Gearbox: Duke Nukem Reviews Didn't Give It a Fair Shake
Gearbox: Duke Nukem Reviews Didn't Give It a Fair Shake
Posted 11/03/2011 at 10:48pm
| by Nathan Grayson
12
Comments
Print
Duke Nukem Forever was, er, not exactly The King's finest hour. After more than a decade out of the limelight, Duke's stitched-together Frankenstein monster mash of levels and ideas took a critical battering from just about every corner of the Internet – ours included. Gearbox co-founder Brian Martel, however, thinks reviewers failed to consider one key ingredient: context.
"I think that if we were going to review the reviews fairly, no,” he told Eurogamer when asked if reviews evaluated the game fairly. "A certain amount of gamers today are not used to [a game in the style of Duke Nuke Forever]. It was what it was meant to be, which is a more old-school style game in what is today's technology."
"We've had this internal debate," he added. "Would Half-Life today be reviewed as highly as it is, you know, even today? As a new IP coming out with the same sort of mechanics Half-Life had. I think we all have a nostalgia and love for that particular brand. Obviously Gearbox got its start working on Opposing Force so we love Half-Life. But is the current gamer, would they have the same love for that? It'd be interesting. I think the same kind of thing happened with Duke."
At the end of the day, then, Martel believes we should all be more appreciative of the fact that DNF exists at all.
"Gearbox made sure the world got to see what they made and I think everybody should really be thankful that it existed to some degree at all. Because it really would've just gone away,” he explained.
"Is it a Gearbox game? No. When and if another Duke comes out it's going to be more consistent with what I think people would expect out of a Gearbox product. But this is the vision that 3D Realms had and that's awesome. It's just great that the world gets to see it."
So Duke's back, and he's here to stay. Are you ready to forgive and forget Forever and give him a second chance?
More like this
12
Comments
Comments are closed on this article
yu119995
November 04, 2011 at 12:59pm
"Would Half-Life today be reviewed as highly as it is, you know, even today?"
Half-Life? Is he kidding? The game is over 10 years old which is still not nearly as long as it took to develop that hodge-podge of a mess called Duke Nukem Forever. Maybe he was referring to Half-Life 2. If he was the answer is, "hell yeah!". Duke looks like a battered sloth compared to HL2.
Slurpy
November 04, 2011 at 10:22am
Gearbox, we forgive you for DNF - we know you bought the IP and pushed the game out just to get it off everyone's minds. Anyone who expected anything more out of this should have paid attention to the development history. Now, could you make us a good game, please?
Archangel1976
November 04, 2011 at 12:22pm
I'll buy into that Slurpy. I'll forgive Gearbox as soon as they just "man-up" and say....
"Yeah. We realize the customer wasn't thrilled with DNF. We're going to learn from this and try to take the good things we did forward into future releases, and listen to the feedback and try to figure out what needs improvement. Those of you who enjoyed the game, thank you. Those of you who didn't, we're going to work hard to earn your respect as fans."
Instead we get finger-pointing. Instead, we've gotten whining and assertions that ALL of these media outlets are against them. If the game was REALLY that damn good, sales would increase after an initial poor showing. People would have been talking about the game and buying despite the "negative press". You really don't understand the gaming community if you honestly think press has THAT much sway over public opinion on video games. Great games will sell themselves.
Gearbox, stop making excuses. Accept responsibility and move forward.
blindhorizon
November 04, 2011 at 9:13am
i dont get it, all you people complain about how bad this game was, i played it and loved it. i wasen't expecting a Borderlands, or and of those other super up-to-date games i was expecting good old one-liner duke to kick @$$ and chew bubble gum, sure the levels were all over the place but it was a good game if you just remember that it was based of 10 yr old ideas and tech. shame on all of you for duke bashing..i myself cant wait to see what gearbox is going to do for a new version of duke for the future.
Archangel1976
November 04, 2011 at 9:30am
Super-up-to-date? Confused in what you mean by this. Graphically... Duke was up-to-date. Hell, I would have been pleased had it been "good" (note this word) one-liners and him just chewing bubblegum.
The game was more Jackass than kick ass.
Archangel1976
November 04, 2011 at 9:12am
Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah....
Here comes the whaaaaaambulance.
Gearbox... you guys did such a crap job with Duke, I'm probably not going to touch anything else your team develops. Not without damn good reason. I tried Duke and .... it was just.... disturbing? Creepy? And not creepy in a Doom3 kinda way. Creepy in a Buffalo Bill-tucking-his-junk kinda way.
Danthrax66
November 04, 2011 at 12:32pm
You do realize that they barely changed anything from what 3d Realms had done right? They essentially just made it playable and modern looking. And gearbox makes tons of good games.
Righteous Fury
November 04, 2011 at 7:02am
Sorry, Mr. Martel, but after having played the game to roughly the half-way point, I quit, uninstalled it and haven't looked back. The description "Duke's stitched-together Frankenstein monster mash of levels and ideas" is quite spot-on. I find myself wishing I had my money back.
h e x e n
November 04, 2011 at 4:19am
This game went in one ear and right out the other. I thought the last iteration was garbage so I couldn't care less about a reboot of a decade old franchise.
This game reminds me of Steven Seagal movies. You watch just to laugh at his terrible acting and forced martial arts. Everyone likes a good train wreck.
AntonioGarrison
November 04, 2011 at 4:10am
For Duke Nukem to become a hit nowadays, the character of Duke Nukem would have to be more of a character rather than a one liner walking around, a story that made sense and wasn't full of gimmicks and with all that.... you don't have the "True Duke Nukem" anymore. Your character who you have come to know and love has become some guy from Call Of Duty or Battlefield with a wide array of one liners for certain situtations and is now just a cliche.
Neel Chauhan
November 04, 2011 at 4:10am
Duke nukem should have had the visual problems that Rage has, so this bad game meets bad rendering.
Best played on a really old IBM CGA adapter.
Connect with MaximumPC
Featured Content
The gang discusses the GTX 690, Trinity, Ivy Bridge, Amazon, big-box stores, MMOs,...
This month's issue
Feature
Build a PC On Any Budget
Feature
Cloud Services Showdown
How-To
Encrypt Your External Drive
Build It
Upgrade an X58 Rig
Most Commented Articles
Latest Max PC Tweets
- maximumpc: Want to work at Maximum PC? Our Online Managing Editor, Alex, is moving away, so we need a new one. http://t.co/9Z7JCh0E1 day 14 hours ago
- maximumpc: Fraps 3.5.2 fixes lots of bugs, so if your motto, like @PCGamer's, is "always be frapsing," you should pick it up http://t.co/3DW3WUI01 day 16 hours ago
- maximumpc: Google Chrome Becomes World's Most-Used Web Browser, Kinda http://t.co/Xqgscmrp2 days 10 hours ago
