With the release of the third Fear game and Duke Nukem Forever I have been getting a fair number of questions regarding these games so I figured I’d write a post with my thoughts on them. Hopefully this way you guys know  my thoughts on them.

One thing I’ll say ahead of time though is that I won’t be let’s playing these games.

Duke Nukem Forever

So Duke Nukem…. really? This came out? It hardly seems real. I initially didn’t want to get this as it wouldn’t be a great game. But I decided I’d get it anyway once it was released, the impulse buyer in me prevailed once again. So going in with little expectations, certainly after playing the demo, really was the right approach as DNF really is a weird game. You can tell it has been in development for over a decade, it feels weird to play and there are some really awkward design decisions. Most notably being the fact that Duke can only carry 2 weapons at a time. Because of this you will very often run into a situation where there will suddenly be a railgun or rpg lying/standing around. That’s basically the game telling you: “You’re going to need this specific weapon for the upcoming part. Take it!”.

Other than that the game is not a looker, but I didn’t find it nearly as bad as console players say it looks. But it did have some neat moments such as the first time you shrink or have to drive an rc-car to get an item you need. But this wears off after roughly the first 30-60 minutes. In fact the best part of the game is probably the first half hour as it really just goes “you can walk around a bit and interact with just about everything” and that was certainly amusing.

After that though the real game starts and it’s all poor regular shooting and turret-shooting moments which are really “meh”. It’s all functional but you can’t say much more about it. In conclusion then I would have to say that it’s a game worth picking up even for the sheer history behind it, but only at a low price.

Fear 3

Now this is a game I really wasn’t sure what to expect from. I played through Fear 1 and 2 at their releases and really loved those games. The shooting always felt great and I really dug the creepy moments with alma. Then for 3 it wasn’t Monolith anymore but day 1 studios and all they really showed was pure shooting and the 2 player co-op. This kind of had me worried and thus I waited for some reviews and impressions to hit the internet. From these impressions and watching the giantbomb quick look it became apparent that the focus was much more on the shooting and not on the creepy moments.

So the focus changed but people still kind of enjoyed it. Well, it continued the story of the fear games and it was a solid shooter, so I got it on the cheap and started playing. In singleplayer you played as Pointman (who you also play as in fear 1) so I was ready for some slowmotion powers and shooting, which was exactly what I got. I completed the game in 3 sittings which came down to roughly 5-6 hours and I really enjoyed it. There were a couple of difficulty spikes where I died a couple of times but it never got frustrating.

The game really is fun to play and I played some co-op after and really enjoyed that, though I was surprised that the enemies didn’t seem to scale at all so it was a lot easier with a 2nd person there. I’m probably going to be playing through the game again on a harder difficulty because I simply love the feel of the weapons and the action.

All in all it definitely isn’t a game for everyone and you really shouldn’t be expecting a scary or creepy game as it barely has any moments like that. But if you’re looking for a fun shooter, especially when you have a friend to play it with, I would recommend the game. I do wonder what is going to happen with the Fear series after this though, if there will be more and where the story will go if it follows the story of Fear 3 because there’s 2 endings. Following either ending though may result in a complete reboot for the series as it can go in any direction.