What a Game! aka. WHY DID NOBODY TELL ME _HOW_ GOOD IT IT??

[rnlf]

#1184

I started playing the game a few hours earlier than scheduled. Let’s just pretend I live in UTC+3, okay?

I played the first three levels and I am thrilled! This game is just so way over the top, I love it.

And all the little details they paid attention to like enemy giblets, when they are smashed between doors, they stretch when the door opens, the small rats running around, friggin’ soap on the floor in the prison showers.

The humor may be a bit out of date, but I just love all those little details.

And not to forget the action! It has just the right ratio of “just blast through” to “maybe go a bit more cautious”.

The graphics were still appropriate for the time, I guess, even though Quake was released less than half a year later.

Looking up and down looks a bit weird, but it’s still a pretty cool improvement over what DOOM and DOOM 2 did.

I think we picked the right game for the big Anniversary!

[Tijn]

#1185

The “humour” is indeed in very bad taste and hasn’t aged well at all, with all the sexism and stuff. It’s probably the biggest point of criticism you can have from a modern day perspective.

At the time, I liked DN3D’s graphics a lot more than Quake’s. I didn’t really understand the 3D stuff, it just looked like a bunch of triangles without any detail to me. Meanwhile, DN3D looks very crisp at 800×600.

I understand Quake’s aesthetic better now, but I still have a soft spot for Duke Nukem 3D.

[rnlf]

#1188

Yeah, the sexism is terrible. It’s the one thing I can think of that you can remove from the game to make it even better.

Luckily, the player doesn’t have to engage in any of this, reducing it to unpleasant background noise.

I wonder if 3D Realms thought they had to add all of this to sell the game? Though back then it was probably just used as a tool to make the Duke look even manlier. People just didn’t think a lot about such issues. That’s not trying to justify, just to explain what I think is the reason.

[Mgoddard]

#1211

I believe I only played this using a keyboard (ie no mouse) and looking up and down was so awkward using the Page Up and Down keys that I rarely did it. I think there was only a couple of times that it was actually required and wasn’t just a “cool” new feature of the engine.

Planning to break out the game this weekend to play again.

[Tijn]

#1212

Yeah, same here Mgoddard. I always play these oldschool shooters with just the keyboard, using the default controls (arrows to move, ctrl to fire). It’s the default for a reason, right! 😀

[rnlf]

#1213

There’s no default. It asks you which controller you want to use :-p

That being said, I set it to WASD + Mouse and with mouse look it almost feels like a modern shooter.

[dr_st]

#1224

I believe that if you set Parental controls to on, it should get rid of most of the child-unfriendly stuff, including the sexism.

When playing using keyboard only, I always use the keypad, not the arrows. This way you can much easier use Pad7/Pad1 to aim, Pad9/Pad3 to look up/down and Pad5 to center the view. I think this is how it’s meant to be played on a keyboard-only setup.

[Tijn]

#1226

Oooh, that’s an interesting suggestion, dr_st! I never played it like that back in the day (probably because I didn’t know about it), but it actually makes a lot of sense.