[MusicallyInspired]

Maybe in another 10 or 15 years it'll have some luck again and be reborn properly. These things come and go. I mean, King's Quest came back...and mostly properly, too. There's a new Star Wars coming out and Disney are also rereleasing the theatrical versions of the original trilogy....conversely Star Trek is going through a big lull of non-love from their owners. It goes in phases. I still have hope...just not for anytime soon.

[Malgon]

^Oh man, I hope that talk of the theatrical versions is actually true this time, as there have been rumours about it for ages now. Please let it be true.

[PsychoGoatee]

Commando Nukem, on 21 September 2015 - 02:35 PM, said:

I don't forsee Duke Nukem ever coming back in any meaningful way. I just don't.

Tea Monster, on 22 September 2015 - 08:01 AM, said:

... and from the great people who brought you boredomlands and Aliens Colonial Marines.

Yeah. Don't hold your breath.

It being good (or damn good) is one thing, which we're hoping for. It existing is another thing, which I think we're almost 100% guaranteed to see. Gearbox paid for the rights to the franchise, I'm sure we'll see a Duke FPS started and published under their roof. Even if it doesn't see the light of day for a few years or more.

Kind of like when Rockstar bought Max Payne from Remedy (granted I think they were involved with publishing at least Max Payne 2, etc). It took many years, but they did make Max Payne 3. Granted, it wasn't quite to my taste.


So just saying, whether it'll be good, we'll have to wait and see. But I'm pretty confident we'll see it at some point personally. And it sounds like they want an external team to make it, and who knows, maybe we'll get lucky and they find a team that does well with it. Though I know Gearbox can be iffy about money matters, I could see them caring more about the Duke franchise they own, despite how they treated Aliens.

[OpenMaw]

If they were going to give it to someone like Raven or Devolver or someone like that, sure. I just don't see that happening.

[X-Vector]

Commando Nukem, on 24 September 2015 - 10:13 PM, said:

Raven or Devolver

That's not exactly shooting for the stars.

BTW, Devolver is a publisher, not a developer.
You might be thinking of Flying Wild Hog.

[MusicallyInspired]

Publishers can own IPs too. They own Shadow Warrior. That way they can make the game with whoever they want.

[Tea Monster]

With all the bullshit that's happened to the IP over the last 15 years, I'm honestly thinking that they should just leave it till another generation can make sense of it all and come up with a better way of doing it. Following down this road we are on at the moment with Gearbox, lawsuits and outsource devs will lead to disaster and disappointment.

It's perfectly possible to make a new Duke game that is fun and would a joy to play. I just don't think any of the involved parties has any clue or even intention to be able to pull it off.

[Mark]

I'm not much of a gamer these days so I don't have much to say about a new Duke game. Given a choice I would actually prefer the completion and release of one or more of the old scrapped versions of DNF.

[OpenMaw]

X-Vector, on 25 September 2015 - 01:09 AM, said:

That's not exactly shooting for the stars.

BTW, Devolver is a publisher, not a developer.
You might be thinking of Flying Wild Hog.

Raven has never let me down in terms of entertaining first person shooter experiences. Soldier of Fortune, RTCW, Quake 4. I enjoyed them all thoroughly.


Quite right, yeah, I was thinking Flying Wild Hog, and put Devolver. Oops.

[Komenja]

Commando Nukem, on 25 September 2015 - 02:09 PM, said:

Raven has never let me down in terms of entertaining first person shooter experiences. Soldier of Fortune, RTCW, Quake 4. I enjoyed them all thoroughly.

Ditto. I don't think there is such a thing as a bad Raven FPS.

[Mark]

I live about a 1 hour drive from Raven's Headquarters in Madison WI. I wonder if I contacted them in advance if I could get the "nickle tour" of the place. Maybe get a t-shirt. Also makes me wonder if any of the other Madison area game makers are still around there.

[Malgon]

Commando Nukem, on 25 September 2015 - 02:09 PM, said:

Raven has never let me down in terms of entertaining first person shooter experiences. Soldier of Fortune, RTCW, Quake 4. I enjoyed them all thoroughly.

Quite right, yeah, I was thinking Flying Wild Hog, and put Devolver. Oops.

RtCW was developed by Gray Matter for the SP and Nerve Software/Splash Damage for MP, unless you meant to refer to the 2009 Wolfenstein game that Raven did?

[Lunick]

Mark., on 25 September 2015 - 05:35 PM, said:

Maybe get a t-shirt.

And one for your pal, Lunick?

[MusicallyInspired]

Commando Nukem, on 25 September 2015 - 02:09 PM, said:

Raven has never let me down in terms of entertaining first person shooter experiences. Soldier of Fortune, RTCW, Quake 4. I enjoyed them all thoroughly.

Komenja, on 25 September 2015 - 04:07 PM, said:

Ditto. I don't think there is such a thing as a bad Raven FPS.

I'm afraid I have to sadly disagree with this notion. I used to love Raven. Their early id stuff was great and I loved Jedi Outcast/Academy and Elite Force, but I think they've really dropped the ball. I wasn't impressed with Quake 4 at all. It wasn't faithful at all for starters, it might as well have just been a random space marine game. Also, some sections (like vehicle control) felt very clunky and unpolished. Also I heard their first non-licensed game was a big letdown. What was it called again? Singularity? I didn't play it myself I admit, though.

[Mr. Tibbs]

Mark., on 25 September 2015 - 05:35 PM, said:

I live about a 1 hour drive from Raven's Headquarters in Madison WI. I wonder if I contacted them in advance if I could get the "nickle tour" of the place. Maybe get a t-shirt. Also makes me wonder if any of the other Madison area game makers are still around there.

Human Head's still going. Romero visited them a month or two ago.

Raven's new offices are pretty flash. Going strong for 25 years!

[Jblade]

Quote

Also I heard their first non-licensed game was a big letdown. What was it called again? Singularity? I didn't play it myself I admit, though.

Singularity - it's not a bad game at all, it's fairly solid and the graphics are good (apart from having no base support for AA in it) It's worth a playthrough, but it's just not an amazing game. I'd argue you could say the same for all of Raven's stuff, none of it was fantastic Half-life quality stuff but they WERE decent, solid games that played well and didn't have tons of bugs or technical problems.

[OpenMaw]

Malgon, on 25 September 2015 - 06:41 PM, said:

RtCW was developed by Gray Matter for the SP and Nerve Software/Splash Damage for MP, unless you meant to refer to the 2009 Wolfenstein game that Raven did?

Ah, my brain is just fucked up. Somehow I got it in my head Raven did RTCW. WTF? Ahh...



As far as Singularity, I thought it was pretty damn good. It had some pretty solid gameplay mechanics. I mean, it wasn't the best I've ever played, but it did deliver a solid FPS experience.

[Daedolon]

Mr. Tibbs, on 26 September 2015 - 12:10 AM, said:

Raven's new offices are pretty flash. Going strong for 25 years!

Cool, thanks for the link! Raven is probably (was anyway) my favourite developer.

[Tea Monster]

Raven had a history of doing a better job with Idtech then Id managed to with their own engine.

Go for it Mark, the worst they can say is no.

[Daedolon]

Wolfenstein 3D? Fixed with Blake Stone.
DOOM? Made a real game with Strife.
Quake? Finally playable as Hexen 2.

[MusicallyInspired]

Apogee made Blake Stone not Raven.

[Daedolon]

And Strife was made by Rogue Entertainment, so?

[Hendricks266]

MusicallyInspired, on 26 September 2015 - 07:39 AM, said:

Apogee made Blake Stone not Raven.

https://en.wikipedia..._%28software%29

[MusicallyInspired]

Uh...it's just that the topic was Raven. I assumed you were praising Raven for their works by your list.

Thanks for the correct, Hendricks.

[hismasterplan]

Mark., on 25 September 2015 - 12:42 PM, said:

I'm not much of a gamer these days so I don't have much to say about a new Duke game. Given a choice I would actually prefer the completion and release of one or more of the old scrapped versions of DNF.

We'll probably see many of the ideas and content that was scrapped. Chances are hints of Duke 5 are in the original DNF trailers.

[Jimmy]

Jblade, on 26 September 2015 - 12:18 AM, said:

Singularity - it's not a bad game at all, it's fairly solid and the graphics are good (apart from having no base support for AA in it) It's worth a playthrough, but it's just not an amazing game. I'd argue you could say the same for all of Raven's stuff, none of it was fantastic Half-life quality stuff but they WERE decent, solid games that played well and didn't have tons of bugs or technical problems.

Honestly Half-Life fucking sucks. Just under 20 years later it's unplayable and unenjoyable.

[Person of Color]

Half-Life is the most overrated game of all time, ever, full stop. It's everything a first person shooter SHOULDN'T be. It's slow, boring, the enemies are tiny and irritating (Except the Xen and soldiers), it has endless needless puzzles that artificially inflate the game's length and slow it down even further, and the environments are among the most uninspired ever. I mean seriously, a giant subterranean top secret research base and it looks like THAT?! It's the original "brown and bloom" shooter.

On top of all that shit I have never played a first person shooter that completely fails to reward the player for anything. The enemies don't feel satisfying when you kill them, the puzzles are so tedious you just sigh and 'thank God', and there's a terrible sense of forward progression. It's downright fucking circular. You spend all your time solving inane puzzles which usually involve hitting the right buttons to move some broken shit out of the way, then discovering you need to find another button. Meanwhile you've shot maybe ten guys in twenty minutes...if you're lucky. When it's all said and done, you've moved forward 500 yards.

Oh yeah, and the controls! Boy do they suck! It's one of the worst handling shooters of the 90's. You move fast and loose and the ladder controls are the worst I have ever experienced. Precision shooting is a nightmare, and platforming is a night terror! But don't worry. There's plenty of both! Plus it's got more ladders than Donkey Kong!

All you do is fall and die in this game.

Oh, and the cherry on top? The laziness. There's maybe four character models and six voices in the whole game. Memory limitations my ass - this game has more loading and unloading than the docks at a warehouse and you can totally switch out character models in a heartbeat. You end up viewing survivors as props and not giving a shit - it's one of the biggest fourth wall breakers in history.

You know what really pisses me off though? How people still say it was "innovative." It didn't take one risk. Not fucking one. Just a bunch of mild changes - that's why only a few years after it came out it was already dated as hell. Meanwhile, SiN is still groundbreaking by 2015 standards.

Fuck Half-Life. Hard. It's one of the worst "genre fusions" out there. A bad adventure game mixed with a downright abysmal shooter. It's popularity proves that people have absolutely no idea what good game design elements are. There's a reason Half-Life 2 is much more intense, Valve wanted to make a good game.

[Jimmy]

Half-Life sucked so much even Gearbox Shovelware improved upon it.

[Person of Color]

Dude I know! They actually added this hot new thing called combat! What a fucking shocker! I'll actually go so far as to say that Half-Life is one of the worst games I've ever played but Opposing Force is much better, what little I played of it.

Half-Life 2 is a classic though. I love it when HL fans say that HL2 is "dumbed down" and "lacking." Wow, your taste is shit. Literally EVERYTHING in Half-Life can be massively improved on or overhauled, yet it's a "classic." Fuck this.

[Jblade]

you guys are dead to me

Seriously though, I replayed Opposing Force recently and it's nowhere near as good as I remember it being. With the exception of the biodome area, the level design is overly linear and doesn't lead anywhere and mostly feels like Gearbox just wanted to script a bunch of cool things they built together. The finale of the game is in a fucking warehouse. Maybe one day I'll actually try and write up something actually explaining the game's flaws but I'm just not that good at it (I did write a little article sort of related to it)

I still view Half-life as a masterpeice, but I'm terrible at debating in general so I wouldn't be able to put my points across very well.