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DUKE NUKEM FOREVER |OT| Spank One For The Good Guys

when someone compared god hand to this review process, that's ridiculous. god hand plays fantastic, and actually has a good sense of humor

duke on the other hand, doesn't feel relevant whatsoever and the gameplay sucks.

at least when i played yakuza, the mini-games are actually pretty solid games, the mini stuff in duke is the jankiest most awful shit ever.

i MIGHT try this again, since i REALLY want my friend to be forced to platinum darksiders.
 

tiff

Banned
Combichristoffersen said:
Duke 3D had those female alien kidnap victims already in the first level (and if you'd press spacebar at them they'd go 'kill meeee.....'). Either way, it's really just 3D Realms riffing on the Alien movies.
Yeah I remember that, I just don't remember the alien rape allusions being so strong.
 

Combichristoffersen

Combovers don't work when there is no hair
tiff said:
Yeah I remember that, I just don't remember the alien rape allusions being so strong.

The only rape allusion I found in DNF were the Holsom twins, but going by what they actually say, and the way their personalities have been portrayed earlier in the game (i.e. they're both dumber than a pile of rocks), I think people are stretching it a bit by claiming they've 'definitely' been raped, as it seems the dumb as fuck twins willingly shagged the aliens. As for the other women, it's not really implied anywhere what actually happened to them.
 
Rented the PS3 version, playing with a friend. We're right before the Queen Bitch fight at the moment. All I can say so far is "it's pretty alright, I guess". At least it's funny.
 
then i'll get this beaten tonight! hoping i can get Alice beaten tomorrow then in time for Ocarina on Sunday, cause Shadows of the Damned is going to sideline everything else.
 
this is going back to gamefly unfinished.

i find the turd you discover early in the game highly amusing seeing as how playing with a piece of shit is more enjoyable than DNF.
 

JRW

Member
FirstInHell said:
I don't even mind the platforming and other outdated play mechanics. The shooting just feels off to me on the 360. I put the sensitivity on 10 and it still feels like it is clunky to aim.

It's because of the poor framerate, I played up to the Queen Bitch level on 360 and then started over on PC version once it unlocked, PC's mouse + keyboard / 60fps / Vsync / FSAA / 1080p made a huge difference especially when it comes to control & aiming accuracy. It also looks a lot nicer, I believe 360 version was confirmed running at below 720P native resolution.
 
fourteen years of gaming history just ended for me. i feel cold and empty inside. i will watch these stupidly long credits and try to gather my thoughts on this game...
 
plagiarize said:
fourteen years of gaming history just ended for me. i feel cold and empty inside. i will watch these stupidly long credits and try to gather my thoughts on this game...

I was at The Clarifier Part 2 ...how much longer do I have? =/
 
so... fourteen years later, the game is beaten in a handful of days. i was sort of hoping for something a bit meatier in length, not so much given how long they worked on it, but just based more on how the game feels like an older game, and those tended to be longer.

as part of the 'circa 2000 nostalgiathon' i suppose it was okay. it was fun at times. i'm thinking playing it on hard may have been a better idea than normal. there were only a couple of moments that really caused any challenge.

did i like it? objectively... no. the game was too broken and too, i hate to say this, unimaginative.

early on it was better. everything was really interactive, there was lots of other people around to say dumb/funny things to me. early on it had character. early on it was offensive and a tiny bit disturbing, in a funny way (funny for me, as base and purile as it was at times). early on it seemed to have some good ideas.

and then it turned into a game.

just a game, with dated graphics, and an odd mix of old and new gun play. the further on the game goes the less Duke Nukemy it got... until you're just running around hoover dam shooting stuff and making the odd quip.

i liked the RC car. i liked the shrunk platforming. as clunky as they were they were different. if Duke Nukem had been a collage of crazy ideas taken from a smorgasboard of aborted versions of the game i think i'd have found it much more entertaining.

i'm glad i played it. heck, i'm glad i bought it. i think there's something about this character that could be better used. that intro... those early levels... they seemed to have something.

i'd love to see gearbox take those ideas and throw out another game in less than two years.

i'd love to see them steer clear of cliched gaming environments (as the game decends into after showing some promise early on).

it's such a strange game. i mean, obviously it was going to be after the storied history, but when you look at the things that were given such care, and some of the things that weren't, it's enough to make your brain explode.

they went to all the trouble of animating microwave popcorn, and yet couldn't get the jump animation right? they made a working pinball game, but couldn't give us the jetpack?

and that Vegas in Ruins level... does that date back to the earliest Unreal engine days or what? how is that still in the game? it's appalling graphically.

i like Duke too much to rip him a new one... i just wish the game had stayed puerile. i just wish it had kept on doing mad things. i wish the interactivity hadn't dried up so early on. i wish even a fraction more of the cool stuff from the trailers made it into the final game.

mostly i wish that 3D Realms had just sucked it up and finished the game ten years ago. i think we'd have had a product that was less dated. hell, judging things from the trailers we might have had an objectively better game. i wish i'd just finished Duke Nukem 6 or 7 and not Duke Nukem 4.

i'd love to play those prototypes one day... but i know it's not going to happen.
 

tiff

Banned
Combichristoffersen said:
The only rape allusion I found in DNF were the Holsom twins, but going by what they actually say, and the way their personalities have been portrayed earlier in the game (i.e. they're both dumber than a pile of rocks), I think people are stretching it a bit by claiming they've 'definitely' been raped, as it seems the dumb as fuck twins willingly shagged the aliens. As for the other women, it's not really implied anywhere what actually happened to them.
The poster I originally quoted said some big dong thing grabs a girl and rapes her. I'm assuming that happens on screen (that's what he made it sound like)? That wasn't the twins, was it?

And speaking of them, I saw that segment in the Quick Look, and I can tell from there what kind of characters they were supposed to be, but on the other hand their tone wasn't exactly "oh yeah, we totally fucked some aliens, it was so hot Duke" either.
 
tiff said:
The poster I originally quoted said some big dong thing grabs a girl and rapes her. I'm assuming that happens on screen (that's what he made it sound like)? That wasn't the twins, was it?

And speaking of them, I saw that segment in the Quick Look, and I can tell from there what kind of characters they were supposed to be, but on the other hand their tone wasn't exactly "oh yeah, we totally fucked some aliens, it was so hot Duke" either.
I don't recall such a thing happening.
 
so i learned you could redo the difficulty with your ego intact, i went back and beat the mothershit!

got about halfway through and got to the crash course level which seems to be the worst.
 

JRW

Member
06-17-2011_15-50-03_resized.jpg
 

chalonverse

Neo Member
animlboogy said:
Reviews often singled out platforming as a relic of another time. It could have been much better, like everything in this game, but its not like it wasn't fun. I don't need or what some military shooter to have platforming, but maybe something new that splits the difference between this and Metroid Prime?

The big difference between the platforming in DNF and Metroid Prime is that Metroid Prime doesn't punish you much for failing. You miss a jump and you can try again in most cases. In DNF, miss a jump and you're stuck at a loading screen for nearly a minute.

I personally was in the camp that despised the platforming, but then again I really disliked game as a whole.
 

bunbun777

Member
Ok just to clarify-- It is a phallic alien 'dong shaped' thing that has a girl who after being knocked out is still being rode from behind -- the whole thing is pulsating and continues to do its thing-- if you kill the girl and explode her-- then at that point you can actually explode the column's 'head' --

It is very dark in there you have to use your Duke Vision or roll a alien ball around.
 

dark10x

Digital Foundry pixel pusher
chalonverse said:
The big difference between the platforming in DNF and Metroid Prime is that Metroid Prime doesn't punish you much for failing. You miss a jump and you can try again in most cases. In DNF, miss a jump and you're stuck at a loading screen for nearly a minute.

I personally was in the camp that despised the platforming, but then again I really disliked game as a whole.
Metroid Prime did it better than any other game.

However, Duke isn't that punishing. Plenty of areas do not actually result in death. Also, you should be playing it on the PC as the console versions are worthless. ;)
 

Nishastra

Banned
tiff said:
The poster I originally quoted said some big dong thing grabs a girl and rapes her. I'm assuming that happens on screen (that's what he made it sound like)?
I don't remember anything like that. There's plenty of big dong things, but... Hell, at no point is there a girl not at least wearing some kind of thong, even if it's not immediately obvious (or logical) :p
 

K701

Banned
bunbun777 said:
Ok just to clarify-- It is a phallic alien 'dong shaped' thing that has a girl who after being knocked out is still being rode from behind -- the whole thing is pulsating and continues to do its thing-- if you kill the girl and explode her-- then at that point you can actually explode the column's 'head' --

It is very dark in there you have to use your Duke Vision or roll a alien ball around.

I know what you're talking about. I just got to that part (early on in the hive), but you are wrong. That girl is wearing a thong. I took a pic in a ridiculous resolution (I have eyefinity 6 and ran the game in 5880 x 2246 to see the detail on that girl)

AND HERE IS THE PICTURE! (captured with steam and it made the pic 793k so it's very low quality but you can see it)

BTW: The girl is right below the reticle.
 
chalonverse said:
The big difference between the platforming in DNF and Metroid Prime is that Metroid Prime doesn't punish you much for failing. You miss a jump and you can try again in most cases. In DNF, miss a jump and you're stuck at a loading screen for nearly a minute.

I personally was in the camp that despised the platforming, but then again I really disliked game as a whole.
i was able to try again on all the platformy bits i messed up on (Duke burger bathroom and tiny machine). i actually enjoyed the platformy bits as they provided some variety.

not enough though.
 
GavinGT said:
Someone's getting free games from 2K from here on out.

Whoever wrote it didn't want to take credit for it, so it seems.
There's a name at the bottom. It looks like a user review though so it's not like it means anything.

I'm at the driving bit, just got through a Western town but haven't gotten to the part from the demo yet. I guess that puts ms about 1/2 way through?

This game isn't great but I can't deny that I'm enjoying it. Even my wife is amused by it (she missed out on the alien hive level though, thankfully.)
 

domlolz

Banned
jmdajr said:
so is the game really that offensive, or are we just a little sensitive these days?


these are from somethingawful but they sum it up for me.I'm a fan of this sort of analysis, some of you may appreciate them most of you will hate them. I apologise for the :wordswordswords:, I thought they were the best summation of the problems in the game and better than anything i could of come up with and also from someone who was obviously a fan and a lot more sympathetic towards duke than me.

I would of linked it but the original thread got deleted/moved and the forum it's currently in isn't public so...



SuperMechagodzilla said:
Duke 3D homaged/parodied 80s/early 90s action films by making the villains such ridiculous villain caricatures that Duke was an acceptable protagonist by comparison.

Roddy Piper and Snake Plissken are goddamn psychopaths in They Live and Escape from NY, but the point of the films is that society is so broken that these guys can thrive. It's a deliberate part of the films, presenting extreme cynicism (Snake ignores a rape-in-progress because he's that desensitized and amoral) with a smattering of dark humor (Snake's nickname apparently comes from his dick tattoo).

Duke 3D's pig cops were in a context where the Rodney King beating and the LA riots were still fresh in people's minds. Not only that, but the villains behind the pigs were basically rapists - the cheesy "mars needs women" premise getting a gruesome subversion with the Aliens-referencing outcome. Duke 3D didn't joke about the rape. It treated rape as a serious problem equivalent to racism and class warfare, to which Duke was a source of catharsis if not any actual social change. (Duke is was a parodic figure specifically because, despite being a working-class shmoe, he's so unenlightened that he's exclusively driven by basic urges to fuck and kill.)

The women and civilians in Duke 3D were just "normal" people doing their jobs, even if they are strippers or whatever. In other words, they're us. They're the folks feeling oppressed by the government corruption and other social ills, who are crying out for a populist hero to save them. That Duke is ultimately an idiot gave the game a measure of honest-to-god complexity.

DNF treats these "normal" characters with relentless and utter contempt.

Any pretense that Duke was a working-class hero have been dropped, as now he's a apparently a billionaire in a solid-gold penthouse with a fucking throne. The aliens no longer represent police corruption or the patriarchy, but rather, "foreign cultures" (see: the WMD joke). And, obviously, they joke about the rape now because the people being raped are no longer audience stand-ins, but rather a bunch of semi-conscious inhuman inferiors.

(What makes the Olsen twins so objectionable that they need to get taken down several pegs anyways? Besides that they're female, of course. Since when did they represent "wholesomeness" and why is wholesomeness the enemy now?)

The aliens are basically now equivalent to Duke. The line separating him from the baddies is altogether erased. He's not defending anything good, even accidentally, because instead of reacting against the status quo (however clumsily) Duke is the status quo now. And it's fucking unbearable.


SuperMechagodzilla said:
The gameplay is intrinsically tied up in the storyline.

In Duke Nukem 3D, the environments, NPC characters and overall production design are relatively 'realistic', which is contrasted with Duke's superhuman run-and-gun ability and total lack of psychological complexity to emphasize that, yes, this guy is a cartoon like Bugs Bunny - but also a transgressive and rebellious figure because of that cartoonishness. The gameplay in DN3D is a huge component of Duke's characterization.

The strippers in DN3D are just women who strip. They didn't shriek innuendos at you at all. They didn't declare themselves stupid in scripted sequences. They did their jobs in exchange for money. Again, the interactive world was 'realistic' (for a 1996 game) and Duke was the cartoon avenging force who flew down to Earth to right the wrongs. Kinda.

(People have noted that in Duke II, Duke is a full-fledged celebrity. But that's part of the 80s action parody - Duke is simultaneously an everyman and a celebrity, a blue-collar Joe and a relentless killing machine. But in the grand scheme of things, he's far more populist hero than elitist billionaire. Think of the Ghostbusters - beloved by the public despite being impoverished, uncouth and totally reckless. Duke is a similar underdog. The aliens in Duke II interrupt his TV appearance and steal his moment in the spotlight, because Duke just can't catch a break!)

BeanTaco hit it right on the head: Duke in DNF is clearly an entirely different character, to the point of being essentially the opposite character. He's an impostor.

With the 2-weapon thing and the slower movement, Fake-Duke is 'realistic'* while the world is cartoonishly exaggerated. Women are literally subhuman cock-hungry idiots and not just perceived that way by a flawed protagonist. The president is a liberal pantywaist caricature who (allegedly) gets his comeuppance when Fake-Duke "proves" that the world does need another George W. Bush. Y'know, someone who's motivated by sheer literal prejudice - we don't need no evidence of WMDs. Those alien Iraqis are obviously going to rape our (white) women because, naturally, that's what they do.

It bears repeating that the "normal" people in these games represent you, the Duke's Bro. Those moronic groupies sucking Fake-Duke's cock and getting raped are you.

2z6fmli.jpg

Fig. 1: Your Face Here.

These NPCs are so ridiculously idiotic and annoying that Duke actually appears rational, levelheaded and intelligent by comparison. The first hour or so of the game is spent with Fake-Duke just walking around gawking at the absurdity around him, because he's normal now. DNF is almost evangelical about this. If you're not like Duke, the game says, you're a fucking moron and a bitch.

Even DNF's cover shows Duke, from the perspective of a kneeling person, holding his gun like a cock. The game's box is telling you to suck Duke's dick. I guess it's truth-in-advertising.

dbo607.jpg

Fig. 2: John Romero's about to make you his bitch.

Of course, that's not the real Duke. Duke fought the pigs, not his fellow man. Plus, the point of DN3D and earlier games, to an extent, is that no-one can be Duke. He's an amoral force of nature. He's a superhuman wish-fulfillment character. He's a cartoon.


*The DNF health system, bizarrely, goes in the opposite direction, replacing reasonably plausible sci-fi health pickups with the purely fantastic 'ego' system. So while Duke3D is a mortal (every)man who transcends his situation through impossible skills and bravado, Fake Duke is immortal despite lacking much remarkable talent or courage.





SuperMechagodzilla said:
While this is true, DNF's main thrust is just to insult its audience constantly. It's fairly unambiguous about this from the start, with the irritating and awful Duke fans. Then the game directly equates the protagonist to George W. Bush and makes him a closet racist. I doubt that the people responsible are sincerely pro-Iraq-War republicans, so what's the joke? Is it that Duke is stupid and evil, even though the game stacks the deck and proves him absolutely and immediately correct? Is it that DNF itself is intrinsically stupid and evil? That's much more likely.

Keep in mind that this is tied into the theme of Duke's 'relevance'. "Is he just a relic?" The intended controversy over Fake-Duke's neoconservatism is directly tied to the questionable existence of DNF itself. The game declares outright that it has one purpose: to serve as a refreshing blast of oldschool "political incorrectness", which we need in today's world because of... spineless democrats, evil brown people and "vapid cunts"?

That's not to say that the people responsible are raging tea-partiers. I actually strongly doubt it, as they were probably just attempting to be 'edgy' and self-satirical. "Ha-ha Duke3D was really neoconservative and racist wasn't he?" (Again though, this stacks the deck. Were Roddy Piper, Ash from Evil Dead and all the other characters that inspired Duke neoconservatives? Nope. They were, for the most part, libertarians at worst - and most of them are morally ambiguous antiheroes besides. Duke3D, after all, hates authority and his two main character traits are his love of guns and pornography. The creators are satirizing aspects of the character that never actually existed.)

However, it doesn't ultimately matter if DNF is sincerely oblivious or is deliberately being terrible as a fuck-you on anyone "dumb enough" to pay for it. DNF is fundamentally asking sensible people to reject it and every message it conveys. Like when they insult Halo's regenerating health while simultaneously using that exact system - that's not a contradiction. They're simply admitting, intentionally or not, that they've made a bad game. Again, the political themes are directly tied to the gameplay mechanics (or lack thereof).

There's really nothing in the game worth embracing, where DN3D had a valuable amount of juvenile-but-valid anti-authoritarianism and commentary on action hero tropes and how they relate to interactive fiction. While you do play as Duke in DN3D, his constant interjections prevent total 'immersion', leaving the women - surprisingly enough - the more relatable, human characters.

No-one in DNF appears relatable, leaving its Duke-shaped void the closest thing to a human experience they could muster.


SuperMechagodzilla said:
I hope that, by this point, it's clear I'm an admirer of Duke 3D. If DNF is specifically targeted towards Duke 3D fans, they've hit the wrong ones. I mean, very little of DNF is the same as Duke 3D, besides trivial stuff like how the weapons look.

These fans apparently didn't care about the gameplay or the storyline or, really, anything about DN3D besides the sheer fact of the pixelated tits and swear words. Like, not even what the swear words and tits mean in context, their comedic effect and whatnot. You could just play Halo with a nudity mod and a fart noise soundboard, and it would be a roughly equivalent - if not superior - Duke Nukem experience to what DNF provides. Which is to say that it doesn't really provide one at all.

These are the fans you always encounter who love something but don't (or won't) consider why. So they make outrageous and indulgent demands that end up backfiring. "I want a sequel to Terminator where it's in the future now and we see people shooting robots and Christian Bale is in it and he saves the day." Etc.

You'll always encounter pockets of fans who claim to be actually satisfied by this crummy fanservice. Because if you go through the checklist, the game does admittedly have a breast, a swear, a shrink-ray and the appropriate brand name/logo. Who cares about the implementation? Fans can consider themselves officially serviced - but to what end?


SuperMechagodzilla said:
An actual Duke's Bro would know from the level "XXX-Stacy" in the Atomic Edition of DN3D that the real Duke was never a misogynist, but is simply into light S&M and even some femdom action on the side to mix things up.

On encountering two lipstick lesbians being spanked by a butch dominatrix on the set of Sister Act V, Duke exclaims "my kind of party!" This dominatrix actually insults and degrades him - yet, despite the character's reputation as an uncompromisingly brutish individual, this is Duke's kind of party. Not a fetch quest for a dildo in a tiny strip club. Strip clubs are small-time. They're the first level. Duke's fantasy is to spank a submissive woman while simultaneously being called pathetic by a leather-clad gal with a whip.

The dominatrix actually looks a lot like Duke, as folks have noted, giving the whole thing a mildly homoerotic vibe, but what this also demonstrates is that being Duke is a gendered fantasy that transcends biological sex. Not only is a female Duke possible, she's desirable to the Duke himself - as a relative equal, even. This understated intelligence is leagues outside the grasp of whoever made DNF what it is.

DN3D was offensive in valuable ways. You didn't need to invoke regressive anti-intellectualism and incuriousity to justify it, because DN3D was much more than just a fecal simulation.


SuperMechagodzilla said:
The danger here is in considering it 'just' perception. That everything is subjective does not make every subjective opinion equivalent in worth.

While DNF can certainly be considered "good" at generating nihilistic despair (and some people do apparently enjoy the game's directionless, quasi-misanthropic hatred of life itself - thanks to "irony" or some other cultivated indifference), this approach to Duke Nukem can be considered invalid when held against other, much more valuable approaches.

Like, for example, rejecting this equivocating heap and experiencing instead the unqualified joy and vibrancy of Duke 3D.

It's simply correct to dismiss the Fake-Duke who would have you fellate his gun, and to celebrate the real Duke who fought to satisfy women of all stripes as well as himself. The real Duke was ultimately a figure of sexual liberation, and to conflate that with this bizarre rape-culture stuff is totally un-Duke. And you always bet on Duke!

What people seemingly forgot is that betting on Duke necessarily requires being able to discern which Duke is real and which is a shit-golem lookalike. You don't bet on shit. You bet on Duke.

SuperMechagodzilla said:
I feel that it's been shown fairly definitively that Duke 3D was not "South Park offensive" (read: halfhearted, 'apolitical' crypto-conservatism) but was rather an precise and laudable progressive statement pulled off with minimal resources, and with excellent gameplay as its base. The revelatory dominatrix scene in DN3D:AE consists of a couple sprites and some tinny sound clips. In fact, that's all the game had at its disposal in any scene. This is absolutely remarkable.

The one 'problem' with Duke 3D is that this minimalism left space for bad people to void their horrors into it and consequently undermine everything the game was actually doing. Effectively: "Duke always hated women, because that's how I played him." And because 'Duke' did it, it's all naturally acceptable.

It's safe to assume that DNF's creators and fans read the dominatrix scene as "hurf, dominatrixes are silly shit" - because everything about Duke 3D was "silly shit" - because there's this very real perception (voiced openly and repeatedly here, and clearly held by the game's creators) that humor is a somehow an apolitical violence. The belief is that the sole purpose and effect of comedy is the mitigated degradation of a target. By 'mitigated', I mean that the humor is considered "just a joke" and "harmless escapism" so there's no consequence to the attacks. They might not even be considered attacks at all. This is not "real" violence, they assert. Duke is and has always been, to them, "just a stupid videogame."

What this attitude reveals is, of course, that people are supporting the rape and hatred perpetuated by DNF's Fake-Duke with utter sincerity. DNF allows them to escape from the society that would tell them rape is wrong and freely enjoy the trappings of rape culture in a "safe" context. DNF's existence as a mass-media event allows them to consider themselves not deviants and aggressors, but simply indulging in some collective (and therefore "normal") rape-wish. The "ironic" approach serves a similar purpose of protecting the DNF creator/player from from being conscious of their hatred.

This appeal to "escapism" - the paradoxical assertion that Duke is desirable because of its lack of impact, relevance, emotional engagement or overall value - is tied into the celebration of its [alleged] "offensiveness".

The real Duke naturally would tell you that an offense involves having a target and a plan. Offense is a strategy. (Again, a game's story and its gameplay are indivisible.)

Clearly then, DNF is not actually offensive. It's just, I don't know, tragic? Unfortunate? DNF is "offensive" only in the sense that a child playing with a gun is an "offense". It's simply the terrible threat of power in the wrong hands. "Wrong" by way of ignorance and inexperience: ignorance of the power held and inexperience with regards to how or why to wield it.

What it comes down to is, as I have shown before, that DNF apologism is anti-Duke to the core.

SuperMechagodzilla said:
I think the Holsom/Olsen twins' rape-death scene should be examined in greater detail so that we can convey the full scope of why it doesn't work, and hopefully help prevent Duke's Bro pretenders from further dismissing our criticisms.

While apologists will says it's just deliberate slut stereotypes getting their comeuppance in a game that "hates everyone equally" (read: whitewashes majority privilege) the twins are actually granted a modicum of psychological complexity. These are full-fledged personalities being raped to death for "just jokes". Why, again, is it the Olsen twins being targeted, and why it's specifically their "wholesomeness" that's (apparently) objectionable? We know from the infamous DNF artbook that Broussard originally intended them to be Christian celebrities and that they are satirical. Superficially, you might mistake it as a satire of hypocrisy in religion/"family-friendly" media, like those anti-gay politicians getting caught cruising for boys.

This is not the case.

What's revealed in the game's actual dialogue is that the two women are self-aware about their degradation. They state outright that they act "naughty" (i.e. "not wholesome" (get it?!)) because, otherwise, Fake-Duke won't protect them. The important point here is that these women are not hypocrites, but are rather actually nice, honest, human people who Fake-Duke is coercing into degrading sex acts. Because, if they don't service him with quasi-incestuous performances that nobody appears to be enjoying*, Fake-Duke will refuse to defend them from rapists. What is being "satirized", then, is not false piousness at all. The game is actually "satirizing" the lengths women will go to to escape the omnipresent threat of sexual violence. Because - ha ha - they might even "choose" institutional oppression to escape straight-up rape-murder!

It's important that all this hateful content is present in the game long before the hive level. The hive just re-enforces what was already present from the game's first seconds. So the reading that the "losing the weight from the rape-pregnancy" line is at the expense of the twins being "vain celebrity sluts" is a misinterpretation. The "joke" is actually that the characters are fully aware of their situation and are playing dumb in a desperate attempt at earning Fake-Duke's "sympathy". And by "sympathy" I mean recognition of their use-value as sentient holes. They are simply offering their bodies in exchange for mercy. They are pleading for Duke not to kill them or let them be raped to death.

Fake-Duke responds: "Looks like you're... fucked."

And fucked by what? As has already been established, the aliens no longer represent American hegemony and patriarchy (as they did in DN3D). They're now "foreigners" - specifically middle-easterners, and most specifically Iraqi people. They are, of course, "uncivilized", yet possess secret and unimaginably sophisticated terror-weapons (WMDs!). With this in mind, why do the twins plead that this was only "our first time... with an alien"? once again, the "joke" has been misinterpreted. It's not just "lol they're totally not virgins". They are trying to assure Fake-Duke of their racial purity because otherwise he will kill them. This of course puts perspective on the whole level: "they're not human anymore." "I'm doing them a favor," and whatever.

For context, the cocooned women in DN3D pleading "kill me" were victims of rape by aliens who stood in for white, American men and the patriarchy in general. The bad guys were the phallic rape-monsters of Aliens and the sexist/racist "pigs" of the LAPD. Since DN3D was innovative for including destructible and interactive objects, the cocooned women, fascinatingly, were made equivalent to breakable barrels by the villains. They were literally objectified, and Duke was powerless to save them. ("Putting them out of their misery", rightly, was discouraged, and neither outcome was "good.") The very clear purpose of this was that rape and sexism are wrong. If DN3D is read in terms of a traditional act-structure, this could be considered the point where Duke grows from paying women at the strip club towards enjoying consensual femdom.

The Fake-Duke in DNF "grows" in a very different way: he simply starts slapping the aliens' "wall-tits" instead, because (paraphrased): "human women don't like it when you slaps their tits". Note that that Fake-Duke's violent groping is overtly non-consensual in either case. Worse, Duke hasn't actually gained any appreciation for his babes - the event has only intensified his hatred for the inhuman "foreigners". Now he's (more overtly) sexualizing his violence against them. He's going to kill their queen-bitch!"

The point of this long post is pretty straightforward. Despite one poster's assertion that the hive scene is only 40 seconds long and therefore 'easily ignored', that scene is a locus for attitudes that pervade the entirety of the game. It summarizes DNF in the same way that the interactive turd summarizes DNF. At least that much is consistent.


*The very first "joke" of the game is based on the revelation to the player that Fake-Duke was being fellated. In other words, the player experienced nothing erotic, and the women certainly weren't being gratified either. Meanwhile, the joke-within the joke is that Fake-Duke is completely indifferent to the women sucking his cock. What happened to the Duke of DN3D who simply and unpretentiously enjoyed sex - which necessarily involved some degree of intimacy and reciprocation?

SuperMechagodzilla said:
Sorry to quote myself, but this has been addressed:

"...the humor is considered "just a joke" and "harmless escapism" so there's no consequence to the attacks. They might not even be considered attacks at all. This is not "real" violence, they assert. Duke is and has always been, to them, "just a stupid videogame."

What this attitude reveals is, of course, that people are supporting the rape and hatred perpetuated by DNF's Fake-Duke with utter sincerity. DNF allows them to escape from the society that would tell them rape is wrong and freely enjoy the trappings of rape culture in a "safe" context."


But more to the point, can anyone please support the game without resorting to this halfhearted whining that's being weakly passed off as cool-dude aloofness?

I'm strongly suspecting that folks are incapable of actually praising this game. That is to say, beyond lame one-liners and indignation over real criticism. Is there a critical perspective that finds value in the game?

Where is the positive criticism from DNF fans?
 

randomwab

Member
domlolz said:
these are from somethingawful but they sum it up for me.I'm a fan of this sort of analysis, some of you may appreciate them most of you will hate them. I apologise for the :wordswordswords:, I thought they were the best summation of the problems in the game and better than anything i could of come up with and also from someone who was obviously a fan and a lot more sympathetic towards duke than me.

I would of linked it but the original thread got deleted/moved and the forum it's currently in isn't public so...

These are amazing. I really need to get a SA account.
 

bunbun777

Member
K701 said:
I know what you're talking about. I just got to that part (early on in the hive), but you are wrong. That girl is wearing a thong. I took a pic in a ridiculous resolution (I have eyefinity 6 and ran the game in 5880 x 2246 to see the detail on that girl)

AND HERE IS THE PICTURE! (captured with steam and it made the pic 793k so it's very low quality but you can see it)

BTW: The girl is right below the reticle.

Yea she's wearing a thong but I am not wrong-- lol-- there is definite motion going on-- if it's not the dirty it's the semblance of-- since you were looking too you must have seen it grabbing both her arms...
 
Matthew Gallant said:
There isn't going to be a next game.
I love how you go around trying (and failing) to troll but this game. DNF has done fine sales wise, and anyone with any real interest in games knows the history of the title and how the game ended up being average not to mention how smart Gearbox is when it comes to IP, A new Duke will come soon and hopefully then you'll learn the difference between what you think and how things really are.
 
B_Rik_Schitthaus said:
Any guesses what the next game will be called, Duke 3D, FOREVER.
I cant think of any clever title for it.

Duke Nukem: Party at the Pentagon

Anyone disappointed that in their Duke 1 shoutout, they replaced Oprah with Lenoman? :(

Otherwise I had a raging boner at that part.
 

K701

Banned
bunbun777 said:
Yea she's wearing a thong but I am not wrong-- lol-- there is definite motion going on-- if it's not the dirty it's the semblance of-- since you were looking too you must have seen it grabbing both her arms...


Well to me it just looks like she's being absorbed into the thing and trying to get out so that's where the motion comes from. If you look closely her arms and legs gradually change into the thing, it's more obvious in the girl hanging in the upper right of the picture.
 
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