"I have no comments regarding bad reviews by clueless critics," - John st John

"They seem to want to compare Duke Nukem Forever to Call Of Duty and other FPSs and they are missing the point. My thoughts about Duke Nukem Forever: It freakin ROCKS! Lots of action, lots of fun, sexy, funny, irreverent... It's everything I hoped it would be."

Nice no comment there John. I didn;t realize it was wrong to compare a fps to gasp, other first person shooters.

With sales data, it seems like *customers* love Duke," he said. "I guess sometimes we want greasy hamburgers instead of caviar..." - Randy Pitchford

So it's not very good then correct? Besides greasy hamburgers are good and cheap, this is bad and sold at the caviar rate.

Randy Pitchford has been distancing himself and his studio from this game for a while. He's been promoting it as "Duke Nukem Forever is finally done, own a piece of history today" rather than actually playing up the game itself, and in the book that comes with the Balls of Steel edition he spends most of his time saying "we had nothing to do with that, it was all 3D Realms." He's not going to say anything bad about the game because to a large degree he's contractually bound not to, but you can bet when the next Duke game gets announced he's going to "address the issues" of DNF and go into some detail about what those issues are. He can't be happy that the game is dragging his company's Metacritic score through the mud right now.

Stop saying stuff like "these sex jokes have nothing to do with the parody" and I will stop saying you don't get it.

Can we stop the bitching? It's not like sethsez is going to convince StingingVelvet that the game is crap, and it's not like StingingVelvet is going to convince sethsez that it's good. It's obviously a difference in opinion, that both sides will cling to until the day they die or have a fucking lobotomy. It wouldn't be such a problem if the arguments were interesting, but they're not. One side thinks it's funny and hits the parody aspect right, the other doesn't. And you just keep on going on and on ad nauseum, "It's not funny", "Yes it is, you just don't get it", "I do get it, it's not funny", "Obviously you don't get it, it works", "I do get it, it doesn't"... This had been going on for like, 25 pages. Accept that you have a difference of opinion and let it drop.

Personally I don't understand what's the "obsession" with Duke's humor/lack of humor, I mean just because a reviewer didn't like Duke's humor/character doesn't means it's the reason why he/she game him a bad note. It's not like if the reviewer had liked the humor it would have given it a 9 instead of 3,4 or whatever not it give it. It's a FPS, not an adventure game, characters/plot are not exactly the main factor.

Personally I didn't mind Duke's humor (most of the time), heck I even consider it as being one of the game few redeeming quality, but I would still have given it a maximum of 5/10 if I had to review it, on the other side I found that every thing about Bayonetta be it plot / characters / etc... was an infamous embarrassing pile of retardness... and yet I enjoyed a lot playing it and would have given it a note of 8/10 (I know it's a console game but it's the first game that came to my mind when I thought about "retarded plot")

The only question I have at this point is about what is the game worth, mostly for single-player only entertainment. I'll pick it up for the gags when it hits that price. I'm fairly convinced there's way too much hysteria over this game to rely on the ratings and at the same time there is something of value there.

For example, I payed 10 bucks for Conan and I thought it was well worth the 10 bucks.

Get it when it's $20 if you really want to play it, $10 or less if you just want to have it to laugh at for a while. Given the word of mouth this thing's getting the price is going to drop like a rock so there's no sense in getting it now.
I think the reason the writing gets so much attention is because the game forces it down your throat, often stopping the gameplay in its tracks to do so. Bayonetta is indeed dumb as hell, but it had the good sense to make the cutscenes self-contained and skippable so it's easier to judge the gameplay separately.

My biggest problem with Duke's writing isn't the lack of humor, it's how much it kills the game's pacing. I don't care if you're Louis CK, don't interrupt my action game to tell me jokes!

I recently bought Fallout: New Vegas for $10 and considering how many hours of entertainment I got from Fallout 3 I think it was money well spent. On the other hand, paying more than $5 for DNF would be IMO too much. I tried the demo and I can see myself enjoying some of the humor in it but if I only wanted that in a game then I'd better go watch a movie.
I bet the price is going to drop in half soon and then it's just a matter of waiting for the 75% off sale.

Based on what I've seen for myself of the game, I wouldn't mind paying five bucks for it to check it out. It looks like I could probably have some fun with it as a bit of throwaway entertainment, but I'm not really willing to invest more than that in it. I doubt I'd want to replay it as often as I replay Duke 3D.

Of course, I have a hard time putting aside my dislike of the Steam client even for dirt-cheap prices, so it may be quite a long time before I play it.

How much it's worth is a matter of opinion. I personally think I'm getting my money's worth, but for those that are into multiplayer, it sounds like they should wait to see what the community makes for maps.

Somebody is going to have to create or release a map editor, or perhaps not, given the engine they're using. Because there's just way too much wasted potential in the multiplayer game. Mines, jetpacks, freeze rays and all that should be really awesome for multiplayer. I haven't had a chance to play yet, but I've heard that the map designs there really suck right now.

FO3 and FO:NV were both worth the initial price and then some, considering that both the games had at least 30 hours worth of gameplay for the first time through, assuming you didn't accidentally come across later portions of the main quest too early.
To be honest, I'm not sure how humor should be factored into a review. It's complicated, but take a franchise like Serious Sam, if you're not getting the humor, it's a much worse game than it is otherwise. Personally, I started to like the game a lot more and had a lot more fun once I started to take it less seriously and played it as more of a parody game.

But, the main issue I have with scoring on humor is that it's very personal what one finds to be funny, but you can't ignore it either because it does have such a significant impact on games.

My favorite shooters are Serious Sam and UT2004, so I'm inclined to say I'd like it, in that case.

FWIW, I did play GoW on PC (back before I developed such a hatred for certain DRMs) and enjoyed it well enough. It did feel different than a Serious Sam type affair, though.

Honestly, I'd say even if he'd love the game he should still wait. There's no way this thing is going to remain full price for long with the word of mouth and reviews it's getting (fair or not). Since he's asking solely about single player, the potential of multiplayer being dead by the time the price drop hits isn't an issue either. Serious Sam's quips are mostly stupid, but if you turn down the volume then you never have to hear it, and even with the volume on the worst thing you get out of it is some groaners. It never actually impacts the gameplay.

That, more than anything, is why people have a problem with the humor in this game. The fact that you have to stand around and listen to Dylan do his Gears of War bit, or listen to two guys talk about the merits of looking at an aunt's tits, and the game itself comes to a halt until the routine is done. The comedy in Duke Nukem Forever is integrated into the gameplay in such a way that it's pretty much impossible to talk about the complete gameplay experience without bringing it up.

The other reason it's being brought up is because unlike comedy just being dumb, some people were legitimately bothered by the whole Hive sequence. When it affects someone the way that part did, it's going to get more attention than your run-of-the-mill failed pun. To a degree it's the same with the "Faggs" gag... it's the kind of thing where some people will really respond poorly to it, so it's going to get more attention than a movie reference or dildo quest.

Edit: or something like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dosV1RBrmmo
which shows 3D Realms hasn't budged on its portrayal of Asians since Shadow Warrior. Whether or not you find it funny, it's certainly designed to offend so it's hard to be surprised when it does.

I posted on my blog some of my thoughts about Duke Nukem Forever.
read it here.

No, I mean 2004 as in Half-Life 2. Duke Nukem Forever is basically a Half-Life 2 clone at the end of the day, quality aside. When I say quality aside I mean it's nowhere near as good as Half-Life 2, it just plays like it. If you love the Duke humor though that will make up for a lot of the quality gap.