While working with mr. House I adventured through the whole map and did all the sidequests that I found. The bothersome thing is that the levelcap struck so damn early. I should've installed a mod to get ten or twenty more levels. Not that I needed them to complete the game but because I enjoy hearing the ka-ching sound every time I do something worth something and get some experience. It's a bit late to complain about that now, but anyway.
Most of the House-specific went mostly just like the ones for Yes Man, this time I should've prevented an assassination but because the other factions didn't trust me at all ("shoot on sight") after a couple of misunderstandings, that quest wasn't even tryable. Oh well, who cares, I didn't like the target anyway ;) In addition to that the only mentionable difference I can think of was that I used a couple of skill magazines (+10 Speech, +10 Barter) so I could talk to Lanius to get a peaceful conclusion with him, just for a change. Of course I put down that NCR general and his bodyguard because he got on my nerves. I didn't even consider negotiating with him to solve things peacefully.
At some point, when I had the time, I started playing the endgame for the Legion. Because it's the endgame already, not much changed from the previous two attempts, so there's not much sense in repeating the same stories here. I got to play surgeon with uncle Caesar's head and I had to do the simpler solution because my medical skill was one (1) point too low even with the skill mags! Well, I'll do that the next time, then. The important thing is that now I got to be the assassin at the Hoover Dam. Didn't come up with anything more interesting than planting a bomb to a Vertibird (once again that Patriot's Cookbook and its +10 Explosives saved me), but I guess you could have a couple of different approaches like sniping from a tower or filling the platforms with mines.
The end fight was interesting and nicely different this time. I also got to see the Boomer's bomber at work because it wasn't the middle of the night this time. As the icing on the cake I got to execute that cocky general Oliver. Which is always good.
 |
| "Firestorm coming closer, Napalm to the bone" |
Now I have just the "working for NCR"-story to be checked and that's definitely not a horribly exciting thing because those NCR people are just suspicious and plain
Of course I went and got Duke Nukem Forever, haven't got far yet. Just a couple of hours worth of fooling around, I've taken my sweet time.
The beginning is somewhat unsual for an fps game but that didn't bother me mentionably. There's a bit of walking around, looking around and listening to what people say. And fooling around with the environment. Then you get to drive a bit and after that the shooting gets to start for real. So far I've got out of the Lady Killer casino, got through the Strip to the Duke Dome and fallen down to its basement. Based on this I can't understand why half an internetful of nerds have thrown insane tantrums...
Ok, the humour is incredibly bad ("poop, ahahahahaha!" or "Hotel Fellatio, khihihihi") and Duke's oneliners are just as bad as in the good old '80s action movies just like it should be. No one *forces* you to pick up poop from the toilets and to throw it around. At least I wasn't forced to do that.
Otherwise all the extra stuff you can do is more or less how it was in the previous installment: you can fool around with the lights, play the pinball/nineball/one-armed bandit and all that. This time you can really play them instead of just "using" it and hearing some noises. Oh, and each new thing you try or game you win gives you +1-+5 Ego boost, which means maxHealth.
The only thing that has got on my nerves so far is the female characters. All three have been annoying, screaming bimbos, I don't want to hear them in my games, it's enough to hear that in the train stops in the real world... Oh, and the levels seem to be straight pipes, that's a thing you can and should always be complaining about.
The action itself is quite nice. Monsters attack and you mow them down. Some monsters stay far and shoot you, some of them rush straight at you and some just warp around and cause a nice amount of panic when they surprisingly find themselves behind your back. Sometimes an enemy falls on its knees for a while and you can execute it for your amusement. For some insane reason (consoles?) Duke can only carry two guns at the same time, but luckily the pipebombs and tripmines go to their own slots and don't count as weapons. The famous Ripper is very nice but it eats through its ammo painfully quickly.
I think that the graphics are more or less at the same level with the other 3d shooters nowadays, I can't go and call it ugly. All these cool effects are used from motion blur, focus-thingies to those things I can't remember how to call them. Lighting effects and water effects look neat and when you stand in the shower your sunglasses get wet and in the steamy pipes they get steamy. Well, I saw those "crap is on my screen" effects for the first time in Metroid Prime, so what?
At leat I haven't read a single comment that tells with some examples, why they call DNF ugly.
No, I really can't understand all the crying and bitching that people have had with this. Maybe I'm just weird or maybe I didn't expect something impossible. With my experiences so far, Duke Nukem Forever is some good old-fashioned shooter fun.
No comments:
Post a Comment