[Mr.Deviance]

Here is the first unofficial public demo review made by me.
I tried keeping spoilers to a minimum but the demo is so god damn small that anything I say about it can be a potential spoiler.
The intro was fucking kick ass. When i saw how well they sent kudos to everybody that worked at the game I almost cried.
They managed to keep the intro stylized and awesome.
The menu and it's settings appear to be ok for a pc game.
You can set graphics in enough levels(it's not a really graphics hog game to begin with so you will most likely want it on max anyway)
The demo gameplay and graphics themselves were exactly as we've seen in the pax demo.
After playing the demo, I still don't like the telekinesis style interaction with the environment like sinks and stuff but it's ok considering that in duke 3d you couldn't even interact with them at all.
The animations of Duke are great when scripted but are very poor when not scripted( again as it can be seen in the pax demo)
I really liked the way weapons shoot, it felt nice to me, they fired as I expected an fps game to fire such weapons, not more spectacular not less.
I liked Duke's moster truck and I also liked how it drives.
I liked how pigs die when you shoot them, and the gibing is decent too.
What I think matters to me the most from this game is that I felt the half life 1 play style was present through puzzles that kept me distracted from graphics analysis.
It really felt like Half Life 1's gameplay style which for me was amazing because no other game got the hl1 ambient right ever since it came out.
I also fucking love the ripper that I so much hated until today! It feels so metallic. heavy and combined with it's reloading animation and it's sounds it feels so much dangerous than it felt in duke 3d.
The one thing that made me wow in the demo was the duke vision. The post processing effects combined with it's sounds made me feel cooler than when I play with the predator vision in avp games.

Sound quality is another thing that is done exceptionally well.
Both sfx and music!

Demo was incredibly small and after playing it I can say that the game is everything we've seen in the pax demo AND it also gave me an immersive puzzle solving feeling.
To me, it showed that it's a pure 90's fps game with 2005-2006 level design covered in modern shaders and higher res textures.

The game feels like it's Duke 3D to a degree but it doesn't feel identical to Duke 3d without it's duke 3d music and it also feels more cinematic.
Duke definitely makes more sounds and feels more human now.

The performance of the demo felt relatively good on a 9800gt, 2gb ddr2 and a amd athlon 64 x2 dual core 6000+ that I have at work.
I was only able to play it in 1280x1024 due to having a 17inch 5:4 lcd monitor here not a wide screen one but I was able to play it maxed out at everything including AA and vsync with occasional stutters. I had around 40-55 fps at all times.

Menu Settings screen


Small tribute for duke4.net made by me
Please excuse the poor small writing but I rushed it due to hype to play the game and also be the first mother fucker to post this kind of thing on the site


It's all stuff you've already seen in the released media so I didn't put it in spoiler tags.

Hope you like my review that I've written with broken hyped fingers while I am at work.

[DN4EVR]

OMG the ego in here is THISSS big.

[Middy]

DN4EVR, on 02 June 2011 - 10:17 PM, said:

OMG the ego in here is THISSS big.

To be honest I was expecting allot more shit from him but suprisingly he wasnt as a bad as I thought he would be. Although, I was under the impression that everyone knew this was the pax demo cleaned up? Hell I only expected the stadium and the first level, one week untill we have the full game. Then its the long wait for serious sam 3

[Detinator73]

All I believe is that this game is pure awesome. I been demanding a Duke Nukem Forever demo and this here..... The demo is purely good. The interactions (using the toilet, drawing on the white board, etc.) are very good (it feels almost like a god of war game). The FPS..... When I was playing, the FPS was lagging only a small bit, but not too much. The reason why was because it was automaticuly set to ultra high. Anyways, the enemies in this demo was good and the 3D environment is amazing. The music and sound quality was very good (much better than Duke3d without the looping). The only drawback is the weapon limit. Your only limit to two weapons (one primary, one secondary). and pipebombs just incase you need it. In Duke Nukem 3D, you could hold as many weapons as you want. I guess Duke Nukem Forever was competing against the Call of Duty series where you could only carry 2 weapons and grenades (maybe flash bangs too). I also found another drawback that I don't know how to use my mighty boot/hands as a melee weapon. I know you could use a weapon as a melee weapon, but I think thats about it. I used my hands during the first part. In conclusion, I believe that Duke Nukem Forever is a decent game. It is basically an improvement to Duke Nukem 3D and I would recommand this game to anybody. The humor was funny and the gameplay was decent and good. The enemies are much tougher than Duke3D, so I am rating this game a 10/10.

I was running with an AMD Athlon Duel Core X2 6000+, 3 GB DDR2, and a Geforce 250 GTS with 500 GB of HDD. I was running with a 19" screen 16:9, with everything ultra high and greater detail. I did not enable v-sync but I had AA enabled.

[Mr.Deviance]

It seems I've beaten the DNF demo from work before George Broussard even managed to download it.
I am such a lifeless person

[DN4EVR]

Mr.Deviance, on 02 June 2011 - 10:40 PM, said:

It seems I've beaten the DNF demo from work before George Broussard even managed to download it.
I am such a lifeless person

You said this in the other thread....

[Mr.Deviance]

DN4EVR, on 02 June 2011 - 10:42 PM, said:

You said this in the other thread....

I did yes but I wanted to mention it here too because it's too damn fun to be able to claim that I did this.

[Alithinos]

Hi,I just wake up some minutes ago and I'm still downloading it!
I'm excited!
Of course I will play it on pc,and Steam's download bar is about 5/6 complete right now.
After it's fully downloaded I'll give it a play,and return here to post my opinion too!

[DI-MeisterM]

Downloading it now too! It don't want to get too spoiled, but is it the PAX demo or not?

[ferran275]

the only thing that bothered me, and it REALLY bothered me, was that I couldn't keep my pistol with me, I've come to accept the two weapon limit, but I didn't realize that was INCLUDING your pistol!!! that's Duke's trusty side arm!!! and he has to throw it away if he wants to carry a shotgun and a ripper??? I am sorry, but that is fucking lame as shit. The worst part is that his pistol is custom, so when you throw it away and pick up another random pistol from a pigcop, its the exact same thing again!!! This is really my ONLY gripe with DNF, everything else was topnotch

[Alithinos]

DI-MeisterM, on 02 June 2011 - 11:03 PM, said:

Downloading it now too! It don't want to get too spoiled, but is it the PAX demo or not?

I don't know,I'll tell you after I play. I think Mr.Deviance could answer that question right now.

[MYHOUSE.MAP]

DI-MeisterM, on 02 June 2011 - 11:03 PM, said:

Downloading it now too! It don't want to get too spoiled, but is it the PAX demo or not?

It is.

[randir14]

DI-MeisterM, on 02 June 2011 - 11:03 PM, said:

Downloading it now too! It don't want to get too spoiled, but is it the PAX demo or not?

It's the same thing they've been showing for months. Stadium, desert and mines.

[DI-MeisterM]

randir14, on 02 June 2011 - 11:13 PM, said:

It's the same thing they've been showing for months. Stadium, desert and mines.

Meh so Randy lied

[randir14]

DI-MeisterM, on 02 June 2011 - 11:14 PM, said:

Meh so Randy lied

Yep.

[Micky C]

Alithinos, on 02 June 2011 - 10:59 PM, said:

Hi,I just wake up some minutes ago and I'm still downloading it!
I'm excited!
Of course I will play it on pc,and Steam's download bar is about 5/6 complete right now.
After it's fully downloaded I'll give it a play,and return here to post my opinion too!

Lucky you. I've been waiting all day for this thing to be announced at roughly 2 o'clock. After I got home, I started downloading it, and it's been downloading for 2 hours, with 15 minutes to go. The longest 15 minutes of my life.

[Outtagum]

DI-MeisterM, on 02 June 2011 - 11:14 PM, said:

Meh so Randy lied

Actually... didn't he say it would be different from the PAX West demo? That was before we seen this version with the extended mine part.

[YicklePigeon]

Took me about 30 minutes to download at full speed, a few extra minutes for Steam to get its act together and then...I'd like to say I blasted through the demo but I didn't. I taken the time out to try to use everything I could, to attempt to open every door, doodled on the board etc but the interactivity felt less than that of the Prey demo of old.

I did like the quote Duke made when...

Spoiler

what you really want to know?

Spoiler

Last chance...either play the demo, wait or click the next spoiler reveal button!

Okay okay...

Spoiler

...how "a crowbar could be handy right about now..." upon getting rid of the boards sealing the mine. Although it wasn't anyhere near as exciting or as long as it should have been.

In any event, according to Steam, I spent but 58 minutes completing it and well...I'm not exactly saying "c'mon June 10th!" but I will be looking out for a scene involving the line "man...this thing is really pissed off!" when I am playing the full version yes that's what DNF has been reduced to for me, looking for references to the old trailers...

Regards,

Yickle!

Spoiler

P.S. Yes I did smirk when I heard "what're you gonna do? Save the world all by yourself?!" to which I mentally replied "Why yes I am helmet for a face!" - I like to see faces not helmets! Rrrr!

[randir14]

One thing I was surprised and happy to see were the very short loading times. In the 360 demos Gearbox has been showing, the load times took forever. In the PC version it's only a couple seconds.

[DI-MeisterM]

I finished it now too, loved it! Sure almost all stuff I've seen before, but if you play it on your own it's different. One thing that annoys me is that the demo on the xbox is forced to german language, there's no ingame option to change that...and that sucks

[CryptKiller]

First of all, thank you sinisterrambo for code, once again

Some of my useless opinions: demo is short and fun, but it really shows that at one point DNF was redesigned to fit on consoles. A big stab to my heart was 2 weapons limit, I really hoped that in some way the menu from those old Jace Hall Show clips will be kept, and the limit will be for MP only... sadly, none of this. Also, demo shows nearly the same content as on PAX, I really hoped for that 1 hour long, full of new content demo. You hurted my feelings, Randy.
Also, short, scripted, dynamic, great music and okay visuals (makes game looking pleasant while keeping reasonable FPS and *really* short level load times) and, really, really fun. Intro is excellent, weapons kill as they should (I was surprised when picked Ripper and blasted pigcop - that thing's feels really heavy and kickass), the difficulty level is *not* too easy, and whole game feels like mixture of good ol' Dukey with Half-Life, as Mr. Deviance stated.

Too bad it's only for FAC members, it just doesn't feel fair for other gamers, who have doubts about DNF's quality and gameplay. Not really best move in Gaerbox's/2k Games careers.

[Honza]

Technical impressions from demo: http://www.dnfmods.c...al-impressions/

[BraveTriforcer]

Alright then. Basically, this is how I feel. The game is great fun, I have no real qualms about the weapon system or the EGO bar. Buuuuut, Randy did flat out lie to us. He said, bold facedly, that the FAC would get something completely new, that no one else has ever seen before besides Gearbox. What'd we get? The ******* PAX East demo. Yes, it was fun as hell, but yes he lied to us.

The Good: The game is fun. I've beaten Duke Nukem 3D before and I did feel as though I was playing a Duke Nukem game when I played the demo. Plenty of ammo and new weapons to find. Shrink Ray is amazing, especially with how you can shrink multiple enemies with one shrink blast. Plenty of humor as well. Nothing quite "LOL" worthy, but that's mostly because I spoiled the best gags with gameplay videos.

Glad to see I can still dismember corpses. Those spider things were pretty fun to fight. I also like how you can use a QTE to punch them off. Speaking of QTEs, the Cycloid boss is good for a nostalgia trip and to mess around with. HoloDuke is great fun to use. RPG caused many-a-laughs. Ripper felt satisfying. And the difficulty was mostly fair...

The Bad: Aside from those ******* double-pistol pigs, the game felt very fair on "Let's Rock". Also, *Gasp gasp gasp gasp gasp gaaaasp* becomes kind of annoying after a while, don'tcha think? The driving controls are iffy at best, but that might just be my computer lag talking.

The Absolute Worst of the Whole Thing: I just could not decide what was the best way to kill those octa-babies! They're just so adorable and fragile and...susceptible to explosives . Also, this demo confirmed that I need to upgrade my video card. Badly. But that's not your fault, is it Randy?

The Best Part: Those damn octa-babies are so adorable! And killable. I had the stupidest grin on my face when I saw those things crawl out. Seriously, guys, whoever came up with the Octa-babies idea, give him a raise.

What Could Have Been Better: I wouldn't have minded a slice of the multiplayer.

Overall: I am looking forward to this game. No doubt about that. I'm also looking forward to DuvalMagic's explanation as to why the demo is the PAX East demo. I'll be replaying this demo in the mean time.

[X-Vector]

CryptKiller, on 03 June 2011 - 12:44 AM, said:

A big stab to my heart was 2 weapons limit, I really hoped that in some way the menu from those old Jace Hall Show clips will be kept, and the limit will be for MP only... sadly, none of this.

Watching video footage of the demo showed me how annoying the two weapon limit is in practice; not only does it cause constant swapping, but worse still is that it adds to the signposting and railroading aspect of the game.
Come across a bridge with some enemies on the other side - there's a railgun laying about, how convenient.
See an enemy dropship swoop down to rain fire upon Duke - why, surely there'll be an RPG sitting pretty a few meters away, right?

It just seems that the game almost forces you to play a certain way, there is very little in the way of freedom.
The few moments where you are allowed to go about and "do your own thing", for example draw text and pictures on the whiteboard, it falls apart with repetitive voice acting that isn't appropriate to the drawings the player is making.

[Fox Mulder]

Mr.Deviance, on 02 June 2011 - 10:13 PM, said:

The performance of the demo felt relatively good on a 9800gt, 2gb ddr2 and a amd athlon 64 x2 dual core 6000+ that I have at work.
I was only able to play it in 1280x1024 due to having a 17inch 5:4 lcd monitor here not a wide screen one but I was able to play it maxed out at everything including AA and vsync with occasional stutters. I had around 40-55 fps at all times.

At 1280 x 1024, FXAA antialiasing brought my GTX 560 Ti to it's knees. I got dips to 30+ and it averaged between 45 - 60 FPS. With FSAA, all maxed out, no problem, steady 75 FPS (vsync). Is FXAA that demanding? or there is something needing optimization?

[Alithinos]

The 2 weapon limit wasn't that bad IMO,because I spent a very little time asking myself what to take with me.
It's obvious that the railgun is the most powerful and useful gun,except from when you have to beat special enemies like the airship that can only be beaten down with the RPG.
Railgun is a one hit killer,it has a faster fire rate than what you would expect if you played games like Quake 3 or Unreal tournament,and you can hit enemies easily without using the zoom function,with the aim assist off.

It's just railgun until you are out of ammo.

[zwieback]

excellent review mr. deviance. +1

[ch108]

Thanks Mr. Deviance.

Can't wait to get home and play this. Hopefully the servers won't be too congested.

[zwieback]

i played the english version and the german version - both are very awesome. the german voice of duke is different, but good too

i also noticed that you can play it really strategic, with a lot of camping and hiding behind stones, but you can also play rush rush rush and kill all those motherfuckers. it's really awesome. I think i played it through 5 times now - really short, but you can find a lot of weapons and small details everywhere. Like mr deviance said, it really has the hl1 vibe. no other game had that for me to date.

love it - it's the game i have been waiting for.

[Raziel]

Mr.Deviance, on 02 June 2011 - 10:13 PM, said:

I liked Duke's moster truck and I also liked how it drives.

Agreed, they tweaked the way it drives a lot since PAX. I'm not kidding, the truck was really crap in the original PAX demo, it was really loose and wonky, and you could almost drive it upside down against cliff-faces. They seemed to have fixed that up quite well. More or less it is the PAX demo though, which is a little disappointing. The mine-exploration bit is newish though, I know some people have played that, but it wasn't in the demo I played at the Mana Bar.

Oh, and check out my comments on: http://forums.duke4....heats-spoilers/ (tells you how to get into duke's apartment, which is sorta fun to explore)