So the Duke pre-order just showed up with a 10% discount, making it $44.99... I want to be sold, but I'm not, yet...

For a major AAA release from a company like Gearbox, it is odd that there are only two screenshots and no trailer... but I'm sure that will change... after all, there is no shortage of videos, images, and text written about the game. But the copy blurbs have me thinking that what they say are exactly why I'm not quite sold yet.

----Bust a Gut: Duke pulls no punches. Duke’s constant stream of hilarious one-liners throughout the game make this an out loud good time.

Okay... They are claiming a lot of entertainment value. But honestly, at what point will all these allegedly hysterical "one-liners" just fade into the soundtrack? Gorden Freeman has approximately zero one-liners, and that guy is a terribly interesting character (with a Nobel Prize in Physics, no less)

This isn't a criticism, I just think that telling me its choke full of jokes isn't the selling point I need.

---World Interactivity: Spend as much time as you want shooting hoops, lifting weights, playing pinball, pool, air hockey, and slots.

You know... the world is being invaded by bad guys from outer space. This isn't really the time for taking the afternoon off to go work out at the YMCA. Is this implying an open world, kind of sandboxy approach to the game? Well, that is cool, I suppose, but I'd probably be as happy with a linear, episodic approach. After all, this game is storytelling game. True, it is a simplistic, almost banal story with the kind of intriguing plot points that a five year old could follow... but a story nonetheless.

---Scale & Variety: Packed with explosive FPS action, outlandish settings, driving, and puzzle solving — gamers will never tire of the endless FUN.

Well, good God, I hope so. What sort of action driven FPS would not claim to be loaded with fun. We aren't gonna play Duke to brush up on out astrophysics knowledge (that's what Half Like and Universe Sandbox are for). We are gonna play for fun.

And I have faith that Gearbox can deliver the fun. But how smooth will it be. Are there any showstopping bugs. I imagine the delay in the release was to iron out a few late-breaking issues that could have turned gamer opinion sour... but really, I'm gonna have to read a lot of press and user reviews on release to be confident that the game is ready to play. I suppose we can all say that about any new release.

---Multiplayer Like No Other: Classic modes are re-made with a Duke twist. Shrink, squash, freeze and shatter your opponents, or just frag them with a rocket.

And there it is. This is Duke. And I know there are a few of you misanthropic cave troll curmudgeons out there in GOGland who, for whatever inexplicable reasons, don't like multiplayer gaming, but for my money, multiplayer is 99% of why I want to play Duke in the first place.

All of my nostalgic attachments to the aging franchise are connected to memories of Duke Deathmatch over a modem connection or at LAN parties. I used to work for US Robotics (back in the 90s when modems mattered) and the IT guys set up regular after hours Duke parties where I logged a few hundred of the best fragging hours ever. I want to play a game that offers that same kind of balls out fragfest with those creative kills...

And this area, multiplayer, is where Gearbox (whose specialty is multiplayer action) is being the most tight lipped. And thus, waiting for more info about the multiplayer aspects of this title is the most significant reason I'm waiting to buy instead of dropping my dime on release day.

They say it will deliver... but you gotta show me.

Any thoughts?

Also... HBH can't make italics... :-(
UPDATE: Thanks Hed... Now I can make italics

Try square brackets.

I'm concerned that we're going to end up with Steamworks DRM covering the physical editions. I'm not sure if I'm going to be willing to put up with that crap.

EDIT: Never mind, I guess that had already been settled. Screw you Gearbox, I'm not putting up with that crap.

Wave of the future man, wave of the future xD
If it's not Steam it'll be some other retailer doing roughly the same :)
Digital age is making 'cd' type no drm implausible, since we can share stuff with the world now.

Sure, you have gog, for the much older games, and Witcher 2 with it's Stardock 'it's just for patches patch' DRM, but in the end it's all the same. Linking to Online accounts, with the retailer or the publisher is happening more and more. It prevents the second hand market and gives more control to the publisher.

And no, although I like Gog and think the No DRM thing is cute and very nice, I doubt it'll last in the long term, or at least not in the 'completely no drm' sense that it was pre-witcher 2.

There's DRM and then there's DRM, the sort of DRM that steam represents is ultimately even more obnoxious than what Ubi Soft was trying to pull with AC2, at least there you can only lose access to that game. With Steam they've got no qualms disabling an entire account worth of games over minor infractions or things out of the control of the customer.

Plus, I think no DRM is ultimately the way of the future, or at very least minimal DRM. Everybody except the execs recognize that DRM doesn't work for any purpose other than pissing off customers. I suspect that as time goes by and more folks of my age get old enough to be a force in politics that we'll start to see actual consumer protections that would make DRM even less palatable than it presently is.

Chances are, if the game's not awfully broken i.e. requires to be patched a lot, then you can fix that problem by burning a cleft downloaded from a certain website where the denizens usually go ARRRR

By the way, what happens when GOG matures another 10 more years, and then most, if not all the "old" games require Steam?

If that happens, I'll be stocking up on dabloons and eye patches matey. There be only so far a man go 'til 'e hoist the jolly roger me matey.

Oh God even I am sick of DRM debates at this point.

On topic: Balls of Steel edition for me yo!

Agree to disagree. In the end, what you want may be nice for the consumer, but it royally sucks for developers/publishers. Gog is smalltime at the moment, so not many people even know about it, let alone are really that much into 'oldies'.

If there was a Steam equivalent of Gog, with the newest games, with no DRM whatsoever, then everyone and their mother would also know that all it takes is one person to share the install file with you, and you have the newest game. Screw paying $50-$60.

That's human nature. And a few idealists lobbying for 'consumer rights' won't change anything about that.

Now Gog works, despite piracy, to an extent, simply because the games are relatively old, and the prices are very low to begin with. So the problem isn't really that bad currently, and gog still attracts people who simply feel the game's worth there $ it costs here, or simply want to own it for a change after having pirated it already when it came out.

Steam vs Gog. Gog will never grow to Steam Standard (where newer games are concerned). Why not? Because it makes no sense for a publisher to side with gog over Steam(or similar style services, unless they happen to be competing with their own service perhaps but then they wouldn't need gog either, and certainly wouldn't support a DRM free version)

So in the end, the ideal of DRM free would have to be enforced. Lobbied for by politics? Enforced across the globe? Behind or over the backs of the industry telling them otherwise?

Not going to happen. I'll bet you a $9.99 gog it never does xD

DRM free would probably be the future if games (and everything else) were going to keep being sold as products. They aren't though, everything is slowly migrating over to services.

I truly believe in 20 years the idea of "owning" a movie or game will seem ancient and mystifying. Everything will be a service you subscribe to or rent from.

"Son, did you know that I used to own a copy of Doom?"
"No...way...!"
By the way Duke Nukem Forever is also available on Gamersgate and Direct2Drive too, so if you don't want Steam to get that ~30% cut, go for either of these two.

The same applies to Deus Ex Human Revolution btw.

Oh wow. The manual mentions a Mac App Store release too.

I won't be running to buy it. Frankly speaking, I've been so disappointed with pretty much all post 2000 FPS I've tried, that I'll be waitng for it to hit the bargain bin. Hell, I still got Rainbow Six: Vegas 2, Borderlands and Far Cry 2 on the pipe line and I got hard time motivating myself playing them.

I prefer the mac appstore to steam.

You speak as if that isn't already the case. Games are often available via torrents before they're released. And games even with the worst DRM are cracked within months, typically within days.

It's naive to suggest that developers get anything out of it other than illegally curtailing the second hand market.

I don't personally think that it's idealistic to expect to do with my property as I choose, and if they're going to claim that we're buying things everywhere except in the EULA then they had better not whine about people expecting to back up or sell their games second hand.

Awareness and ease of access make a vast difference. You see plenty of people still jumping at the though of a crack in fear of viruses and trojans etc or simply 'being caught', and that's the ones who can even navigate torrent sites without getting lost (adblocker) or even know how Utorrent work, of which there are still plenty out there.

I don't like and agree with some forms of DRM either, especially the Ubisoft kind, and yes, most of it is rendered useless when it comes to piracy within days. Hence why you see the industry moving towards server based 'service' so to say. Keys linked to localized servers, kind of like MMO's and why some companies are saying they're done with 'singleplayer' games all together (was EA I believe). Because Multiplayers require internet by default, which allows you to link to accounts which is far more reliable in preventing piracy.

And I think even back in the day games already stated you purchased a license to a game, rather than the game itself.