The gaming industry has always lived for hype. It fuels the fan base’s expectations; throws the ethanol of speculation on the brushfires of rumor. Most importantly, it lets a gamer paint a picture of how a game is going to be in their mind before we even play it.
Imagination is the bastard child of hype: ‘What is it going to be like?’ is often the thought on everyone’s mind when they see those new screenshots or videos. Back in 2007, 2008, everyone was passing around gaming magazines with screens of the upcoming Fallout 3 plastered across each and every page. This was back in school. Ages ago.
We never had an inkling of what Fallout 3 was going to end up like, but from what we all thought would be included, it was a definite buy. But when we got hold of a copy, the game itself could not have been more different to what we imagined, but nonetheless, the mental scenario we had envisaged was as inviting as the actual virtual world that was created. We loved it.
Bring it forward to 2011, and the same formula was repeated; pictures of the high points of Duke’s latest outing appeared; videos of gratuitous violence, ‘babes’, etcetera. This looked pretty fun.
By showcasing the high points of the game, the publisher pretty much tied us up into the belief that that was what we were buying. However, as a lot of you probably know, the game turned out much differently to what we expected and what we had envisaged; it was better in our heads.
Sure the things we had been shown earlier were there, but the game sort of lacked much else. Anyway, this isn’t a review. If you want one of those, Google search ‘mad pseudojournos preaching hatred against 2K’.
You may be wondering why this article, which has above highlighted the failure of DNF to please, is titled with the statement that this is the most relevant Duke title yet. You wonder correctly, and no, it’s not a mistake.
DNF has, somehow, captured the attentions of nearly every contingent of gamers to date, and, via the internet, has caused them to be united in their genuinely passionate criticism of the title.
The classic gamers are split over whether old or new is better, or whether it was all just rubbish anyway; the casual gamers enjoyed it about as much as they enjoy everything, ‘there are worse ways to spend an afternoon’; the moral corps of the internet are up in arms, sexism, misogyny, etcetera; there hasn’t been so much controversy and casual commentary over a game in a long, long time.
But every comment is feedback.
Duke Nukem: Forever has successfully worked up a shitstorm, maybe even literally, in the consciousness of gamers, but that the fact that ‘it was so bad it was good’ may still somehow bring in enough money and most importantly, details of what the consumer wants from the franchise to 2K and Gearbox to warrant a properly done, in-house sequel.
DNF isn’t really a game. It’s more of a hammy theatrical performance by Duke himself, designed to elevate him above and beyond our expectations in the future. In a somewhat Christlike self-sacrifice, which has left most of us sufficiently pissed off, Duke has ensured that next time we see him, well; we might be pleasantly surprised.
La Noire Mysterious ‘Nicholson Electroplating’ DLC Revealed
EA Big Man Has Only Harsh Words for COD and Activision
John Riccitiello ain’t no pushover. In a straight-to-the-point interview with industry gamers, John gave some opinions of steel about the state of the FPS showdown between COD and Battlefield 3 – Here’s what the man himself at EA thinks of these things.
- Modern Warfare 3
“The honest truth is I think Modern Warfare is going to be a really good game,”
“I think that in a weird way it’s starting to feel a little to me like the Disneyland abstraction of a war game – a little bit jump the shark. So it feels a little bit like that to me. And I think there’s a market for that.”
- Battlefield 3
“I think our game is more authentic. It’s definitely going to do a lot of things better. Lighting’s better, physics is better, animations are better, particle effects are better, vehicles are better.”
- COD Elite
“I don’t know what’s in Elite right now, but based on what I’ve seen, I think they might’ve been better off holding the Elite thing and been a little more careful and show up a month after they’ve launched Modern Warfare 3,” - Activision’s reaction to superior Battlefield 3 promotional media
“I think the reason they led with their chin is that they needed to say something against what was clearly a more powerful presentation of Battlefield 3 over Modern Warfare. So they needed something to say. I think they picked the wrong thing, but there’s a lot of months between now and November so they’ve got plenty of time to recover,” - Who will buy BF3
“[There is] a concentration of people that might tell the difference between a good game and a bad game. We’re going to do really well there. A lot of people bought Modern Warfare more for the coffee table and didn’t play it for 2 months. There’s sort of that mass audience… they’re going to win there. The question is, ‘So, if the gamer buys our game and the mass audience buys their game, where do the two meet?’ And all I want to do, if you will, is to have them rot from the core,”
So, Ea and Activision are slinging words like bullets in the very games they plan to sell… is Battlefield 3 going to come out on top after all? Will COD ‘rot from the core’ like John Riccitiello of EA would have it? Who knows, but both titles are coming last quarter 2011, around November. See you there.
The Wii U has a pretty flashy controller – the dual analogue sticks, the touch screen, motion control, the incredibly diverse array of gimmicks. So erm, how are we going to afford a truckload of these things in order to have a bit of co-operative japery?
Apparently not, as Nintendo bigwigs in Japan have said that the company is only going to support games that utilize a single controller, as additional controllers would be too much for an average salary to cover.
Satoru Iwata, the man himself of Nintendo, said to a Japanese business web domain that there was a definite financial downside to requiring consumers to purchase additional controllers for Nintendo’s shiny new console. Apparently easiest solution for the company is minimizing the amount of controllers to combat this issue.
Iwata made it clear that it is possible for the Wii U to support multiple controllers, but Nintendo is not planning on asking its customers to buy more than one in the interview in which he revealed this news.
Does this mean Nintendo co-op is dead and gone for good? Is what we experienced on the N64 dead for good? What happened to local multiplayer? I am sad now. Goodbye.
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