I have a confession to make, but before I do I would like to pour out a proverbial 40 on the grave of the apparently deceased Duke Nukem Forever, if this story and others are to be believed. There's not much that can be said that hasn't already been said about DNF - heavy anticipation gave way to disbelief, which turned into exasperation - and this was about 8 years ago; the jokes about the development time never stopped, and yet people still cared enough to make them. We all wanted DNF to come out, really, and to have it die at this stage in the development - when prominent industry-types had actually seen it in motion and proclaimed that it looked pretty cool - well, it's hard not to be disappointed.
I can't even really say anymore what I was expecting out of DNF, to be honest; the FPS genre has evolved so many times since it was first announced that it was bound to feel dated anyway. But feeling dated doesn't necessarily mean that it wouldn't still be fun; last year's XBLA re-release of Duke Nukem 3D was still totally awesome and it was still possible to appreciate just how far ahead of its time that game really was.
Maybe it'll get picked up by another publisher, and maybe it will actually see the light of day; in this economy, however, it's hard to be optomistic about a publisher willing to take on even more development cost for a product this steeped in controversy. In any event, good luck and godspeed to the 3D Realms cast and crew.
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I'm not even sure why I feel the need to confess that I purchased Wii Fit 2 weeks ago. The truth of the matter is that I've been feeling like a fat fuck lately, and I happened to be in a Gamestop that happened to have Wii Fit in stock, and as I was in a perfect storm of self-pity and desire for self-improvement due to a shocking, sudden death in the family, and since I had access to a car, and my wife wasn't totally opposed to the idea, I decided to pull the trigger and go for it.
I've been using it for 2 weeks now; I've skipped a couple days due to hangovers. I do 20-30 minutes in the morning - yoga to start, some strength exercises to warm up, and then some aerobics to get the blood pumping. I'm not entirely sure I'm making any progress, though; everything is pretty low-impact. But at least it's a start; I knew I was going to have to trick myself into getting into shape somehow, and this is certainly better than nothing.
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The release calendar doldrums continues, so much so that even the shitty games in my GameFly queue are mostly unavailable. I tried Wheelman last weekend, and gave up a few hours in; the game is actually better than I was expecting, but the missions are really repetitive, ridiculous, and agonizingly long. I got stuck on a mission that still hadn't ended after 30 minutes of driving around and fending off endless hordes of henchmen, and decided to pack it in. Last night I tried out Ninja Blade, which I rented only because I'd heard that the Achievements were pretty easy to come by; beyond that, it is exactly as dumb as I'd prepared myself for.
The next big game on my want-list is Codemaster's upcoming driving game Fuel, but the total lack of PR up to this point makes me a little nervous...
Showing posts with label Duke Nukem. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Duke Nukem. Show all posts
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
DN3D; Sonic DS; SH:H
It's been even longer since my last post than that one was in relation to the one preceding it, so I won't bother apologizing. Suffice it to say, I've been pretty busy lately and there hasn't been a whole lot of gaming going on, and that particular trend looks to continue for the next few weeks; considering the bevy of big titles that are about to be released (Fable 2, Fallout 3, and LittleBigPlanet, to name but 3), I am more than a little curious how I'm going to be able to do anything at all.
So, then, let me get to it:
Duke Nukem 3D is one of my all-time favorites, and I am ever-so-pleased to see that after all this time, it still holds up. Obviously the graphics are dated, but whatever - the level design is still fresh, the carnage is still, er, carnal, the weapons are still awesome and the one-liners still put smiles on my face. There's a lot to be said for the retro-irony factor of playing old games again on new systems, but here's the thing - DN3D is actually still fun. And I'm not even talking about multiplayer, which is something I never did back then nor am I doing now - the single-player campaign is fucking AWESOME. I'll say this right now - if DNF was simply a remodelling of DN3D in the Unreal Engine, it would probably still be better than whatever it is they've been working on for the last 12 years, and it would also probably be one of the most fun FPSs going.
Sonic Chronicles: Dark Brotherhood is something I picked up on Friday, the day before a weekend trip to Columbus, Ohio for a wedding. I had originally intended to rent it, and then I read the IGN review which kinda tore it apart somewhat convincingly, and I removed it from my Gamefly queue; then I read some other reviews which were a bit more upbeat, and since I was in a state of post-anxiety relief and release (I'd bought a suit for this wedding, and in the week between buying it and actually picking it up I'd somehow remembered it as being this gaudy, tacky monstrosity, and when I finally picked it up it instead turned out to be a rather nice suit), I figured, well, why the hell not. ANYWAY. I've put a few hours into it, most of my party is around level 6 or 7 (I think) and I've pretty much gotten the hang of how the mechanics work, and I have to say - it's pretty fun. It's somewhat easy, which is fine, and the story is pretty simplistic for a BioWare game - but, again, this is a Sonic game - who the hell cares? The battle system is engaging and utilizes the DS touchscreen quite nicely. There's not a tremendous amount of exploration to be done, but what's there is fine. A solid, engaging title that will certainly keep you occupied on a plane.
I've only put maybe 20 minutes into Silent Hill: Homecoming which had arrived in the mail while we were away, so I'm not really ready to talk about it. Having only actually played Silent Hill 4 (which was kinda meh), I'm not a fanboy; indeed, I only decided to pick it up because a friend of mine at work has been talking about wanting to play it for the last month or so, and I figured I'd give it a shot. It is creepy, but not scary, and to be honest, some of the attempts at creepiness are a little lame and cliched; solitary ghost children drawing pictures in delapidated, monster-infested buildings is something that's been around in the genre FOREVER. The game just kinda throws you into the story without explaining who you are and why you're there; maybe if I were more knowledgeable about the franchise it would mean something more to me, because right now I'm just a dude with a flashlight in an abandoned mental hospital taking orders from some whiny brat.
So, then, let me get to it:
Duke Nukem 3D is one of my all-time favorites, and I am ever-so-pleased to see that after all this time, it still holds up. Obviously the graphics are dated, but whatever - the level design is still fresh, the carnage is still, er, carnal, the weapons are still awesome and the one-liners still put smiles on my face. There's a lot to be said for the retro-irony factor of playing old games again on new systems, but here's the thing - DN3D is actually still fun. And I'm not even talking about multiplayer, which is something I never did back then nor am I doing now - the single-player campaign is fucking AWESOME. I'll say this right now - if DNF was simply a remodelling of DN3D in the Unreal Engine, it would probably still be better than whatever it is they've been working on for the last 12 years, and it would also probably be one of the most fun FPSs going.
Sonic Chronicles: Dark Brotherhood is something I picked up on Friday, the day before a weekend trip to Columbus, Ohio for a wedding. I had originally intended to rent it, and then I read the IGN review which kinda tore it apart somewhat convincingly, and I removed it from my Gamefly queue; then I read some other reviews which were a bit more upbeat, and since I was in a state of post-anxiety relief and release (I'd bought a suit for this wedding, and in the week between buying it and actually picking it up I'd somehow remembered it as being this gaudy, tacky monstrosity, and when I finally picked it up it instead turned out to be a rather nice suit), I figured, well, why the hell not. ANYWAY. I've put a few hours into it, most of my party is around level 6 or 7 (I think) and I've pretty much gotten the hang of how the mechanics work, and I have to say - it's pretty fun. It's somewhat easy, which is fine, and the story is pretty simplistic for a BioWare game - but, again, this is a Sonic game - who the hell cares? The battle system is engaging and utilizes the DS touchscreen quite nicely. There's not a tremendous amount of exploration to be done, but what's there is fine. A solid, engaging title that will certainly keep you occupied on a plane.
I've only put maybe 20 minutes into Silent Hill: Homecoming which had arrived in the mail while we were away, so I'm not really ready to talk about it. Having only actually played Silent Hill 4 (which was kinda meh), I'm not a fanboy; indeed, I only decided to pick it up because a friend of mine at work has been talking about wanting to play it for the last month or so, and I figured I'd give it a shot. It is creepy, but not scary, and to be honest, some of the attempts at creepiness are a little lame and cliched; solitary ghost children drawing pictures in delapidated, monster-infested buildings is something that's been around in the genre FOREVER. The game just kinda throws you into the story without explaining who you are and why you're there; maybe if I were more knowledgeable about the franchise it would mean something more to me, because right now I'm just a dude with a flashlight in an abandoned mental hospital taking orders from some whiny brat.
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