ThunderPeel2001

From 2002 is "only" five/six years. I guess that's how they've managed to keep going? In April 1997 (when they expected the game to be released in 1998) the entire Duke Nukem Forever team comprised of: Todd Replogle (lead coder) Allen Blum (associate producer & lead level designer) George Broussard (project manager) Dirk Jones (artist) Brian Martel (artist) Brian Cozzens (texture artist, modeller and sketch/concept) Michael Wallin (artist) Stephen Cole (mapper) Keith Schuler (mapper) According to Broussard it was "the strongest, most talented Duke team yet".

I just read your guide to joining Idle Forums (no idea why the thread is locked, so I'm replying here). When I saw the title I thought "who is this idiot?", but as I read it I realized it was hilarious and brilliantly (awfully) true! But now it makes me suspicious of your pro-LucasArts/pro-Loom post... Is he just saying this to try and become our friend...?? Is it all just some ruse to win us over...??

As mentioned they're paying for it themselves, so they have nobody to answer to (which is probably a good thing). Your crude maths seems to assume that they would have had a full development team working full time on it for 11 years. I reckon they've probably had only a handful at various times, or else, as you say, they surely must have gotten too far into the red by now.

It's very odd, especially considering that being stealthy is an option for dealing with bad guys. What's with all the great reviews? None of the ones I've read have mentioned this glaring hole in the gameplay... Is everyone afraid because of the Kane & Lynch thing?!

It seems to me that the streets are filled with more aggressive, angrier, tenser people than usual... and I can't help but feel Xmas is to blame - It's so bloody stressful! Is anyone else feeling the extra stress from this jolly time of year?

Ok, well I just left it at Medium setting and kept playing. I quite enjoyed it. I appreciate the huge landscape and it did look beautiful at times. It's quite freeing. I saw a boat on the horizon so I decided to swim towards and see if I was met with a dreaded invisible barrier... but instead I was able to keep swimming and swimming until eventually I was shot by the boat.. Lots of fun! I really got the feeling I could have wandered around the whole beautifully rendered island. I have rarely encountered worse enemy AI, however. The physics allows you to do some interesting things. There was a jeep with a gun turret mounted on it that kept patrolling the road I was following. So I took a random car, blockaded the road with it and hid in the bushes waiting to take the enemy jeep out... Brilliantly, they couldn't pass. But they didn't slow when they saw the vehicle either... they just kept "driving", neither of the bad guys noticing that they were going nowhere. Hmmm. Later, I also killed three bad guys and, being unable to move their corpses, I panicked when I saw an enemy jeep coming down the road where they lay. I braced myself for a reaction when they saw their comrades laying in the road... No need to worry though, they just drove RIGHT past them. Hard to believe that, despite beautiful graphics and physics, older games like Deus Ex had better enemy AI... Big disappointment in this department and a hugely wasted opportunity for more tactical gameplay

I think it's still a bit stressful. I think yesterday was the worst, though. People were going crazy in the shops

This. Guy. Is. A. GENIUS!!!!

I agree. The films weren't perfect renditions, but they did capture the world and feeling you got from reading them better than I think anyone could have expected. Before the film came out, LotR was considered "unfilmable". Jackson and Co managed to perfectly capture the essence of the books while staying pretty damn true to them at the same time. The "homosexual tension", as you call it, was there in the original books and was talked about a _long_ time before Jackson made his movies. Of course Jackson said that Tolkien was probably drawing on his own experiences in WWI, where he had seen people need to band together and rely on each other much more than they would in everyday life. The aerial shots obviously weren't in the original books, but instead we have a detailed description of EVERY PLANT THEY WALK PAST! (Especially in the first book.) So, yes, I do love LotR, but I can see why people might not like the books, as they can be tough going at times. There were definitely a few changes I could do without (the highpoint of all three books, The Battle of Helm's Deep, was the low point of the films for me... WHY did he have to change it...? moan moan whinge whinge ) but overall PJ defied all expectations and managed to take something considered unfilmable and turn it into something which pleased fans of the books (mostly) and average cinemagoers alike.

I guess it's the hype. It's almost like when Doom 3 was announced. Duke Nukem was another popular game from around that time. I never played Payne 2... was it any good?

Where do you download it?! Or is that part of the puzzle

Good lord. How on earth do they keep going?! If DNF doesn't work then I can only imagine they won't be around any more?

Excellent idea!

I sense another completely pointless Thumbs argument brewing

They captured the books PERFECTLY (which a few minor quibbles - Gimli... sigh). If you didn't like them then you surely couldn't have like the books... and if you DID like the books, how could the films have possibly been improved?! (Go watch the Ralph Bakshi version and we'll discuss.) I'd be willing to bet that most people who didn't "get" LOTR were people who heard the hype before they got excited about seeing it. Hype always kills movies It took me two watches to appreciate the first film, as I was TOO expectant, but on the second watch I saw it: A brilliant, non Hollywood, true to the original, imaginative, creative, beautiful vision of Tolkien's work. Seriously the most consistent trilogy of films ever made (that tell one big story).

Hmmm. They're just not very good reviews. They're just a guy bitching about a game, which to start off with was usually very funny and deserved. Then he gave a good review to Psychonauts and people complained, so now he just complains about every game he gets. Sometimes it's funny (GH3, but he still missed a lot of the reasons to hate it) and sometimes it's just strained (Super Paper Mario). Plus there's something base about just enjoying someone complaining for the sake of it. Don't get me wrong, if I thought that his insights were spot on and he really let rip into something that genuinely deserved it, and he was STILL funny, then I'd think he was a genius (Charlie Brooker, anyone?). But it really doesn't take THAT much talent to just complain about things in an amusing manner for the sake of it... so I'm not that impressed. Well, I never actually said they were intended as "buying guides", I said that they shouldn't be taken seriously by anyone... which makes your post - Lame!

Well 3D Realms are paying for it themselves... which is good I guess, as they're independent. I suppose the money came from Max Payne and Prey, and the reason they keep working on it is that it's the best license they own, and so more likely to make money than a "new" title. Apparently Prey was in development hell for 11 years... DNF has only been there for ten!

His reviews are still lame... They're entertaining, sure, but no-one should ever make a buying decision based on one. Mass Effect's was particularly lame; in between the jokes was the message: If you like this sort of thing, then you'll like this sort of thing and if you don't, you wont. Gee, thanks for that insight Still, glad to see that just about everyone is having the same feeling about GH3. Bring on Rock Band!

Well, it does seem like they're trying to capture what made Duke 3D so popular in the first place... It feels the same, but obviously the last line, which should have been funny, was not funny. I'm sure the original voice guy did a better job (although, for all I know, this IS the original guy). That's how he's always looked. I think he was designed to be specifically a cross between those two actors... He's supposed to be a tongue in cheek version of those two, with Ash from The Evil Dead thrown in for comedy.

At this point it will take a lot more than a screenshot and a teaser trailer to make me excited about this game.

Hmmm. I was running it at 1280x1024, so I thought it'd be ok. The game "rates" my system at a Medium graphical setting across the board. If I add 4xAA I can feel it, though, which is annoying. With BioShock I ran it at 1680x1050 with everything maxxed out, including V-Sync, and I didn't notice a single bit of slowdown. Not sure if your Quad processor or more onboard GFX ram makes a lot of difference, but your proc will certainly help with the physics. I'll mess around with the settings and see if I can make a difference.

I see what you mean now, but it's more than just enthusiast media. What about newspapers? They need to sell in order to keep going. They're businesses. All TV shows are dictated by how much advertising they can generate for the TV channel, too. It might be less so in the UK, especially with the BBC, but it's definitely true for the US, and the UK is following their model more and more. As aside, the reason that the BBC News Service isn't dictated by advertising is probably because they don't have sponsors But more importantly, in the UK, TV news has to unbiased by law (unlike in the US). Which is why all TV news over here, not just the BBC's, is generally pretty good and of much higher quality than in the US.

What are your graphical settings?

Not that far back then

Those Fucking Unicorns Brilliant! There's a few other good ones there, too. Chevy Metal, I like it! Might just use that for my GH/RB band name... Butt Stomach might be a bad name, but I like their music.