Eurogamer

Gearbox co-founder Brian Martel has claimed Duke Nukem Forever was not reviewed fairly by some publications, arguing it was used "as a soapbox" while claiming: "Everybody should really be thankful that it existed to some degree at all."

Speaking to Eurogamer in a previously unpublished interview conducted at Gamescom in August, Martel reflected on the controversial shooter's critical reception, stating: "We wish the reviews were a little less caustic. We're not quite sure where some of the anger came from."

Discussing the spread of scores across all reviews, he said: "There were things towards the high and things towards the low, but the middle just didn't get any traction. It's pretty obvious that people were using it in some ways to kind of use it as a soapbox or whatever."

Asked if that meant he didn't think, broadly speaking, that the game was reviewed fairly, he replied: "I think that if we were going to review the reviews fairly, no." He suggested that part of the problem was that "a certain amount of gamers today are not used to" a game in the style of Duke Nuke Forever. "It was what it was meant to be, which is a more old-school style game in what is today's technology".

To emphasise the point, Martel compared the game to classic Valve FPS Half-Life. "We've had this internal debate," he revealed. "Would Half-Life today be reviewed as highly as it is, you know, even today? As a new IP coming out with the same sort of mechanics Half-Life had.

"I think we all have a nostalgia and love for that particular brand. Obviously Gearbox got its start working on Opposing Force so we love Half-Life. But is the current gamer, would they have the same love for that? It'd be interesting. I think the same kind of thing happened with Duke."

In the run up to the game's release, after well over a decade in the development wilderness, Gearbox boss Randy Pitchford told Eurogamer: "We know the game's great. Any journalist that decides to try to go... to lowball it is gonna be held accountable by the readers." He went on to claim: "The last time I had a really solid experience like this was Half-Life 2."

The game subsequently scored a 3 in its Eurogamer review, described as a "gruesomely mangled resurrection".

Asked if the studio could have better managed expectations, Martel said: "I think there was no way that anybody could manage expectations. Name another game that's in a similar situation. This is a game that was around for 15 years and it went through a number of engine cycles. It could never be everything for everybody, right?

"It is a caustic game in some ways, so maybe in some of that respect it could've been softened," he added. "But it's [3D Realms'] vision and people should understand that in a world where we embrace the creator's vision for something, we let that go. We let that be what it was supposed to be. And that is the team's vision.

"Gearbox made sure the world got to see what they made and I think everybody should really be thankful that it existed to some degree at all. Because it really would've just gone away.

"Is it a Gearbox game? No. When and if another Duke comes out it's going to be more consistent with what I think people would expect out of a Gearbox product. But this is the vision that 3D Realms had and that's awesome. It's just great that the world gets to see it."

Martel acknowledged that the criticism the game received would be "taken into account" when consider the future direction of the series, and quipped: "I can guarantee it won't take 15 years to see another.

"We love the IP and I think there are a lot of people that really love it. You just have to make sure the character is something that people can love as well."

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-11-03-gearbox-duke-nukem-forever-wasnt-reviewed-fairly

Lol from what I hear it deserved the reviews it got.

There's so much... wrong in what he's saying.

"old school game in todays tech" - yeah, with regenerating health and '04 graphics, hahaha

Then, a rant about HL hypothetically coming out in 2011, etc - a stupid argument, not to mention that shooters would be completely different from what they are now without HL.

the game was bad though lol.

It's not fair that the Duke Nukem fanbase waited so long for this piece of crap.

As a person who loves Duke Nukem 3D, this game was horrible and I'd rather go replay 3D again than this crap...

If anything I think too many of the reviews were overly generous and forgiving. People had to fork out money for that piece of crap, It wasn't just poor graphics, or poor story, or poor controls, or the dated content, or the incredibly dull boring beginning to the game that you can't skip, it was all of that combined in one game. A bad game is a bad game and I hadn't felt that ripped off from purchasing a game for a long long time. Articles like that trying to justify it only make the author look stupid.

Frankly, I think we'd be better off it had "just gone away."

Wow we had to wait 6 years for Half-life 2 and look at the gem we got and now we await Half-life 2 EP3 or halflife 3 which ever they decide it will be knowing it will be great ,so what a conceited nonesense to talk about half-life made today we know what happened it evolved into HL2 .
I wish they would make up their minds they make excuses for it by saying it's outdated next thing they reckon it's up there with half-life 2 complete bollocks , more like we slapped it together to at least get it out the way but even though it's crap thats because of 3D realms vision handicapping us  we still made it as much fun as Half-life 2, so imagine what the next duke will be like , Signed the damage control team.

I see where Randy is going with this and I still like the game...but a lot of these problems people bitch about like poor graphics, long loading times, shoddy game mechanics...can be blamed on....consoles!

I'm running the game on max settings and it looks fine to me, depth of field doesn't work properly so it's disabled but I haven't had any issues with texture popping. As for loading times...it takes about 10 seconds to load when I'm first booting up the game. Every time after that is about 3 seconds. Once again, the inferiority of the underwhelming Xbox 360 causes the game to suffer when at best, it really is a a fun game. Well, maybe not fun to a lot of you, but fun to me and worth the 40 dollars I paid for it.

However, I do make the assumption that most reviewers reviewed it on the Xbox 360 as that seems to be the platform of choice for multi-platform games.

Many of you are right though. But I do have to agree with Gearbox on this one. They released the game 3D Realms made. Unfortunately, 3D Realms made a crap game even if it was one that I enjoyed.