The end is near
Let’s not beat around the bush — Chinese Democracy came out last week. I held off this post for a week to make sure the album was actually out, since I figured it was entirely possible that they’d ship jewel cases with IOUs in them just so something would be on the shelves. But it’s been a week, and I haven’t heard anything about the CD actually being blank or maybe made out of breadcrumbs, so I suppose it’s real. The Metacritic score of 68 is probably low enough to border on "disaster" range, though.
But that’s beside the point. What I’m here to say is this: the ball’s in your court now, George Broussard. In case you didn’t pick up what I’m putting down, what I mean is Chinese Democracy is out. Maybe time to get the ball rolling on your end.
And, yes, I’ve seen those screenshots. And the bottom one’s the wrong way around.
Wow, those screenshots look awful. You’d think fifty years of development time would get something a little better than that.
Comment by Stephen | 1 December 2008
Remember when the big joke was how long it took for Daikatana to come out?
And how long was that, like 18 months? Two years maybe? Duke Nukem Forever is, I believe, well and truly into its second decade of “development”.
Will anything ever be funnier than that?
Comment by Dave | 1 December 2008
The only funnier thing was Chinese Democracy, which was fourteen years old by the time it was finally released. Duke Nukem Forever is only eleven years old, and the hi-larious Daikatana was actually three whole years in development.
But, yeah, I’m not really impressed with the quantity of aliasing I see in those screenshots. And I think they’re using some type of "super bloom" that causes every single light source to bloom out as much as possible and make the whole scene look sort of trippy and washed-out.
Comment by Darien | 1 December 2008
The big difference I see is that music at least has the potential to be timeless. Guns and Roses could have spent 20 years on the album, still have sounded just like Guns and Roses when it finally got released, and lots of fans would have been perfectly ok with that–because that’s what they want, a Guns and Roses album.
But video games? Sure, there are “timeless classics”, but for the most part video games, most especially FPS games, are pretty tightly tied to a time period. I mean, Quake comes out, everybody makes a bunch of games on the Quake engine, then in a few years Quake II comes out–and if you’re still making games on the original Quake engine, it better be for a good damn reason, or else you better do like they did for Daikatana and… what was it they did? Announce that the sequel would be on the Quake II engine before they’d even finished the actual game? That was pretty funny right there…
Anyway, I can see how it’s possible to start laying down tracks for a rock and roll album in 1994 and still have those tracks be something you could use 14 years later. Yeah, maybe they’re all on quarter inch tape and the industry is now strictly digital, but music is still music, and Guns and Roses are still (despite having no original members except Axl) Guns and Roses.
But there’s just no possible way that any programming for a game like Duke Nukem Forever is still useful after 11 years–unless what you’re looking to make is some retro-classic game. Anything you built on an engine that old needs to be scrapped or ported to something modern–there’s a good chance it won’t even *run* on today’s Winders computers.
And if they’ve spent the past 11 years just doing design work? Well, all I have to say is, the level design and plot of that game better be flipping SPECTACULAR.
Comment by Dave | 2 December 2008
Daikatana was actually ported to the Quake II engine partway through development — that’s one of the major delays it expeienced. Of course, for comedy reasons, it still didn’t manage to get released until after Quake 3 was already out.
And I don’t agree that video games can’t be "timeless" in that way. Sure, there are an awful lot of people who expect every new game to have TEH BETS GRAFICS EVAR and use all the new tricks that have been invented recently — recall the N64’s launch, when Nintendo and Enix released some pretty damn fine 2D platformers that sold rather poorly due to the public’s fixation on 3D games. Now consider that one of the major criticisms of Chinese Democracy — something that nearly every critic complains about — is that it sounds "dated." Innat the same problem? 2D platformers are sooooo last decade… oh, and so is Guns ‘n’ Roses.
On the flip side, there are a lot of people who don’t care about the dated sound, and just, as you say, want a new GNR album. Similarly, there are a lot of people who aren’t hung up on the "latest and greatest" approach to video games and just want to play something fun. Both World of Warcraft and the Wii were roundly criticised for not having the best possible graphics at the time they were released, and both subsequently went on to set new sales records in their respsective fields. On the other side of the coin, we have Mega Man 9, which was intentionally designed from the ground up to look, sound, and play like an 8-bit NES game; despite being technically 20 years out of date, it received overwhelmingly positive reviews and sold roughly six zillion copies.
Comment by Darien | 2 December 2008
It’s one thing to have “dated” graphics, another thing entirely to be built on an engine that probably can’t even be run by a lot of today’s hardware. I mean, what were they programming it for originally, DOS? Win 95? Maybe with a PHAT SNES port?
Any actual programming they did back then is completely useless now. Whereas if Slash laid down some tracks in 1994, they’re still good now. I mean, not that he’s in the damn band anymore or anything. But still.
Comment by Dave | 2 December 2008
DNF, as I recall, began development on the Quake 2 engine, which ran natively on Win32. It was subsequently ported to the Unreal engine, and then the Unreal Tournament engine, both of which were also Win32 native. All three of those engines will run just fine on modern computers.
To be sure, programming can easily become useless over large periods of time, and that’s one of the major reasons DNF has been in development for so long — they keep going back and porting the existing code to run on a new engine or to take advantage of a new API or something to that effect.
Comment by Darien | 2 December 2008
What they need to do is just official give the hell up, because nobody gives a shit about Duke Nukem anymore.
Comment by Dave | 4 December 2008