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Once upon a time, there was an empirically gifted trio of musicians from Canada who called themselves Rush. Despite the undying loyalty of millions of fans who swooned over Rush's technical excellence and conceptual acumen, there was a cabal of well-placed, cliquish curmudgeons who took a twisted joy from denying Rush their proper recognition. These self-appointed arbiters of taste, most prominently the fop rag known as The Rolling Stone, had consistently blocked the world from officially regaling Rush with appropriate honors.
Why? You see, if you want to be a genuine rock star, where every exercise of poor personal judgement is seen as a profound and revolutionary statement, then you must be either alcoholic, strung out, dissolute, controversial, crazy, or just plain bad. If you're an exceptionally talented musician who prefers to maintain a "normal" personal life, and have no interest in nefarious activity or political activism, well then... you're simply not cool enough for the Hall of Fame. Much like the cynical grinches who refuse to induct Rush into the Hall of Fame, the "journalists" who have gathered themselves together to burn Duke Nukem Forever (DNF) at the stake are entirely in love with their own biased arrays of creative defamation. I was going to take them all on one by one, but the huge list isn't worth my time. If you're seeking the most even-handed and honest review out there, the only one you need to read is the PC Gamer review by Dan Stapleton: http://www.pcgamer.com/review/duke-nukem-forever-review/ In the spirit of full disclosure, yes, I am a Duke Nukem "fanboy." I have not only played Duke Nukem 3D off and on with some frequency since about 1998 (I discovered FPS fun two years after Duke Nukem 3D's release), but I've played several ports, and I have collected thousands of user-made maps. I was crushed by the news back in May of 2009 about the lawsuit by Take-Two Interactive, and the subsequent dissolving of the DNF development team. Then a year and a half later, I was ecstatic beyond measure when on September 3, 2010, Gearbox Software made their totally unexpected announcement to release DNF. But these facts about my personal love of one of the gaming world's most iconic characters are beside the point. The reason I wrote this essay is because I'm quite tired of agenda-ridden poppycock passing itself off as legitimate journalism. For years, up until the release of DNF, Gamespot was my most trusted source for PC game reviews. This is sadly no longer the case. Kevin VanOrd of Gamespot gave DNF a rating of 3.5 out of 10. While everyone is entitled to their opinions, no matter how accurate or erroneous, and although plenty of VanOrd dittos will line up and throw rocks at anyone who disagrees... well, objectively speaking, VanOrd's review is largely inaccurate, and misguided as well. Seriously, he should know better. What the 3.5 rating is saying, without qualification, is that according to past Gamespot reviews of other PC games, that DNF is worse than the following games:
Something tells me the actual list of crappy games considered by Gamespot to be better than DNF is much, much larger than this. I listed these particular games because I've actually played them, thus I am qualified to make a somewhat objective comparison, regardless of my love of Duke Nukem. Each of those six games I listed is clearly inferior to DNF in a multitude of ways, which include user interface, user controls, gameplay, graphics, sound, and fun factor. I challenge anyone who doesn't begin with a biased hatred of Duke Nukem to come forward and attempt to convince the reasonable gamers out here that these games are all better than DNF. They won't even try, because the effort would be futile. I could go on with this essay far too long, picking apart the absurdly sissy-pants rubbish that Ben Kuchera at Ars Technica penned, or the endless whining of Jim Sterling at Destructoid, who should remain forever wrapped in the womb of the Pathetic Excuse For FPS Play, also known as the console. In fact, there are so many of these overly-eager-to-rape-The-Duke faux journalists that have left themselves open to honest criticism by going too far, I could spend the next six months burning them all at the stake. But what's the point? I would not only be wasting my time (and yours!), I would also being performing that cliché reaction of the hypocrite: lowering myself to their standards. The most compelling reason for me to post this reaction to their collective witch-burning is my empathy for the developers who sacrificed so much to bring this game to fruition. While Gearbox committed the last-second slam dunk, it is actually the nine brave individuals at Triptych Games who carried the vision over the land mines known as Broussard's never-ending search for perfection and Take-Two's impatient ploy to swipe the DNF intellectual property for their own financial windfall. Triptych Games is comprised of former employees of 3D Realms who worked on DNF all those years, since it was first announced on April 28th, 1997. When Take-Two attempted their resource-grab back in May of 2009, and 3D Realms laid off the entire DNF team in a stubborn expression of defiance, guess what happened? These nine brave souls continued to work on DNF in secret, without pay! For over a year! And furthermore, they continued what could have only been a labor of love born from pure passion for the Duke, with absolutely NO promise of any compensation. Just the undying belief that Duke was worth keeping alive for themselves, and for all those out here who love him. Sure, I get it. The passion of a developer is not enough to give a video game a higher rating than it deserves; with that I agree. But... the disgusting lack of respect these stalwart and talented developers have received from the "official" game critics on the Internet is indeed pathetic. For certain, regardless of whether or not you like The Duke, DNF is nowhere near a 3.5 or a 2.0, or whatever worthless rating these ding dongs dared to ascribe to an entirely better-than-adequate game. For those out there who would like to put some names and Internet entities with these comments I've been making, go here: http://www.xentax.com/?p=303 This is an EXCELLENT exposé of these journalistic hacks, complete with charts, stats, names, ratings given, and web sites these reviews appear on. Not all of the objectionable critics made the list, because some serendipitously avoided inclusion due to the non-numeric rating system of their site, such as Ars Technica's rating of "Skip," and Game Revolution's "D+" grade. One last thing... unlike the majority of the politically correct mosquitoes who played for five minutes and merely parroted the feminist and new-game-whore party line, or endlessly whined about how long DNF took to be released, I've actually played the game. And Dan Stapleton was one hundred percent accurate. |