After huge successes for the past decade, Gearbox just took a shit on the video gaming industry with Duke Nukem.
Titles like Half-Life (and work on Counter-Strike), Brothers-In-Arms, and the insanely popular Borderlands wreaked havoc in market share. But Gearbox’s latest release, Duke Nukem: Forever, just doesn’t fit. Anywhere.
At first, I thought it was satirical: a subversive attack on the evolution of the FPS genre. Then after typing that last sentence, I realized I may be as full of bullshit as Duke Nukem: Forever ever was.
I’m not mad at playing a shitty game. It happens. I just feel like a trick was played on me. That or Gearbox severely underestimated the gaming IQ of it’s consumers. I’m really hoping it’s the latter.
RFA plays like the spunky, lively brunette who you keep calling and making plans with, and you’re too busy having fun in the moment to worry about anything long-term. That’s Armageddon. Completely engaging and without guilt. The antithesis of most female twenty-something Catholics.
Glitchoris BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front)
Don’t shelve this one for a rainy day – pick it up and play right now. It’s not redefining the FPS genre, but it’s just too damn good to pass up.
Apology
Playing through RFA a couple times changed the way I played the game – which isn’t to be confused with how I played the game. The first playthrough found me walking into a new area, blasting everything to high hell (most probably with the singularity gun), and then figuring out what I was supposed to be doing. But each successive hour during the second playthough I found myself walking into a new area, spending a brief second or two recording the placement of structures, and then blowing everything to high hell. However, this time around, I was able to analyze the environment and gage where I needed to go according to the structures.
Part of me thinks this change isn’t any big deal; we all get better at games the more we play them. I just think the larger part of me was impressed that Armageddon played this large of a role in my thought process. I admit: I underestimated RFA from the beginning – and I’m extraordinarily pleased that I was wrong.
Smooth
Darius Mason, the protagonist, is not your typical shoot-first, foul-mouthed hero. He doesn’t necessarily contain an absurd amount of depth, but he actually plays like a normal human being in his spot would: fairly realistic with a hint of sarcasm. This was one of our concerns with Bulletstorm – the characters were so transparent that after the first few acts, when they started to mature, even the maturation was transparent.
While Armageddon is a departure from Guerrilla‘s open world mode, we don’t feel terribly boxed in by our environment; it’s actually quite the opposite. We are able to obliterate and reconstruct with ease, and after a short few hours of gameplay, the entire process becomes second nature.
Final Thoughts
We hope that Volition doesn’t sit too long before offering either more content or another installment. The story is definitely there, as most narrative arcs normally are, but we’d drop cash for more content, more guns, more forge nova talents, and more pure fun.
One aspect of the game that we wish would have been included, however, is a dual player co-op story mode. The multiplayer scenarios are definitely fun, but to run through the tunnels and magma pools with a good friend would add hours (I’m talking back from the bars at 2 am hours) of fun. We may not remember playing the hours, but if we did, we’re sure they would have been hilarious.
With today’s media climate as it is, with Weiner bringing sexty back and Tracey Morgan speaking out against anybody not straight, it’s nice to play a video game that is exactly how it’s advertised.
For your viewing pleasure:
Now, did you see that big fucking spider thing pop up like three times? You get to drive that thing! And shoot people. It’s great. We also are pretty sure you saw the protagonist rebuilding a walkway with his left arm “forge nova.” You get to do that too!
Here’s how the game started out for us. You know when you have just one thing to do? It happens about once or twice a year. Everything else is already done or can’t be started, and that leaves you with one measly little chore for the day. These are the days where you only have to put on pants for like, maybe, fifteen minutes? Then you go back to your pajamas and t-shirt as if annoyed that being dressed like a grown-up is more contagiously shitty than the black plague.
Well, that was yesterday for me. And my one thing was to put in some game time for RFA. And for the record, I didn’t start playing until about 4pm. I’m a lazy sloth at times.
I honestly think Volition coded crack into the game. I couldn’t put the controller down. Seriously, I completely forgot the Mavericks were playing the Heat in Game 5 of the NBA Championships. I’m a moderate NBA fan, but only because I like to watch theatrics of professional sports. Then I didn’t even watch the endof the game where apparently Lebron James pulled a Chris Angel and vanished in the fourth quarter.
Now that the introduction is through, here’s the rest of my neural firings.
More Playtime
Creative deaths. Part of me wishes we could transplant the environmental deaths of Bulletstorm with absolutely everything else from Armageddon. Then we’d be all set. I hammered a guy into a twenty-foot gas tank only to watch him bounce off. I would have enjoyed the explosion.
Epic battles. One of the pleasant surprises of Armageddon is the sheer amount of killing that takes place in a short amount of time. Headshots are fun – but erasing twenty people from God’s red Mars in under five seconds dwarfts that.
Secrets. I know I sound like a fucking five year old just discovering the joys of bombable walls in the original Legend of Zelda, but I can’t deny I would spend hours blasting shit up that doesn’t make sense just for one minute of ecstasy of finding something buried.
Less Playtime
Asshole CO’s. Every CO in the game is a stereotypical Patton. Nobody can be right going against the commanding officer. It’s more than played out, and this seems to be the norm for FPS’s these days. Oh well, can’t have it all, can we?
Fatality sans blood. Armageddon doesn’t really employ blood, and that’s something we definitely want to see. It doesn’t need to be spurting out of every orifice…ok, it needs to be spurting out of every orifice.
Final review up by the end of the week – probably Saturday morning.
We love games that let us just blow the shit out of everything. Maybe there is a small membrane in our cortex that secretly admires Michael Bay? Continue Reading
L.A. Noire plays like the woman you are dating that does everything she wants in her own time, but everything still works out in your favor. And somehow, in the end, you’re left wanting more.
Glitchoris BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front)
Buy it. Now. It’s a more than a worthy follow-up release from last year’s Red Dead Redemption. Rockstar is evolving, and this is a crucial step in their maturation. Continue Reading
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Bulletstorm is like the freaky girl that would be hotter if she was even freakier. And we’re talking freaky. Then your friends wouldn’t ask why you’re with her. They’d just think to themselves, “He’s into some freaky shit.”
Glitchoris BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front)
Don’t buy it for more than about $20 used. It’s fun, but it’s more like pop video gaming. You’ll have fun with it, but the fun is fleeting. Like a Britney Spears song. Except Toxic. We still love that song. Continue Reading
The thing about Bulletstorm isn’t that it’s over-the-top. It’s that it’s not over-the-top enough. We want this game to wake up in the morning, slam a venti coffee, wash it down with a Red Bull, then eat a bowl of sugar-coated steroids. Continue Reading
The first-person shooter genre seems to be paradoxically covering two very specific paths in the video game industry: the no-nonsense, wartime theme, or the guilty-pleasure theme with science fiction-y guns, environments, and armor.
