Status Chovus Oct 18, 2020
Beat on Hard (come get some) on loan from my cousin. It was fairly challenging and reasonably enjoyable and I made sure to get all the ego boosts, even spending time on things that I inherently dislike (pool and other minigames). Only being able to have 2 weapons sucked, even more so when only explosives work vs bosses. I preferred …
Beat on Hard (come get some) on loan from my cousin. It was fairly challenging and reasonably enjoyable and I made sure to get all the ego boosts, even spending time on things that I inherently dislike (pool and other minigames). Only being able to have 2 weapons sucked, even more so when only explosives work vs bosses. I preferred the rail gun for sniping and ripper for closer ranges but made use of whatever was available. I played around with throwing objects in the first level and found it to be a bit too powerful as a last resort kind of thing, but never bothered to use it later. I appreciated many of the puzzles and set pieces, particularly the sequences when Duke was shrunk, but struggled a bit on the turret sequences; something all too common in shooters played on high difficulties. The biggest challenge I had though was mashing the damn button to finish off the bosses. The final boss was particularly harrowing because I failed that button mashing so many times. I am good at shooting and had no trouble circle strafing around and slaughtering the minions, but soon as that button mash prompt came up... I had to take a break during the fight to rest my hands. I was glad the game was over, but only because I never wanted to do that stupid button mashing again. I did consider playing again on the highest difficulty sometime but not sure if I really want to.
The core gameplay was fun but not really what I want from a shooter. Too much focus on limited weapon inventory, lousy ammo carry capacity, using infinite ammo refill stations, and fighting off waves of enemies after hitting a trigger point. Not like Duke 3D, which was in turn based on Doom. The only other parts which really stood out negatively were the monster truck and strip club levels. While the driving was decent enough I kept wondering why the hell the military airlifted me a monster truck with no weapons or armor, instead of a tank, or at least a humvee with machine gun. It made me think the order of the levels was not right, because it seemed like it would have made more sense to have Duke leave his place in the monster truck to go where the aliens are. And the strip club level really broke the pace of the game. Nothing wrong with a slow cinematic start but everything after that should be straight up balls to the wall action. The strip club felt like it should have been a reward for beating the game and giving Duke a chance to relax after all the hard work. Or some kind of bonus level to play from the title screen. I would definitely want to skip that level if I ever play again. Never tried multiplayer.
Might be fun to play the DLC but I am not going to buy it for a console game I don't own. I heard modders may have done interesting things so might be worth getting the PC version.
6.8/10
