rifle that lets you steer the bullets in midair! At one point, you remotely control a robot dinosaur that fires laser beams from its eyes!
You can use the environment to kill enemies in lots of creative ways, something you could NOT do in DNF! You can run for as long as you want, and faster than DNF! You can slide and trip up enemies! You can kick every time you want!
Duke actually participates to dialogs, and does not limit himself to one-liners! When he actually says a one-liner, it's original, and not just a quote from a movie (except for the "chew bubblegum" line, but he consciously said it as a joke, even in-universe)!

This is why I cannot hate Duke Nukem's Bulletstorm Tour. It's fun, it's adrenalinic, and it has lots of original moments, which is what Duke really needs to succeed. Originality and ground-breaking ideas, not throwbacks!

Altered Reality, on 09 July 2017 - 05:54 PM, said:

What's wrong with using one-liners from movies? Duke's a huge movie buff, so it makes sense for him to make movie quotes.

As for the game itself, I cannot agree or disagree, I still have yet to play it. But, like you, I heard of Bulletstorm because of Duke Nukem's Bulletstorm Tour.

I also played the original not too long ago, and found it hugely enjoyable in terms of gameplay, and the story/humour was also pretty good. I liked what little I saw of the Duke parts on youtube. One of the big problems though is the price of the game. You can get the original for as little as $5 on steam, and there appears to be precious little new content or graphical improvements in the new version. It's not worth paying so much more just for a bit of tacked-on Duke experience. They should have offered everyone who owned the original game a discount, if not given it to them for free.

Never Forgotten, on 09 July 2017 - 06:10 PM, said:

Not if a consistent part of his lines are a reference to something else. That would mean the people who made those movies were creative, while the people who developed that game were lazy.
When Duke3D was new, I had never seen They Live nor Army Of Darkness, so I enjoyed Duke quoting those movies because I didn't know he was quoting anything in the first place. I enjoyed them for what they were, at face value. But had I known those movies back then... I probably would have groaned instead.

Who says, one is supposed to hate something?
Bulletstorm was a fun game. It was pulled of the market and got a make over. Apparently it has no noticeable game play improvements. Thus I will pass on it.

I'm angry at Bulletstorm Full Clip for the same reason why I was angry at World Tour, there isn't really an issue with the content itself, but rather how they are reeking of the worst parts of Gearbox rather than the best.

World Tour having a tweaked engine, new episode by the old team and such are heavenly for Duke fans and having Duke in Bulletstorm is a fun thing as well, nothing wrong with the content.
It's the stench of Gearbox's greed that mostly caused all the hate and anger.
- Removing the much liked Megaton Edition that had 3 times the content and had half the price of World Tour then replacing it with World Tour, charging double the price and it being full of technical issues along side it being censored and still refusing to give back the Megaton Edition.
- Then there's Bulletstorm, charging Full brand new AAA game price for it and charging extra for Duke when Duke was clearly lazily implemented at the time and removing the original, far cheaper version from sale.

It's not really the content that's hated, but rather the practices surrounding them.

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I get what you're saying. I've been writing a story for a while now, and the hardest part is coming up with something original, and that's the fun of it.

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I've always loved the quotes, even after I found out they were from movies. To me, Duke is someone stuck in the 80's/90's, so, he's going to quote things from such times. I can't think of a time where I didn't quote something from a movie I really love. Seriously, my brother and I are constantly quoting movies to each other, mostly Scrooged. And since Duke is such a huge action movie fan, it's only natural for him to quote such movies as well. Now, coming up with some original quotes isn't bad, it'd probably be for the better so Duke isn't just stealing lines from every action movie out there, but at the same time, it isn't a crime for him to quote them.

I liked the idea as well. I just can't pay that much for it personally.

Never Forgotten, on 09 July 2017 - 06:38 PM, said:

To the point of sliding into irrelevance. It would be nice if he was so innovative that others started quoting him.

Never Forgotten, on 09 July 2017 - 06:38 PM, said:

Isn't that circular reasoning? "Duke quotes old movies, so he must be a fan of old movies. And since he is a fan of old movies, he must keep quoting old movies."

1. It was $50, and half that would still be too much.

2. Duke Nukem's presence was completely shoehorned in. I don't recall if they changed the NPCs to not call Duke "Gray".

3. Duke's lines suffer from the same terrible writing as DNF, if not worse.

Hendricks266, on 10 July 2017 - 04:45 AM, said:

I get why Randy went down that route, but I agree with you; shoving Duke ADR into a game, isn't going to make me buy it.

My biggest problem with bulletstorm full clip was that it was announced like five months in advance of release. They did the same thing for World Tour's release and it's super frustrating.

I did preorder it, though I too thought the price was a bit steep, not really having any interest in bulletstorm, just because of Duke. Played it for a couple hours and the cutscene heavy massively linear gameplay experience didn't much do it for me, but that's no fault of Gearbox.

Altered Reality, on 10 July 2017 - 02:17 AM, said:

How would that make him slide into irrelevance? Do you know how many people love and adore the movies Duke quotes. It wouldn't be bad for him to make some modern references as well, like the Has Fallen films, but not like DNF had him quote Chris Brown... Yuck...

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Duke quoting old movies does show that he is a fan of old movies, and since he tends to quote them, I don't think they should change the character just to come up with 100% original lines. If I were in Duke's situation, with Duke's training (otherwise I'd probably be running for the hills), I would do the same thing... or at least I think I'd do the same thing. I do agree they need to have some more original lines, unlike DNF, but at the same time they don't need to remove the character trait completely, it's something that has been established in Duke's personality, and shouldn't be removed.

I still didn't buy the Bulletstorm re-release during the Summer Sale. 30% off simply wasn't cheap enough for me, considering the rather modest changes/updates Gearbox applied. It even seems they reverted the water visuals to the looks of the original release in a recent patch. Looks worse like that, at least IMHO.