Duke Nukem early access to demo

**DJ Ms. White** · 05-25-11, 12:15 PM

If you own Borderlands, you can get early access to the demo! There's a dvd-code you can get that you can register at the duke nukem site to get the access!

**Keiron** · 05-25-11, 12:19 PM

I don't think I've gotten mine yet and I've applied the code months ago when they first started talking about it. I get periodic updates on the game, but nothing more about the demo that I've seen yet.

Just checked my email again to make sure. We get access to it on Jun 3rd supposedly. Awesome then, I can't wait to try it out and see how it lives up to the classics that we all remember and love!

**DJ Ms. White** · 06-01-11, 08:46 PM

If you registered to get a part of the early access, you got the first multiplayer map pack for free!

**judedeath** · 06-03-11, 01:26 AM

Just got my email, check your First Access Club page and it will give you a code to put into steam to activate the demo, the demo itself is a little under 2 gigs.

**PizzaSHARK!** · 06-03-11, 04:16 AM

Demo should take you about 30 minutes to beat. Shows you what's probably the intro to the game, then skips ahead to give you a sample of the driving portions and then the incredibly predictable "truck's out of gas, fight through an army to get a gas can" segment. Then it shows you a trailer for the rest of the game.

Honestly? I was bored the entire time. There were a few spots that made me smirk, remembering the old days... but Duke 3D this ain't, and it isn't even close.

It has regenerating health. It has quicktime events (mash spacebar to not die.) You can only carry two weapons at a given time, they don't come with much ammo, and there's always a weapon conveniently strewn about when you're about to encounter a scripted sequence that will require it (railguns near areas where you need to snipe, RPG near the area where you'll shoot down a dropship, etc.) This isn't Duke, this is Halo with a Duke Nukem skinpack and soundpack.

The game engine itself isn't anything to write home about, either. When you're used to blowing individual bits and pieces off of zombies and watching them chase after you with a gaping hole in their chest, knocking a head off a pig cop isn't very special. The textures and environments look good, but nothing spectacular - if you can run Source maxed out, you'll probably say L4D2 looks better overall. Hell, I've been playing through FEAR and FEAR 2 again, and those games look at least as good - and they're from a few years ago.

I'm damned glad they made a demo for the game, because for a second there I was almost thinking about buying DNF. I'm sure I'll still buy it eventually, but not until it's on a Steam sale for 50% or 75% off. I'm not paying $50 for a derivative piece of Halo-esque trash.

**Keiron** · 06-03-11, 10:17 PM

Yeah, I'll probably wait on it to go down some in price. The health regen is really what got me. Even on Come Get Some (aka Hard), it was fairly easy. I think I died twice, and those were because I went ahead before getting the right gun since as Pizza said you can only carry 2 at a time. The Shrink Ray seems pretty pointless so I wouldn't bother using it.

It was fun, but kind of disappointing at the same time. I'm hoping that the demo is a very gimped version of the game. Having only 2 weapons and then your pipebombs/explosives, and beer, just doesn't seem like it'd be enough. Forcing you to choose 2 weapons, that's kind of lame. Also, I didn't get to save at my convenience, the game just did it for me. I'm hoping that is not how the full version is.

Still hoping for something good and I'm at least glad I was able to play the demo.

**PizzaSHARK!** · 06-04-11, 08:17 PM

Yeah, I completely forgot about the console-friendly checkpoint-only save system. No quicksaving or quickloading. Hell, you can't even make specific saves - so you couldn't, for example, make a save right before a really awesome scripted sequence to play it multiple times.

DNF is really just reinforcing my opinion that we're probably gonna have to wait another 10 or 20 years before we can have decent shooters again. I really think TF2 was the last truly good shooter to come out, and even then I wouldn't put it in the same league as UT2k4 and Q3A.

EDIT: And yeah, I hate the regenerating health thing. It's something that developers put into the game because it absolves them of the need to actually balance maps and the game as a whole, simply because you don't need to worry about whether or not you have too many medkits or too few medkits lying around - just go hide under a rock for 20 seconds and get your HP back.

At least older games with the concept at least tried to make things difficult... you could only recover about enough health to take one bullet in FEAR 2, your health doesn't come back automatically in Halo (only your shields), and things like that.

Still, I don't see what the issue is with there possibly being a situation where someone uses up all their medkits and somehow gets themselves into an unwinnable situation. Assuming you have the game make a separate autosave at the beginning of the map... if they get themselves into that situation, too fucking bad. Start the level over and don't suck so much next time. Maybe allow them to change the difficulty of the game on the fly so they can just pussy their way through that boss fight that was just TOO DAMN HARD for them.

**Keiron** · 06-05-11, 12:00 PM

I think it appeals to more casual gamers more since it allows them to allow complete the game and think it took some sort of skill when it doesn't. Allow people to save when they want with an auto-save at new levels or hell even HL games at certain points in the level, so you can learn to save your medpacks and actually get better at the game.

Still hoping there are more features in final release though.

**PizzaSHARK!** · 06-06-11, 03:38 PM

Originally Posted by Keiron

I think it appeals to more casual gamers more since it allows them to allow complete the game and think it took some sort of skill when it doesn't. Allow people to save when they want with an auto-save at new levels or hell even HL games at certain points in the level, so you can learn to save your medpacks and actually get better at the game.

Still hoping there are more features in final release though.

Mediocre sells just as well as exceptional, but takes less time and effort to produce. It's why hack and slash games all copy God of War (just like ARPGs copied Diablo), why all MMOs copy World of Warcraft, and why shooters copy either Call of Duty or Halo (and those two games have become so similar that you could probably just call it Call of Halo.)

I like the Duke-style take on Capture the Flag, but I don't really expect DNF will have decent multiplayer if they're just gonna make it a Halo clone. Hell, the fact that they even offer the option of autoaim on a PC game is mildly offensive :-/