Category Archives: Game Logs

Duking it Out 2

Duke Nukem Forever doesn’t need much of an introduction – it’s incredibly well known even if mostly thanks to its lengthy stint as the official Internet poster-child for vaporware. The game did take an utterly ridiculous 15 years to see the light of day so fair enough. Upon release though, the game got trashed by seemingly every other person on the Internet with a keyboard and a passing knowledge of it. I suppose it’s somewhat understandable, I mean no game could possibly live up to 15 years of built-up hype and it would have taken a miracle to convert public perception of the game after that long. Whatever! I hate pile-ons and I’m willing to look at it with an open mind. So is it really that bad?

“Somehow they made me hate octabrains even more.”

Just like Duke Nukem 3D, Duke Nukem Forever is a first person shooter in which you play as the venerable hero Duke Nukem as he tries to stop an alien invasion of near-future earth. Despite the similar story setups the gameplay makes a notable veer away from that of the first game. Considering how dramatically the FPS genre has changed since those early days it would probably be more notable if it didn’t, though. Instead DNF takes obvious queues from its successors. Games such as Half Life 2 and Halo are obvious influences with a much more guided, linear approach to level design, cutscenes and somewhat of an actually recognizable plot, driving and turret segments, and even physics puzzles. Controversially, it also incorporates features such as recharging health and a limit to how many different types of guns you can carry at a time.

“Scoring a headshot in the awesome intro sequence.”

The game was nice and short, clocking in at around 10 hours for me. I think my favorite parts of the campaign were the sections where you got shrunk down in size. Sure, it’s a bit gimmicky but it reminded me of all of those old “giant” user made maps we used to deathmatch on in games like the original Unreal Tournament. Too fun! I was actually reminded a lot of Prey during the game, somehow, which is mostly a very positive comparison to make. All said my only real complaint about the gameplay (noting that I played this patched meaning I could hold 4 weapons instead of just 2… thankfully) is that I felt like the difficulty was noticeably inconsistent, with boss battles being a big spike up compared rest of the game. I know that isn’t necessarily unusual (bosses are supposed to be hard, duh!) but I’d literally go for a few levels without ever being in any real danger only to die 10 times in the first phase of a boss fight. Irritating.

“This screenshot is gross on so many levels…”

DNF still features all of the referential humor and satire that Duke Nukem 3D was known for only this time it’s totally cranked up. I swear, some of the damn silly lines Duke delivers and situations he gets in this time around make the game seem almost like parody of Duke 3D and I often found that funnier than the actual jokes. Unfortunately the casual objectification of women of the previous Duke Nukem games is also cranked up to absurd if not outright offensive levels and where Duke 3D flirted with nudity DNF has tits and ass all over the place. Thankfully despite large doses of it early these scenes make up a relatively small portion of the game and the aforementioned ridiculous tone of the whole thing makes it hard to take too seriously. I do have to wonder if they really missed the boat on their target audience by delaying the game so long though. That is, it seems it probably won’t resonate with today’s younger gamers and since so many of us who played Duke 3D did so as kids and teenagers it likely won’t appeal to us in quite the same way either. I guess what I’m saying is that Duke is a bit of a relic.

Moving on from the negativity for a moment, also back from Duke Nukem 3D are most of the weapons and enemies, all more or less intact. Hell, the game even starts out with you reenacting the boss fight from act 3! Awesome bit of fan service there. I was disappointed that they got rid of Duke’s “mighty boot” as an always available melee attack (a feature that was ahead of its time!) but I still enjoyed tearing up alien scum with the ripper and sending rockets into the asses of those annoying octabrain bastards. There were plenty of other throwbacks to Duke 3D in the game, from classic lines to all of the neat little interactive environment objects (which now actually serve somewhat of a purpose) but my favorite of all had to be the glorious introduction to the game which recounts the plot of Duke 3D in a highly stylized, James Bond movie intro sequence like way.

“Offroading in the Mighty Foot.”

The graphics got panned a lot when the game was first released but I found them to be decent enough with the character faces and animations being the main low points. I was actually pleasantly surprised to find that the game did a good job of representing your whole body from first person – something somewhat rare that I personally really find helps me get more immersed in first person games. The sound is decent and while the music seems like it mostly consists of throwbacks to the classic soundtrack of Duke 3D let’s not forget that people fucking love the soundtrack of Duke 3D! I didn’t really encounter any of the bugs, performance problems, or any of the other technical issues I heard a lot about though I understand those issues were mostly with the console versions, never mind the fact by the time I got around to playing DNF it had already been patched more than once.

“I’m not entirely sure what’s going on here but I like it.”

Overall, while it definitely doesn’t feel like 15 years of work (because it isn’t, technically) it is a fairly solid effort and even with its modernized systems it manages to feel like a bit of a throwback to the golden era of FPS games. That said, unless you’re a big fan of Duke Nukem it doesn’t really have all that much to offer. Still, the answer to my original question is a resounding “no!” Duke Nukem Forever might not be amazing, it might be offensive to some, not at all funny to others, and not at all worth waiting 15 years for, but it certainly isn’t the horrible train wreck piece of trash that you’ve probably been led to believe it is. Bandwagons… blech.

Duking It Out 1

My Duke 3D retrospective was pretty epic. Sure, it’s not too much longer than my earlier ones but I put a lot of time into it. Tons of research and tons of gaming. Not only did I play through the entire 4 episodes of the Atomic Edition multiple times on several different platforms but I also played through the entirety of Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project and Duke Nukem Forever. While I’m not going to write full reviews of them I figured I’d give a little more of my impressions of both games while they’re still fresh on my mind.

Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project was released on PC back in 2002 while Duke fans were still very much waiting around wondering where the fuck Duke Nukem Forever was. While there had been a few other Duke Nukem related games on other platforms Manhattan Project was the first time Duke’s original fanbase on PC were catered to outside of expansions for Duke Nukem 3D itself. I remember reading reviews of it in various gaming magazines and on a few of the sites I read at the time as being fairly positive, particularly considering it was released as a budget title. Researching Duke’s many offspring for my Duke 3D article I figured I might finally give Manhattan Project a try and learning that it was available on Xbox Live Arcade sealed the deal.

“Dumb billboards and gibby goodnes, yep, Duke Nukem!”

Manhattan Project is a side-scrolling platformer that, in the most basic sense, plays a lot like the original pre-Duke 3D Duke Nukem games. Platforming, shooting enemies, collecting keycards, backtracking, etc. Combine this gameplay with the updated oneliner-spouting, babe loving Duke and lots more obvious influence from the weapons, enemies, and environments of Duke 3D, and that is pretty much Manhattan Project in a nutshell. It’s a relatively simple game all in all – there’s only ever one babe to rescue and one keycard to track down on any one level though it still does a decent job of trying to make the levels not feel too linear. The weapons are decently varied and feel pretty satisfying to use and the mountains of quippy dialog from Jon St. John keep things lively. The humor is still pretty close to that of Duke 3D though there is a slight negative shift in the tone of some of the jokes and the way women are treated – that is the jokes are sometimes a bit sillier and the women are definitely more sexualized and objectified.

“Don’t mind me, I’m just hanging out…”

One of the more interesting things about the game is that it was one of the first “2.5D platformers” I’d ever heard of. That is, a 2D platformer done entirely in a polygon based engine that leverages its 3D capabilities to do interesting things with planes, camera movement, etc. It’s a little rough around the edges in that respect but mostly only because the developers seemed to be having a little bit too much fun with some of those aspects as some of them, particularly changing perspectives and changing planes, quickly wear out their welcome and start feeling gimmicky. One thing that particularly annoyed me was that you could only shift planes at designated locations but I’d occasionally bump into other spots where it looked like I should have been able to and no, I’d have to backtrack to just the right spot. The camera can also occasionally do some silly things too but all and all it’s perfectly serviceable.

“Now with breathtaking 3D technology!”

The platforming itself sometimes bothered the shit out of me as the collision hit boxes seem totally off or at least massively oversized which meant sections that involved avoiding insta-death obstacles (spikes for instance) could be highly frustrating. Thankfully such sections were pretty rare so other than a couple of instances of repeating the same section 20 times it wasn’t a deal breaker for me. The story was, as you might expect, practically nonexistent, mostly only setting the scenes from stage to stage, giving Duke a good excuse to shoot some pigs in the face and rescues some babes. The XBLA port is well done but it is definitely a “port” more than anything with no real updates to the rather outdated visuals or anything else not directly related to making the title work right on an Xbox 360.

Overall, I’d recommend the game if you’re a big Duke fan and it sounds at all appealing to you, otherwise I’d give it a pass. Part 2, wherein I get into the much more interesting Duke Nukem Forever, coming soon!

As usual my Xbox 360 screenshots were stolen from elsewhere. I had to cherry-pick these few out of the PR releases as few of them did a great job of representing how the game ACTUALLY looks.

On a Rail

There’s been all kinds of buzz lately around the release of Minecraft 360 Edition on Xbox Live Arcade. I first played the original all the way back in 2010 and I’ve revisited it plenty of times since and yet I still managed to get swept up by the hype. One boring evening I bought it with the intention of “just checking it out” for a couple of hours, max. That night ended up being the latest I’ve stay up gaming in a couple of years…

The game is largely identical to the PC version, save the crafting menu, the limited world size, and the Xbox Live integrated multiplayer. The biggest draw for me though was the achievements. I’m not exactly an “achievement whore” but I do sometimes go out of my way to go for those sweet, sweet points and, more importantly, some of the more creative ones inspire me to play games in different, interesting ways. While the PC version also has achievements these days I’ve pretty much ignored them. With Minecraft 360 Edition I set my sights on “one hundred percenting” them! The achievements in Minecraft are mostly tied to pretty basic things that you’re likely to get through normal play. Even some of the harder ones could be stumbled into, really. The most interesting ones to me were probably “Leader Of The Pack”, “When Pigs Fly”, “Into The Nether”, and “On A Rail”.

“Random picture of a sheep enjoying a hot soak. *shrug*”

I set off going for On A Rail almost immediately. The idea was simple: ride a mine cart 500m in one direction. 500m is, for the record, 500 blocks which is definitely nothing to scoff at. I believe the world size on Xbox 360 Edition is only 1024 x 1024 so it’s approximately half the width of the entire map. Damn!

So, I started by building a modest cabin and gathering the usual resources to kit it out nicely and start doing some real mining. I next built a massive 10 or 15 block wide one block stair step down from my home’s basement all the way to bedrock. This ended up being a pretty epic mine shaft and once I got to the bottom and started doing some strip mining out from there, then having to make a few exhaustive runs up and down for supplies, I decided would be a great place to build my new rail system. I’ve only dabbled with rails and carts in Minecraft and have barely scratched the surface on using Redstone but some experimenting and a bunch of gold and iron down the drain later and I had an awesome fast ride up and down the shaft. Nice!

“Come here and give me a hug, you loveable little scamp, you!”

I next continued to strip mine just above bedrock from there, mostly searching for iron to continue my railway but I also started a new tunnel straight out from where my old track stopped to try to hit the 500m mark the achievement called for. This took quite awhile as I ran into the two walls I always seem run into with Minecraft: iron and lava. That is, a lack of the former and an abundance of the latter. At first I didn’t run into any lava and I was quite pleased with myself but eventually it hit. I mined around it. I hit it again. I mined around it again. I hit it again. Soon my track went from being straight to being this funky zigzagging mess. I also couldn’t find iron to save my life. In fact, I found far more gold and diamond than iron oddly enough! Eventually after extended my tracks a tiny bit yet again and not getting the achievement I realized that I had unfortunately forgot about the requirement of the 500m being in one direction. All of my lava detours meant that I’d be using quite a bit more than 500m of track. Doh…

For the second phase of the project I took my now MASSIVE collection of cobblestone and started building a 3 block wide raised railway from one end of the map all the way to the other, up and down mountains, through and sometimes totally over forests, over lakes, over lava pools. It was quite a construction project – in fact I ended up having to build a series of smaller houses to stay the night in along the way since I was so far out. On the plus side I did gather quite a lot of wood and other resources. About 2/3s of the way to the end I spotted a giant pack of wolves. I had no idea wolves spawned in packs like that and figured it was the perfect opportunity to get Leader Of The Pack. It’s a simple one: tame 5 wolves.

“Woof.”

Now, I’ve never tamed a wolf in Minecraft so this was all new to me. It seemed simple enough – give them a bone and they become your pet and follow you around. Bone in hand I approached the pack. For a brief moment I thought to myself “I sure hope this doesn’t attack them…” and sure enough, hit the wrong button and was instantly mauled to death by a pack of 7 or 8 angry wolves. Okay, I’ve had some pretty funny deaths in Minecraft but this one was just fucking hilarious.

I eventually finished it and then dug up all my old track. Still not enough track to finish the entire railway nor enough for the achievement. Around this time I decided to explore a bit and poke around for some dungeons. Dungeons were also something I hadn’t really experienced yet and were required for the When Pigs Fly achievement. I figured the easiest way to find one would be to explore mountains and existing caves for signs of them. Shortly after starting I discovered a MASSIVE cave system and it was absolutely chalk full of iron to boot. My expedition to explore and mine these caverns became such an undertaking that I had to come and go to restock on food, torches, and picks multiple times. One of the times I was making a supply run I ran across another pack of wolves. This time I didn’t make the mistake of accidentally hitting with the bone instead of using it and tamed my 5 wolves. Achievement unlocked! I figured while I was taming 5 wolves I might as well use all my bones and ended up with a ridiculous number of wolves all following me into the caves. Unfortunately this actually became a huge nuisance for some of the riskier mining and climbing I had to do as the dumb bastards had a bad habit of blocking narrow paths and even nudging me off ledges. Eventually the problem resolved itself as they all dove into a huge, dark pit to attack some skeleton rangers and zombies never to be heard from again.

“No, I don’t have a life.”

By the time I was through with my crazy cave exploring expedition I had more than enough iron to finish my track. One long, glorious ride later and achievement unlocked! Now that was a long, hard, but fun achievement. The railway was useful too, and I ended up adding enough powered rail to make it 100% automated in either direction. One of my favorite Minecraft engineering projects ever.

“The chickens and moon alignment aren’t related to the achievement… just something I’m into. Don’t ask.”

Next I set out for building a Nether Portal for Into The Nether. Again, I’ve never built one. To make one you need to mine some obsidian. Obsidian is formed when water his calm patches of lava. Now, lava and water mixing isn’t super rare to find but in my experience it’s almost always running lava hitting calm waters, or two running streams coming together. These both produce boring cobblestone – nothing at all notable. Most of the lava I had encountered was in my mines under my house and wasn’t exactly safe to try to play with so I began looking for other alternatives. I first decided to try making an artificial lava pond by using buckets to fill small trenches I’d make and then pour water buckets on top. Unfortunately the lava produced by buckets this way is flowing and therefore not suitable for producing obsidian. Fortunately I realized the very source of lava I was using had a bunch of calm patches so I began dousing it with water. A little while later and I had stepped into the Nether for the first time. Achievement unlocked! Annoyingly my 360 locked up when I tried to leave the Nether (not uncommon from what I’ve read) and I lost my save though I ultimaltey looked at it as a good thing since I didn’t need a Nether Portal in my front yard and I preferred my little lava pond being filled with beautiful glowing lava and not blocks of half mined obsidian.

Finally all I had was the When Pigs Fly achievement. This one is the most bizarre of all of them. You have to find a saddle, which can only be found as random loot in a dungeon chest, put it on a pig, and then ride the pig off of a ledge tall enough for it to take falling damage. Alrighty then. Unfortunately I still hadn’t found a single dungeon anywhere in my world and continued to search for one. Eventually I decided to cop out and start a new world using one of the seeds that people had been passing around to get this achievement – one where you spawn right next to an exposed dungeon that always has a saddle in it. Nice!

“Do it, DO IT!”

This isn’t the end of the challenge however. When you mount a pig *insert dueling banjos here* they freak out and start moving erratically, not unlike a bucking bull, so you can’t really control them to force them off a ledge. I ended up having to try to block one in on the side of a cliff, saddle him, climb on him, and then wait until he got close enough to a ledge that I could hit him and cause him to jump off. It took a while to pin him in and it took almost as long to get him to wander close enough to a cliff but finally… achievement unlocked!

400/400 points.

Screenshots are actually recreations and general screwing around in creative mode on the PC version – not actually the Xbox 360 Edition and not my actual world, unfortunately.