Unfortunately, PALGN missed the boat with the single player preview, but some of the aspects that Randy spoke about it made for exciting listening. It started off with an anecdote about how Gearbox, which had an office “down the road” from 3D Realms, were investigating the fall of their friends and rivals, as well as the “death of the King”, from the perspective of an ambulance. Rather than watching an accident helplessly from the sidewalk, they had the tools and equipment to bring the Duke back to life. Just as they were completing Borderlands, an opportunity at making history fell into their hands.
It’s easy for us to sit back and claim that 3D Realms (with whom Randy begun his development career) had been completely lackadaisical about developing the game, which lead to the stupidly long development cycle. Randy spoke about how surprised he was to find in the 3D Realms vision for Duke Nukem Forever a lot of the various elements in the game and how they broke through a lot of the modern development templates and patterns. He further went on to say how surprised he was to find that Duke Nukem Forever has the length, the variety and the density of “two or three Call of Duty titles”.
Needs more Duke...
As many have seen through the trailers, Duke Nukem Forever won’t be lacking in irreverence and self-awareness. Randy mentioned that in spite of this, the game still managed to be “intelligent” in its designs and that 3D Realms ought to get credit for creating a game that changes its pace well. So rather than just playing to the key mechanics of twitch-based shooting, he mentioned that the gameplay design is as much focused on the pacing, as it is the element of making sure when you shoot the trigger you hit the enemies. It sounds like a return to older design sensibilities, where you’ll be encouraged to do some exploring and some thinking to get through.
However, the focus of this session was to provide information and a hands-on with the multiplayer. And Randy was gracious enough to give us the lowdown. While Duke Nukem isn’t the first game that comes to mind when you hark back earlier multiplayer shooter experiences, Randy agreed with this but qualified that it’s easy to forget because it’s been so long since the last Duke experience and that so much has advanced since then, such as high-speed internet. Overall, he expressed the desire to bring the days of Duke Nukem 3D gameplay into the modern era.
Jetpacks, I see?
The way you actually play multiplayer hasn’t really been changed too much, and Gearbox has stuck to what they do well. However, all the multiplayer aspects have been given the Duke treatment. ‘Dukematch’ is Deathmatch, ‘All Hail the King’ is King of the Hill, ‘Capture the Babe’ is Capture the Flag. While he was unwilling to tell us too much about the “new” weapons in the multiplayer, Randy spoke very enthusiastically about the humiliation of being stomped to death after being shrunken, or the comical value in placing some pipe bombs covertly under a security camera, then setting them off while you’re on the other side of the map in the security room watching on a screen. Furthermore, players will have a number of options for customising their games as they like.
Something that we touched on, was whether Gearbox was going for an experience-based (read: grinding) approach as seen in something like Call of Duty or a more accessible ‘jump in and play’ experience. Randy explained that they definitely wanted the latter, since most of the ‘competitive’ shooters have the tendency to end up being only be accessible to the ‘elite’ players, and did so with the concept of a “meta-game”. He clarified that the challenges that you pass and experience that you earn are all part of an overriding goal to collect all of Duke’s individual paraphernalia. As such, there are apparently a tonne of options for creating your own Duke, which include a cowboy hat, star sunglass, ducky shirt for your online avatar, yet you will “still look bad-arse”. Finally, Randy was keen to point out that all this content, as well as “more than just four or six maps” will all be available on disc.
HoloDuke will still beat you.
Having actually got to spend some time in the multiplayer as well, from a mechanical perspective it can be told that it handles pretty much like most other Gearbox shooters. This is actually pretty good, as most of them handle great. Capture the Babe was the order of the day, and it was amusing to be holding a flag that ‘moves’ and that needs to be… umm… ‘disciplined’ when they’re getting in your way… Yep, this is Duke alright. The map on show wasn’t really conducive for some of the strategies and play styles that Randy spoke about, but hopefully the final game will show off the true potential. Mind you, there was something refreshing about playing without perks, grinding and other fluffy modern multiplayer additions…
Yes, believe it. Duke Nukem Forever exists, and it will be released. Who’d have thought? And when Randy Pitchford says it’s going to be awesome, he certainly makes a compelling case. A lot of the aspects he spoke of in regards to pacing, length and variety in the single player were quite exciting. And the multiplayer looks to seamlessly carry over the irreverence of the Duke, while being run by the unparalleled mechanical fidelity of Gearbox shooters. Now at the risk of speaking too soon, you can all start looking forward to the June release. Bet that’s something you didn’t think was possible…
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