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Duke3D's spiritual successors?

User is offline   MrFlibble 

#1

I've come to think of Quake as Doom reimagined in full 3D - not a 1:1 recreation, but keeping the core gameplay elements while taking full advantage of the new tech. A recent post in the Quake corner thread made me wonder what a similar game continuing the tradition of Duke Nukem 3D but in true 3D could be like. After all, the Build engine has a lot of features that expand the possibilities of level design compared to the original Doom. Would true 3D bring a new depth to the game? (I'd be particularly interested in what the mappers here have to say on this.)

On a related note, what existing games from the late 90s would you call possible "spiritual sequels" to Duke3D? It seems that the emerging story-driven FPS type was already taking over, with the more "environment driven" design getting phased out at the time.
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User is offline   FistMarine 

#2

edit

This post has been edited by FistMarine: 09 December 2016 - 10:52 AM

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User is offline   Tea Monster 

  • Polymancer

#3

Serious Sam was always pushed as the spiritual sequel to DN3D, with a wisecracking, steroid-enhanced protagonist going up against OTT monsters with OTT ordinance.

There are several problems with this though. 1. SS's levels are really dirt-boring. There are 3 basic themes in the whole history of the franchise. 2. In practice, the one-liners and jokes are really thin on the ground compared to Duke.

To be honest, I've never really played a game like DN3D. There are loads of shooters, there are a few shooters who are a lot of fun, but I don't remember anything that was anywhere near the amount of just plain fun that DN3D delivered.
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User is offline   deuxsonic 

#4

Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior, Blood, Redneck Rampage, besides all being technologically all related, all feature that kind of gameplay. It would be awesome if they all ended up ported at some point but who knows if it will ever truly happen. I know people have tried to rebuild Blood and Redneck Rampage but none of them feel like the originals.
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User is offline   Mike Norvak 

  • Music Producer

#5

View PostMrFlibble, on 08 March 2016 - 04:52 AM, said:

It seems that the emerging story-driven FPS type was already taking over, with the more "environment driven" design getting phased out at the time.


This. As if environment couldn't drive the story by it self. I hope game designers eventually remember this.
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User is offline   MrFlibble 

#6

I also thought about Serious Sam as a possible candidate, but it is my understanding that it aimed to be more of a spiritual successor of 90s FPS games in general, and ended up creating its own sub-genre anyway due to completely different level design and gameplay mechanics (which are in certain ways closer to Doom II).

Serious Sam also shows quite clearly that dropping one-liners and blasting monsters/aliens with powerful weaponry aren't the only things that make Duke3D what it is. Duke3D pays a great deal of attention to level exploration, quite in line with the standards set by Doom, but taking it further with more realistic, but at the same time very gimmicky, locations. In this respect, I agree completely that Shadow Warrior followed the same principles, and enhancements to the Build engine partially compensated for the fact that it's not true 3D.

It's probably hard to pinpoint exact games from the era because the design generally shifted towards more realism, and this was supported by the new developments in the tech and hardware departments. However, Duke3D manages to maintain a fine balance between a considerable degree of realism and gameplay efficiency characteristic of the classic Doom style level design. It seems to me that later titles often slid into the "realism over level complexity" territory (although it is not to say that this would necessarily result in less fun gameplay).

Another thing is that the novelty of more realism in game environment design seems to have gradually worn off, and it eventually became something taken for granted. In this respect I wonder if there are/were any titles apart from Serious Sam that would focus on gameplay and level exploration more than on telling a story, contrary to the contemporary trend of the time back then. In fact, there seems to be quite a few FPS projects in the late 90s - early 2000s that were not completed. Perhaps there's something interesting among those titles?

On another note, I've heard a lot of positive comments about SiN here in the forums (never played this game), and once read a review which basically said, contrary to what you might have thought after playing the demo, SiN isn't just Duke Nukem 3D on the Quake II engine. I know Levelord made levels for the game, but are there any similarities in design/aesthetics?
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User is offline   oasiz 

  • Dr. Effector

#7

SiN has a bunch of similarities, design aesthetics and themes. Main difference is really that it's way more linear.
My main problem with the game is that it's heavily rushed in places and the difficulty balancing just isn't always there. Some enemies are just plain awful.
If they had about 6-12 months extra devtime, I think it would have stood really well.

When it comes to serious sam, I find it kinda boring to even look at. Huge plain levels with very little in variety. Sure the balancing and such might be there but I want interesting areas, layouts and themes. Not open arenas.

While very different in game play, I think that NOLF nailed it down pretty well with the setttings as well. Levels had interesting variety and things just felt wacky.
Really made you feel like you had completed some huge adventure once you beat the game and look back to it all.

But yeah, as for a proper spiritual successor, classic level layouts kinda died around that time and you had less and less of the same.
Overall, SiN did get really close in many ways and with some changes in characters/plot, major parts of it could pass as a duke game.
You have very duke-like urban environments, industrial complexes with sewers, tech laboratories, underwater caves (planned for duke at one point), especially during the final levels you see marble and bunch of aesthetics that remind of duke. Possibly due to LL's contributions too.
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#8

According to Person of Color. SiN is the spiritual successor to Duke Nukem 3D. That's just his opinion. Richard "Levelord" Grey did the levels. At least I got it on sale on GOG.com for $2.99! :whistling:

View PostPerson of Color, on 04 September 2015 - 01:26 AM, said:

I was playing SiN the other day and came across some Chips A Whore! cookies in the breakroom of the dam.

Duke Nukem Forever couldn't even make fun of shitty cookies without being derivative.

Which reminds me, if you haven't played SiN yet, put it at the top of your list. Simply phenomenal. Easily in my top 5 FPS games ever. It's the spiritual successor to Duke 3D and was so innovative it's still new and fresh in 2015. Also it gets the parody thing down pat just as well as Blood Dragon and Duke 3D. Oh yeah, and LEVELORD did most of the levels!



View PostPerson of Color, on 04 September 2015 - 10:43 PM, said:

Atta boy!

Seriously, we're all heartbroken about Duke yet again getting assfucked.

For the love of all that is holy, DROWN YOUR SORROWS IN WHAT DUKE NUKEM FOREVER COULD HAVE BEEN!

Realize how great things could be if Duke was given a competent team. Play SiN! Gearbox isn't just going to sit on this IP - this could be your next Duke game!

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=dXlvcnMM1EQ

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=yabCy1NtPm0


This post has been edited by DustFalcon85: 08 March 2016 - 08:59 AM

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User is offline   deuxsonic 

#9

The first mission pack for Quake, Scourge of Armagon, was developed by Hipnotic Interactive, which was the original name of Ritual Entertainment. The maps in that are also done by Richard Gray and other familiar people such as Jim Dosé and Tom Mustaine, which was done prior to Sin's development.
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#10

After DNF's disappointment, I searched around for modern games to fill the void. The closest I found to a Duke 3D-esque game was Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon and Wolfenstein: The New Order - that's talking about modern spiritual successors. Definitely way more options the further back you go.
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User is offline   MrFlibble 

#11

View Postdeuxsonic, on 08 March 2016 - 01:56 PM, said:

The first mission pack for Quake, Scourge of Armagon, was developed by Hipnotic Interactive, which was the original name of Ritual Entertainment.

Right, I also wanted to ask if there were any add-ons (authorised or fan-made), if not full stand-alone games, to follow the same design venues as Duke.

I wonder what HacX 2 could turn out to be? The original game was kind of similar to Duke3D in some aspects, with destructible/interactive environments, and more consistently realistic level design than Doom.

I would still be interested in the mappers' opinions on how the transition to full 3D could (if at all) add depth to the Duke3D level design and gameplay. With Quake versus Doom, there are obvious changes: faster paced gameplay, more degrees of freedom for the player and enemies. Duke3D already has that: there's jumping and swimming and flying, although it seems that the pace of combat is often still slower than the next-gen games had to offer. Shadow Warrior turned up the combat with more and tougher monsters, and the 3Dfx version is also "kind of" true 3D, or at least as close as it would get back then.
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User is offline   OpenMaw 

  • Judge Mental

#12

Honestly, and i'm probably biased since Duke 3D is just a game that I love that much, but I think Duke 3D was the apex of the shooters for the entirety of the 90s. I don't think "true 3D" would add as much to the designs of Duke as some might think. Indeed in all the work I've done with Half-life related to Duke mods, I can say that Duke3D pushed the engine, and many of the modders since have pushed the engine, to places that some full 3D engines simply can't go, or I've never seen go with the same kind of performance. Oh sure you can make a game that is ten times prettier on a 3D engine with all the modern bells and whistles, but Duke simply put allowed for some amazing gameplay, and the BUILD engine is the key to that. For a 2.5D game, Duke had quite a lot of verticality at work.
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User is offline   deuxsonic 

#13

View PostMrFlibble, on 09 March 2016 - 03:28 AM, said:

Right, I also wanted to ask if there were any add-ons (authorised or fan-made), if not full stand-alone games, to follow the same design venues as Duke.

I wonder what HacX 2 could turn out to be? The original game was kind of similar to Duke3D in some aspects, with destructible/interactive environments, and more consistently realistic level design than Doom.

I would still be interested in the mappers' opinions on how the transition to full 3D could (if at all) add depth to the Duke3D level design and gameplay. With Quake versus Doom, there are obvious changes: faster paced gameplay, more degrees of freedom for the player and enemies. Duke3D already has that: there's jumping and swimming and flying, although it seems that the pace of combat is often still slower than the next-gen games had to offer. Shadow Warrior turned up the combat with more and tougher monsters, and the 3Dfx version is also "kind of" true 3D, or at least as close as it would get back then.


Quake was originally planned to be something different (the old mesh of the Ogre with horns and an axe and the dragon were part of this. You can definitely see it in a lot of the map artwork.) A tremendous amount of effort was spent on the engine and the new networking functionality and that took up a good deal of time, something that John Carmack admitted should have been 2 separate projects. They reached a point where in order to get the game finished they basically decided to just go with the same formula as DOOM. Something I've long wondered is what it would have been like had they kept going with the original ideas.
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User is offline   NutWrench 

#14

I think Bulletstorm is what DNF should have been.
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User is offline   ---- 

#15

View PostNutWrench, on 11 March 2016 - 02:37 PM, said:

I think Bulletstorm is what DNF should have been.


A game with a boring story, corridor levels, weapon limit, lots of annoying quicktime events, no interactivity in the levels and no jumping?

Hey, you could play DNF for that and neither hit the jump button nor play with any of the interactive elements. Tadaaahh: Bulletstorm.

This post has been edited by fuegerstef: 14 March 2016 - 11:50 PM

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User is offline   OpenMaw 

  • Judge Mental

#16

Yeah, Bulletstorm really isn't much better than DNF, except that the action is fairly constant throughout.
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#17

View PostNutWrench, on 11 March 2016 - 02:37 PM, said:

I think Bulletstorm is what DNF should have been.


I disagree personally, didn't like Bulletstorm. It had some good humor (less funny than DNF though), but largely it was just walk in a straight like CoD style level design, very very dull. And you didn't even have a jump button, just using canned grapple thingies at times when they want you too. So boring. As mentioned before, DNF's campaign is more in the Half-Life 2 style, which is much more in keeping with what the 2001 DNF trailer promised (though that was HL1 influenced) than what say Bulletstorm delivers. Though in DNF with a more nutty comedy style than the earlier trailer.

As we've discussed a lot, the level design is what makes Duke 3D different from modern shooters the most. Bulletstorm is completely a dull modern shooter when it comes to level design, so to me it's not a good comparison.

Since FPS games keep changing and streamlining level design a bit too much, there isn't really a spritual successor to Duke 3D. Though I do think DNF is a good game, it's more like a lower budget or smaller team HL2 with lots of comedy (which appeals to me).

I think the upcoming Doom game could appeal to Duke 3D fans. Since Duke and Doom have a lot in common, and this Doom has jumping, more melee, etc.

This post has been edited by PsychoGoatee: 15 March 2016 - 12:58 PM

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User is offline   Striker 

  • Auramancer

#18

I think the only game that came close to Duke3D in terms of gameplay, at least when it comes to multiplayer... is Half Life 2: Deathmatch, believe it or not. Frantic, fast-paced gameplay, levels with things like air vents to crawl through, tripmines, and a clever/innovative weapon (HL2's Gravity gun in place of Duke's Shrink Ray). When you look past HL2DM's bugs, and install some serverside mods, it's fucking fun. It's what I wanted DNF's multiplayer to be, but sadly GBX outsourced it, trashed the polls, and it came out shit.

Singleplayer? I haven't really found others much like it aside from other build games.

This post has been edited by StrikerMan780: 15 March 2016 - 04:36 PM

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User is offline   MrFlibble 

#19

I wonder why the complexity of level design was somehow foregone in favour of story narration in the more recent games. It's not like a game can't do both. Perhaps it's just that the developers did not feel it necessary to focus on level design that much? The only explanation I can come up with is that games like Call of Duty basically put the player in an interactive action movie, with sidetracking and freeform exploration becoming unnecessary.

What about Deus Ex (the very first game I mean)? I haven't played it much but it seems to pay a lot of attention to details and non-linearity in level design. Although of course it's also a lot less about straightforward combat than a typical FPS game.
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#20

View PostMrFlibble, on 16 March 2016 - 03:32 AM, said:

I wonder why the complexity of level design was somehow foregone in favour of story narration in the more recent games. It's not like a game can't do both. Perhaps it's just that the developers did not feel it necessary to focus on level design that much? The only explanation I can come up with is that games like Call of Duty basically put the player in an interactive action movie, with sidetracking and freeform exploration becoming unnecessary.

What about Deus Ex (the very first game I mean)? I haven't played it much but it seems to pay a lot of attention to details and non-linearity in level design. Although of course it's also a lot less about straightforward combat than a typical FPS game.


I think with so many genres, and mixes of genres, when we're talking about how simple modern FPS games are we mean full-on FPS games. Deus Ex is an action RPG, we still have games like that. Deus Ex Human Revolution of course, and other games where you're in detailed realistic city hub areas to wander around in. Though that's almost a different art than the classic FPS gameplay design, you're not having to find keys and solve puzzles to get around in a maze-ish reality.

Maybe the change to more "realistic" environments has also done away with some of the old FPS level design style. After all while Duke 3D was a huge step forward in having places that echoed real locations, it was still an FPS level first, real place second. Lots of twists and turns and kookiness that wouldn't exist as much in a realistic area.

This post has been edited by PsychoGoatee: 16 March 2016 - 07:56 AM

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User is offline   ---- 

#21

View PostMrFlibble, on 16 March 2016 - 03:32 AM, said:

I wonder why the complexity of level design was somehow foregone in favour of story narration in the more recent games. It's not like a game can't do both. Perhaps it's just that the developers did not feel it necessary to focus on level design that much? The only explanation I can come up with is that games like Call of Duty basically put the player in an interactive action movie, with sidetracking and freeform exploration becoming unnecessary.

What about Deus Ex (the very first game I mean)? I haven't played it much but it seems to pay a lot of attention to details and non-linearity in level design. Although of course it's also a lot less about straightforward combat than a typical FPS game.


Crysis 1 does it right, IMHO: it tells the story between the levels, or in the early levels with radios you can listen to. Same could be done with posters and other elements that tell a story by simply being there at key points you visit anyways. And the level design is open. Of course you have to go from A to B (as you have to in DN3D), but take the first level for example: how you get to B is totally up to you: by foot, by car, underwater, by boat ... and for everthing there are several routes and different approaches. And in such an open map secrets would be a pleasure to look for.
Now put that into a more Duke-like environment and adapt the gameplay and we are set.

Keycard hunting wouldn't work in such an open environment ... but what if that is replaced by other stuff like getting gas for a car or generator to power something or whatever and you have a gas station at far sight. And when you go back to the car/generator change the level geometry (earthquakes or whatever), spawn new enemies (backup that arrived) or open shortcuts. Et viola ... a modern Duke game.

Speaking of Crysis ... why can the protagonist in Crysis 2 kick cars around and kill enemies with it but Duke cannot even kick what he wants in DNF?

EDIT:
More ideas: Why not upgrade the shrinker to also work on certain static objects (a light on the gun (and perhaps in the hud when you have another gun equipped) telling if an object can be shrunk) ... useful if an enemy takes cover behind a crate, or to hop onto a larger crate that then regrows to reach that formerly unreachable secret.
And the freezer can freeze certain doors you can destroy in frozen state for secrets (or, as before: you can destroy cover of enemies, etc ...)
That way you had the classic weapons upgraded.

This post has been edited by fuegerstef: 16 March 2016 - 09:02 AM

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#22

View Postfuegerstef, on 16 March 2016 - 08:55 AM, said:

Crysis 1 does it right, IMHO: it tells the story between the levels, or in the early levels with radios you can listen to. Same could be done with posters and other elements that tell a story by simply being there at key points you visit anyways. And the level design is open. Of course you have to go from A to B (as you have to in DN3D), but take the first level for example: how you get to B is totally up to you: by foot, by car, underwater, by boat ... and for everthing there are several routes and different approaches. And in such an open map secrets would be a pleasure to look for.
Now put that into a more Duke-like environment and adapt the gameplay and we are set.

Keycard hunting wouldn't work in such an open environment ... but what if that is replaced by other stuff like getting gas for a car or generator to power something or whatever and you have a gas station at far sight. And when you go back to the car/generator change the level geometry (earthquakes or whatever), spawn new enemies (backup that arrived) or open shortcuts. Et viola ... a modern Duke game.

Speaking of Crysis ... why can the protagonist in Crysis 2 kick cars around and kill enemies with it but Duke cannot even kick what he wants in DNF?

EDIT:
More ideas: Why not upgrade the shrinker to also work on certain static objects (a light on the gun (and perhaps in the hud when you have another gun equipped) telling if an object can be shrunk) ... useful if an enemy takes cover behind a crate, or to hop onto a larger crate that then regrows to reach that formerly unreachable secret.
And the freezer can freeze certain doors you can destroy in frozen state for secrets (or, as before: you can destroy cover of enemies, etc ...)
That way you had the classic weapons upgraded.


Duke can throw explosive barrels like Donkey Kong in DNF, that's cooler than kicking cars three feet. Crysis 2 is decent but I prefer DNF, but that's another story. I mean it has Triple A polish, but it's fairly generic to me.

Personally I don't think Crysis level design is oldschool or in that same style of artform that guys like John Romero and Levelord made famous. There are a lot of games with open level design, and sure I'd take that over Call of Duty's super narrow straightline style. But it's also not that creative to me, you just recreate big realistic-ish areas. You have say a field with a few ruined cars in it to run around, or you run around an office building with a few identical rooms etc. There's nothing to it, you just wander through some places.

Where as oldschool level design did have a few specific directions you could go in, was less open than that but better because it was interesting and unique, you could have areas loop around in interesting ways, unexpected twists and turns etc. And in Duke 3D you get to reshape areas by exploding things, pushing buttons etc. In Crysis you're pretty much just running across some CounterStrike maps.

The Crysis/FarCry style Duke game you're looking for to me would not be the spiritual successor to Duke 3D this topic is looking for.

I'd love to see a new Duke game just take a new approach to that old style, with all the resources and tools we have today. Make each level or area unique, have a crazy little city street that you hang around which is connected with fun things to do to open up the next path etc. Then maybe you're in an alien ship blasting fools, but don't have it just be a big open space, have it be kind of mazey and whatnot.

This post has been edited by PsychoGoatee: 16 March 2016 - 11:12 AM

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User is offline   ---- 

#23

View PostPsychoGoatee, on 16 March 2016 - 11:06 AM, said:

Duke can throw explosive barrels like Donkey Kong in DNF, that's cooler than kicking cars three feet. Crysis 2 is decent but I prefer DNF, but that's another story. I mean it has Triple A polish, but it's fairly generic to me.

Personally I don't think Crysis level design is oldschool or in that same style of artform that guys like John Romero and Levelord made famous. There are a lot of games with open level design, and sure I'd take that over Call of Duty's super narrow straightline style. But it's also not that creative to me, you just recreate big realistic-ish areas. You have say a field with a few ruined cars in it to run around, or you run around an office building with a few identical rooms etc. There's nothing to it, you just wander through some places.

Where as oldschool level design did have a few specific directions you could go in, was less open than that but better because it was interesting and unique, you could have areas loop around in interesting ways, unexpected twists and turns etc. And in Duke 3D you get to reshape areas by exploding things, pushing buttons etc. In Crysis you're pretty much just running across some CounterStrike maps.

The Crysis/FarCry style Duke game you're looking for to me would not be the spiritual successor to Duke 3D this topic is looking for.

I'd love to see a new Duke game just take a new approach to that old style, with all the resources and tools we have today. Make each level or area unique, have a crazy little city street that you hang around which is connected with fun things to do to open up the next path etc. Then maybe you're in an alien ship blasting fools, but don't have it just be a big open space, have it be kind of mazey and whatnot.


I probably was easy to misunderstand. I didn't mean that a spiritual successor to DN3D should have open or sandbox level design. I only took the basic principle of the first Crysis level as example where you can decide which way to go to the target. When I said "change the environment" I meant that it should be switched to a city or something and of course not be as huge as a whole part of an island.

But I still prefer being able to kick stuff (even barrels that explode on target impact) which could be additional weapons in a firefight. Being able topick up barrels is cool for better targeting but cannot be performed when carrying and firing other weapons. Both would be cool. Pick and throw for better "aiming", kick for additional damage in heated firefights..
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User is offline   MrFlibble 

#24

Hopefully not to detract from the original topic of this discussion, a while ago I stumbled upon this video showing a multiplayer test of Ken Silverman's Voxlap engine. I had played Voxelstein 3D before, and frankly it did not impress me much besides being a cool gimmick. However, the video somehow put the capabilities of a voxel-based engine into a completely different perspective for me.

I wonder what a Duke Nukem game using such an engine could be like? I suppose completely destructible environments should get along with the gameplay and atmosphere of Duke3D rather well.
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User is offline   Person of Color 

  • Senior Unpaid Intern at Viceland

#25

View Postfuegerstef, on 16 March 2016 - 08:55 AM, said:

Crysis 1 does it right, IMHO


Get the fuck outta here. One of the most overrated games in the entire industry. It's a bad open world shooter with lousy cybernetic elements and tedious gameplay. It's dumbed down compared to everything else in it's genre except MUH GRAPHICS.

At least Crysis 2 played like a love letter to Doom in some ways and had mega fast ultra vertical action, and a VERY faithful rendition of New York City. The third game had some of the best FPS level design ever and WAS ONLY SIX HOURS LONG.

But CRYSIS ONE? Dude, I would rather blow a transitioning dogkin than play that pile of shit.

This post has been edited by Person of Color: 20 April 2016 - 10:48 PM

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User is offline   Person of Color 

  • Senior Unpaid Intern at Viceland

#26

I'd also like to add that the trucks have gauges out of an SN95 Mustang. That shit is fucking inexcusable. Whenever I'm driving I'm staring right at an older version of the same gauge cluster I see every day in real life.

Can someone tell me where the fuck North Koreans are getting Mustang parts? Talk about a fucking fourth wall breaker.

Posted Image
Posted Image

This post has been edited by Person of Color: 24 April 2016 - 09:59 PM

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User is offline   Romulus 

#27

How is Crysis overrated, care to explain?
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User is offline   Lunick 

#28

I'm not sure you can get a calm and collected logical answer out of that person.
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User is offline   MrFlibble 

#29

I have not yet had the time to play it, but The Adventures of Square seems to share many gameplay and design similarities with Duke3D, although the art style/theme is completely different.


This post has been edited by MrFlibble: 01 May 2016 - 09:15 AM

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User is offline   MusicallyInspired 

  • The Sarien Encounter

#30

View PostMrFlibble, on 01 May 2016 - 09:14 AM, said:

I have not yet had the time to play it, but The Adventures of Square seems to share many gameplay and design similarities with Duke3D, although the art style/theme is completely different.



That looks fun. I like the bright colours and playful atmosphere/sounds.
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