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Duke is out (at least in the UK) so with a fair degree of excitement I loaded it up this evening after I saw it in the pile of mail.
So far, I can't say I'm too impressed; it suffers from all of the worst bits of the current generation of games, such as recharging health, near-endless-ammo-everywhere, limited ability to carry weapons, horribly brown/grey environments, auto-aim (even when I turn this off I can still hit enemies if the crosshair is only "vaguely" pointing at them, so it obviously doesn't turn 'off off'), lack of serious graphics options (Just Cause 2 showed how a 'Graphics' option menu should look on the PC) and it's far too "hold my hand, guide me, I'm afraid of the dark". The only time I got remotely puzzled so far about what to do or where to go, the game started dropping... well, I'd hardly call them hints... more like neon-signs pointing to what I should be doing. I won't even start on the OTT post-processing that is straight out of the 'lots of upscaling so need to hide the jaggies' console programmers bible - especially since a couple of times I went to check my resolution settings as stuff was a lot more aliased than it should have been.
I hope I don't have to explain why I find many of these things annoying. Some of them can be forgiven. OK, basically just the ammo one can be forgiven. The rest smacks of console-itis. It's like Gearbox said, "Duke has aliens... Halo has aliens! Duke must be like Master Chief!" then followed it up with... "Did Doom 3 have aliens or demons in it? I think it was aliens...!" because I've not encountered an enemy yet that had the colour, the vibrancy, the interest that the old Duke enemies had... even if they share the same names. They all seem like Doom 3 rejects. So do the weapons... even the Devestator, the classic use-all-your-ammo-in-five-seconds Duke weapons sort of farts out warheads in a phut... phut... phut... phut... rather than the pftpftpftpftpftpft rapid-fire that it did in Duke 3D.
The humour, while a bit on the crude side, and the interactivity of the world is probably all that is really keeping me interested. I won't spoil the game for those that want to buy it, but some of the puzzles, with no crudity at all, had me genuinely smiling at them. They weren't hard, but they were fun to do.
At the minute, I just hope Gearbox release a mod toolkit, or this game will be completed once, and then utterly abandoned. I don't think I've ever sold a game, and yet this one is making me seriously tempted... except I can't, because it's now permanently locked to my Steam account. Ah well.
Duke should be about crazy weapons (and lots of them - I mean, what other game gives you an RPG 30 seconds in to the first level?), (somewhat crude) humour, cunning level design and fun.
So far, this isn't really any of those things. I don't know why I expected more.
I'm just hoping now that the "more accessible" Hitman: Absolution won't be a dumbed-down pile of turd too. Given some of the teaser vids I've seen, I don't hold out much hope.
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