DNF is a Halo/CoD clone. :/

It's really not. It uses Halo's weapon and shield systems, but in every other way it's more like Half-Life. It's nothing like Call of Duty which is heavily scripted and corridor-based. While DNF is linear it's open room find the path linear, not CoD linear.

It's nothing like Duke3D though, which I assume it at the heart of what you're saying.

Yeah, because the ranking system in the multiplayer is nothing like call of duty. And there are a handful of levels where it goes "loading screen" - "take two steps" - "loading screen" much like CoD.

Haven't touched online... and no, loading like that is not really from CoD or CoD-specific, I don't know what you mean.

Even if those things were accurate though that's hardly the gameplay in general.

Did you read my blog post?

No and I'm not planning to, sorry.

I could see that in some of the streets of vegas levels, but really for most of the game it plays much more like Half-Life if you ask me. Not just storytelling but general gameplay... physics puzzles, how do I get this door open, enemy spawn points, turn the power off, vehicle level where you get out to solve puzzles or open the way here and there, etc. etc.. It does have some grander moments that are like Halo, but those are more rare if you ask me.

It's like a bad Half-Life 2 mod using Duke really.

For those interested I wrote a review on amazon. Gave it 3 out of 5.

It feels like a Halo clone with Half Life 2 and Prey bits flung around, and none of the fun of any of those games. It's a mishmash of stolen ideas, all so poorly and lazily implemented that the entire thing lacks any kind of innovation or personality of its own.

I absolutely hate DNF, and I rarely say that about a game. The best part of installing it was uninstalling it.

That's a wee bit of an exaggeration. But, the loading screens wouldn't be so annoying were it not for the bug that makes it take forever to load and the complete lack of any feed back as to how much time is left. Thankfully it pauses at the end so that you can go take a leak or eat a sandwich.

Bizarrely, enough I've noticed sometimes when the loading is almost instantaneous which makes me wonder if it can't be patched.

I'm not planning on reading this, either.
After you beat the mothership, you get to crouch through some vents, as soon as you get out, bam it's loading screen time.
then once you get on top of the elevator, as soon as you hit the bottom, bam it's loading screen time.

Wow - and here I thought this was about the re-birth of the old SSI General Series ;-)

'Kay. There is a difference between linking to a review like that and linking to one's own blog, just so you know. I dislike when people try to get me to click on their blogs, it just rubs me the wrong way. Like shameless self-promotion, "look at me! follow me!" Maybe that's a failing of mine. In any case don't take it personally.

It's hardly the case for most of the ones though.

I did eventually figure out that it was taking so much time because somehow my hal.dll got swapped from the multicore one I had been using to a single core one. Causing the processing time to take up far longer to do the calculations than normally necessary.

I really, really hate MS. In all fairness, they should be paying us to use their crappy OSes. 7 seems to at least be tolerable, but I'm sure that after a bit I'll find out that it's the same crap they've been repackaging for the last few decades.

I just wish I could buy decent hardware without going to the MS/Apple duopoly or having to way overpay to get it a repackaged computer where they probably paid the fee and just installed something else on top of it.

It's not just the level linearity that feel like (I wouldn't say Halo, but at least modern shooter) it's also the fights, low number of enemies at the same time, arenas (last time I was so annoyed at arenas while playing a FPS was while playing Jericho, and yet I otherwise enjoyed Jericho).

But I think if I was to describe DNF with a single phrase it would be : "it plays like X but; without what made X interesting/enjoyable/etc..."

It plays like most modern shooter (arenas, little number of enemies, regenerative health); but without the scripted sequences/events/enemies or general rhythm that keeps things interesting.

or

It plays like Half Life 2 (physic puzzle, slow pace), but without "ambiance building" or story development/exploration that took place during the slower, non fight, sequences.

or even

It plays like DN3D (old enemies and weapons back, interactivity, of course Duke); but without what made DN3D fun to play, lot's of action, lot's of enemies, lot's of weapons and explosion.

The issue with DNF is not that it's a modern shooter nor that it's an old school one but that it doesn't seems to know what it is and end up being neither.