#147
Posted 08 September 2012 - 10:42 AM
The hardest thing is to judge this game without having in mind its history,and the history of the series.
How would we feel about this game if we never had played Duke Nukem 3D before ?
Well... Here goes my review:
The game feels rushed,and it is rushed,as the development of the final version that we got to play started in 2007,and only 15 people worked on it which is a rather small nubmer for a 3D game.
The production of the game was halted in 2009 though,when 3D Realms closed,but then a few people of them (fewer than the people that work on popular 2D games) kept working on the game on their free hours.
It might have taken 4 years for this last version to be developed,but assuming that the number of people that where working on the game where way fewer than the number the average games studio has,it equals to work of less time in comparison to other studios,as the more people you have working,the more results you get on a specific time limit. Which means that 4 years of 3d Realms/Triptych development equals to about less than 1 year of development for large studios like Team Bondi or Bethesda.
Having 8 to 15 people max working for 4 years,is different than having 60 to 100 people working for 4 years,and will produce different results.
So let's check the game. It surely wasn't what people thought it would be. Some people had the wrong idea that this single game was worked on for like 12 years,which is wrong. The truth is that for 12 years 3D Realms attempted to make from point zero 4 different games,and failed on all of them.
Each time they started with a new engine,and they had to build new assets,design new levels and story,and new gameplay mechanics. The reason they could never finish one of their games ? Because their team was so small by the time they would had a game finished its graphics engine would be slightly old to feature new graphics features. It was like a chase of a moving target. They always wanted their game's graphics to have a "wow factor",and they where so stubborn to scrap years of work just because a few months before the time their game was to be released,a new game would come out that would have a feature X that their own engine didn't had. So it was something like that:
After 4 years of developing a game,making 3d models of everything,designing the levels,the gameplay and the story,7 months before the game's release and only with voice overs and testing having left,a new game comes out that runs on a newer engine that has a new lighting system and developers say "Hey,we need that new feature for our game! Scrap 4 years of work and lets start working on the new engine to have slightly better shadows!"
Of course Captain Obvious wasn't there to tell them that if they take so long to make a game,there will always be new engines before them having completed the game they were making. And of course I believe nobody would have a problem to play a game just because it doesn't feature the latest graphics feature invented. We wouldn't have a problem if a game came out in 2011 and didn't featured Tesselation,or if a game came out in 2007 and didn't featured ambient occlusion,or if a game came out in 2001 and didn't featured dx9 dynamic shadows,would we ?
But anyway,we still got a game that was developed by a handful of people in 4 years. 4 years are still enough for a competent studio to make a great game,but still there where problems.
And I'm not talking about low resolution texture quality or things like that. I'm talking about deeper problems. I'm not even talking about the new school gameplay that the game featured instead of the old school gameplay.
Even if we where to judge DNF as a modern new school game,it still has some flaws.
One of this flaws is that level design along with gameplay design doesn't fit or work that well. Playing DNF it is clear to me that different people of its development team thought they were working on a different game,like there were absolutely no communication between level designers,gameplay designer,and the rest of the team with each other.
I come up to that conclusion because of fatal design flaws that I faced. In one level while I was walking a path the screen turned black and I exited the level carrying two guns. Then the next level loaded up and I carried the same 2 guns. But walking a few meters in the next level,I faced a room full of enemies that I needed a different gun to kill them all and progress. You see,the game was designed so each gun is more appropriate for each kind of enemy. An interesting idea of the gameplay designer,who thought that if we had to think about which gun we should use to which enemy is something nice,a true old-school design philosophy. The problem was though that the level designer probably wasn't informed for that,and as such the problem erupted: The gun that I needed to pass through these enemies was nowhere around. Perhaps the level designer thought that I would have carried it from the last level,and perhaps he thought that I could carry with me all the weapons I could find,but he probably didn't knew that the gameplay designer decided to not allow me to carry more than 2 guns! So after dying some deaths and searching the rest of the playable area inch by inch for some times,I decided that what I had to do was quit the game and restart the past level that I already had completed,so I would now exit it with the appropriate guns for the next level!
Gameplay and level design is inconsistent.
But the problem isn't only that the weapon carriage limitation broke the game. There are more inconsistencies between gameplay and level design. Gameplay was designed so its a cover-based shooter,a typical game with regenerating health,in which you have to hide behind things and walls to stay alive. But for some levels the level designers forgot to... add cover points. Leading to unfair player's deaths,and frustration. Another symptom of the gameplay designers thinking they are making a Call of Duty clone while the level designers think they are making a Doom clone.
Another example was a pretty weird WTF moment I had,where I shot some wooden boxes up on which other wooden boxes where standing,and the upper boxes stayed in the place they were,now floating above thin air. Once more it seems there were no coordination and communication between the members of the development team. The level designer created a nice scene where boxes are piled one above the other in a hangar,and then the guy responsible for the physics told him that he decided that boxes from now and on would break if the player shoots at them.But perhaps he forgot to tell the level designer that the physics system was only supposed to provide boxes explosion physics,and not gravity physics,so the game ended up so when you shoot the lower boxes on a pile of boxes,the upper boxes hover in the air.
And that was my biggest problem and frustration with the game. I didn't cared about the game not having the latest graphics technology.While good graphics are nice,they don't break a game if they aren't top notch,I still play Mario Bros and have fun sometimes. I could forgive the game for not having health packs.I played Wolfenstein without healthpacks and had nice time with it,even if a would prefer a healthpack system. I would even don't care if I could only carry 2 weapons at a time.If there was any thought put behind this decisions and the developers had made sure that the game will always provide the player with the appropriate weapon for the danger he will face,I would be OK with that. And I would be disappointed if I learnt that the game wouldn't have secret areas,but not that much to not buy and not like the game. I could even pretend I don't care for a shit ending.I played and respect Mass Effect 3,even if its ending ruined the series for me. But what really frustrated me was that the game was a broken mess because gameplay decisions,engine decisions, and level design doesn't match,they don't fit,they don't hang along together,they are like they where parts for different games and somehow someone taped them in a single game.
It's like the game was was created with each person developing the game on a different building,on a different country,perhaps without ways of communication with the other team members.
Design inconsistency is the fatal flaw of Duke Nukem Forever.
It's not its graphics,its humor,its sound,or the features it misses from Duke Nukem 3D.
Clearly 3D Realms had huge problems problems of coordination,organization,consistency,and communication between its team members.
My hope is that Gearbox is a healthy studio that at least knows how to make the people working on its studio to know that they work on the same game all of them.
This post has been edited by Alithinos: 08 September 2012 - 10:53 AM
0
Help
ozz, on 25 November 2011 - 06:43 PM, said:
Duke4.net
DNF #1
Duke 3D #1
