Duke Nukem Forever is here...for better or worse

Hell has officially froze over…”Duke Nukem Forever” is here…for better or worse.

If you read the reviews surrounding the title (which has spent a decade plus in development), you’d think that it’s the worst video game to come out since “E.T.” on the Atari. As someone who has waited so damn long for this game to come out, I can’t say that I’m not a little disappointed at the end result, but what I can say is that the bad press surrounding it is hardly all that warranted either.

Back in the late 90s (97 I think) when DNF was officially announced, the first person shooter genre was a lot different than it is today. We didn’t have the “Halo” franchise or the numerous “Call of Duty” games, or “Killzone”, or “Resistance”, or “Half-Life”, etc, etc. We had simple yet fun FPS games like “Doom”, “Quake”, and of course, “Duke Nukem 3-D”. From that time until today, where we have the more sophisticated shooters that I already mentioned, things have surely changed, and expectations for DNF, as well as shooters in general, have reached incredibly high heights. I’m not saying it’s unfair to have high hopes for a game that was well-known for being little more than vaporware for the past decade, I’m just saying that there’s no way any hype built around it could really live up to the exceedingly high expectations. Hence the facts that I think the reviewers and press have been a little too harsh on Duke thus far.

On to the game itself, I will admit that it is underwhelming to a degree, and can be quite frustrating. I love the juvenile, dirty humor of the game, because that’s what I was hoping for in a game starring Duke fucking Nukem. Gameplay wise, it often feels like a mish-mash of various shooters that have come and gone since DNF was originally announced. There are puzzle elements that feel like they were ripped right out of “Half-Life 2”. Duke can now only carry two weapons max. He has a regenerating health bar. There’s more features besides that have been adopted by the game that are so featured in every FPS around today that at times it doesn’t feel like a true Duke Nukem game should: i.e., old school shooting fun. The graphics are a mix of bland and boring, but the shooting elements themselves make up for it in my humble fucktard of an opinion. And honestly, I enjoy the game for the most part; minus the tedious driving assignments that is.

What it all comes down to is this: if you’ve become so used to how big-budget games like “Halo” and the “Call of Duty” series are, you won’t like “Duke Nukem Forever”, so it’d be best for you to steer clear. If you want an enjoyable dirge however and wind up not paying too much for it and want to kill some brain cells, I say check the fucker out.

Like I said before, I’d still take this over Call of Duty 25: Modern Warfare 12 in Space with Zombies or whatever installment they’re at now.

Uncensored "Revolution X" review for Sega-16...bitches.

Here is the uncut, unedited, and uncensored review for the pile of shit known as "Revolution X" for the Sega Genesis that I wrote for Sega-16. The link to the actual, kid-friendly review can be found here:

http://www.sega-16.com/review_page.php?id=712&title=Revolution X

Anyway, on to the review in all its nasty glory!



REVOLUTION X (1995)

Publisher: Acclaim
Developer: Rage Software



“Remember, music is the weapon”

Music is the weapon my hairy Irish ass.

Legendary rock band Aerosmith has been kidnapped by a fascist organization that is hell-bent on destroying everything Aerosmith-related in their diabolical plot for global domination…or something. Naturally, it’s up to you to save the band and save the day.

Personally I think we’d all be better off if we just let the bad guys slaughter Aerosmith with extreme prejudice, but that wouldn’t make for much of a game now would it? Or…now that I think about it, that actually sounds like it would be a fun game…at least more fun than this 16-bit piece of shit.

Released in the waning days of the Genesis’ lifecycle, Revolution X is one of a number of Midway’s digitized light-gun shooters (like Area 51 and Maximum Force); the only difference being that this one features a big-name band lending their likenesses and music to the game. Sadly though, the Genesis just didn’t have what it takes in terms of tech to really do the arcade version of the game justice, and the port that we are left with here just feels overly sloppy. Aerosmith songs used for the game’s soundtrack sound so ungodly awful that you’ll mute your TV. Plus the digitized video between stages looks so badly pixilated that Steven Tyler resembles the Rocky Dennis kid from the movie Mask more so than anything else. Then again, these days you don’t need to play Revolution X to notice that, just tune in to upcoming episodes of American Idol (and if you do, there’s already no hope for you), but I digress.

The rest of the game’s graphics are decent enough to be fair considering all the loss in animation frames for the conversion from the arcade game to the Genesis, with some spots in the game looking just plain ugly as a result. Sound-wise, we are given a handful of Aerosmith songs between and during stages that can barely be deciphered as hits like “Dude Looks Like a Lady” and such, which can’t really be blamed too much on the game designers themselves, as the Genesis never really had that great of a sound-chip to begin with. In that respect, much like the game’s graphics, the soundtrack of Revolution X is basically a kind of affair where you’ve just got to take what you can get, or like I said before, go for the best option and just mute your TV.

The gameplay is so ungodly simplistic that it will not take you long to breeze through it. Besides your main weapon, you can also shoot CDs at enemies, which you’ll find in abundance. Yeah, that’s a good idea, kill people with Aerosmith CDs, otherwise known as, “death by Aerosmith” (I’m copyrighting that shit right there). There’s also a good deal of secrets and Easter eggs to locate throughout the game, including finding all five members of the band throughout different stages (which you’ll have to do in order to get the “good” ending of the game). Truth be told though, regardless of having Aerosmith be the featured attraction of the game, there really isn’t much here to hold your interest. Revolution X is enjoyable to a degree, but it doesn’t take long for its novelty to wear thin, and by the time it does, you won’t be anywhere close to completing the game. Granted that doesn’t necessarily take long, which may be a blessing in disguise.

Going back to the fact that you can locate and save the five members of the band, it should be noted that you have to shoot them in order to collect them. Yes that’s right, you must shoot each member of Aerosmith. In the first stage of the game, you can find Steven Tyler in a bathroom stall making out with a groupie. At this part of the game, I make it a point to get my cursor right over Tyler’s crotch and blast away. Yes sir, shooting Steven Tyler right in his wretched nut sack makes Revolution X worth playing in itself. Sadly though, as fun as that may sound, it doesn’t make the fact that you’re actually supposed to save these pricks any better.

Something else I also want to take the time to talk about here is the fact that Revolution X is incompatible with the Sega Menacer. Yes folks, you read that right, a light-gun game does not work with the console’s main light gun that the game was released on. Now Konami’s “Justifier” gun, which came packaged with Lethal Enforcers, doesn’t work with it either, but that really isn’t much of a surprise either. However, the fact that the game doesn’t work with the Menacer is a complete shock to me anyway, just for the fact that this is a fucking light-gun game we’re talking about here, and it doesn’t work with any kind of light-gun! What the fuck kind of shit is that? Granted that the Menacer wasn’t the best light-gun in its time, but the fact that the game doesn’t even offer the option is just plain unheard of.

All in all, the Genesis can do so much better in terms of light-gun shooters (the Lethal Enforcers games and T2:The Arcade Game come to mind) than what you’ll get with Revolution X. Also released on the SNES as well as the Playstation and Saturn, you’d be better off checking out either of the 32-bit versions to find a more polished product, but regardless of whichever console version you end up getting your hands on, you won’t stick around too long for this revolution to conclude, and in all honesty, you really shouldn’t to begin with.

Fucking Aerosmith.

3/10