We’ve just gotten word that Duke Nukem has broken street date. We’ve called EB Games to confirm – they are selling the game in-stores now.
EB has already announced the street date break on their Facebook page and notified those with pre-orders.
No word yet, but we expect other retailers to follow suit.
EDIT: GAME, JB Hifi and Game Traders are all now selling Duke Nukem Forever early.
Thanks to everyone who sent this in.
Hey wait a minute. Duke never comes early!
[Anyone got any of that nasal spray stuff?]
Just received the txt from EB stating I can come and collect my pre-order.
Feeling a bit skittish though… No reviews online typically mean it’s rubbish and they want to cash in on release day sales before anyone finds out…
No reviews can mean two things:
They didn’t release a code to reviewers. This can happen.
If they do release a code, usually there is an embargo on publishing the review unless it gets a high score.
Just to clarify – there certainly can be embargo’s on particular titles. The content of the review shouldn’t matter as most online publications should receive notification of the embargo prior to collecting a copy of a particular game.
3rd option, they released code to reviewers but not early enough that it would be a priority in an E3 week with two console announcements.
Crap or great, it’s still a piece of video game history.
Yeah I got my text from EB about 20 minutes ago. Too bad I can’t get it yet, gotta wait till payday next week…stupid priorities!
My understanding is they’ll only hold the pre-order for 48-hours.
That’s right, 48hrs. You might want to give them a call though and ask them to hold it for longer since the “official” release date hasn’t passed.
**Hey wait a minute. Duke never comes early!
[Anyone got any of that nasal spray stuff?] **
It’s about time Duke came, he’s been fucking us for a while.
[Applauds]
I never heard your sister complaining…
Post of the Year All Years
You think his sister has balls of steel too?
*slow clap*
I literally LOL, thanks.
In this case it’s an NDA stopping reviews from hitting the world before a certain time on 10/6. Which quite likely means the same thing…
For all of those that bet on Duke… I’m sorry.
I’m waiting to hear from JB Hifi so I can get my pre-order. They tend to take forever when a game breaks street date
good for console owners, but not for PC gamers steam wont unlock for another 8hrs
eh i got my copy for 36US off of greenman gaming im happy to wait
I’m still betting it’s going to be rubbish. Sentimentality and toilet humour/crudity that made you giggle 15 years ago won’t work so well today.
I mean, prove me wrong, I’ve got mates who’ve been gagging for this since ’97, but call my cynical, call me a realist, or even a troll – I’ve placed my bet.
Duke is awesome. You either agree or disagree.
The gameplay when viewed on its own merits, could be good or bad.
To me, Duke is awesome and I’m really hoping the gameplay will back him up.
I want to pick it up, but I’ll wait for some reviews. Gameplay videos have me feeling positive that it’ll play well though.
It’s very unpolished and also very dated. The console versions in particular have some very serious technical issues, chief among them is an incredibly unstable framerate. It’s a decent ride for Duke fans who finally want some closure for this but you can definitely tell that the game originates from a half-decade old build. The fact that the game places the story’s events back in 2008 cements this.
Chances of buying without positive word of mouth = 0. An embargo break is no good unless there’s also an embargo break on reviews, at a minimum.
Just walked in and picked up a copy at my local JB, $79 PC.
haha knew it would come out today 🙂
There IS an embargo on reviews, they aren’t authorised to go live until the actual release date of the title in this case, June 10th: tomorrow. Reviewers have to sign NDAs to make sure nothing goes out until after release.
Also remember that it doesn’t come out in the US until a couple of days after the AU release; so you probably wont see reviews on the major sites until after the weekend.
Bajo from Good Game just tweeted that he can’t talk about it until midnight tonight.
Just tried to install it. It won’t let you, stating it isn’t released!
The demo sadly didn’t do anything for me.
5 Years ago it would have been good/great. Today it feels quite old. Also getting 120 FPS on my system that gets 40 in Witcher two without uber sampling tells me its been sitting on the shelf too long too.
Cheers
Kactus
Agreed. The demo was a load of garbage, not to mention just being the e3 2010 demo.
From what I have heard, the PC versions wont even work until tomorrow because of steam activation.
Let the console fans have their moment. Duke is going to be at its best on PC. Hail the king
12 years to create the game and then they release it a day early? Allanis Morrisset would call this ironic.
Mine was mailed out on Tuesday, but I’ll be lucky if it arrives today.
I’ll pick it up when it’s cheap, they didn’t give me enough time to save up for it.
Would another 14 years help 😛
If you get the PC version you won’t be able to play because 2K has set it to not allow the game to work till a certain time (Steam release).
Damn you 2K!
I have no idea why EBGames have broken the release date, this is stupid. In the world of online activation, retailers need to just stop making up their own release dates. There’s a big yellow “STRICT RELEASE” on the box for a reason. Other retailers, such as myself, get really pissed off at this kind of thing.
We keep reporting EBGames to the distributor and there’s never any action.
That is because they are the all powerful EB Games.
Might just be me getting my info wrong but isn’t EB games GameStop? makes sense the Distributor wouldnt do anything to stop them/
FYI – I work at an EB Games store, and we began selling Duke yesterday AFTER we found out the Toys R Us store in our shopping centre had started selling it. We then followed Street Date Break procedure, which entitled us to begin selling. I’m not sure if this Toys R Us are the only place that started selling early, but as far as we know, EB Games have just played by the rules, and other stores were informed by head office after we informed them of the break.
Sooo…..
Great and powerful EB Games (who tend to break ALOT of street dates apparantly…)
Did you tell the PC customers that they couldnt actually PLAY the game you sold them until the following day? Nope. You just wanted their cash. Assholes.
Kind of ironic that a game whose release dare tagline was “When it’s done” is actually released early.
Picked my PC BoS Edition from EB Games before… pity Steam won’t let me install it… =(
I refuse to believe it exists. Therefore, I bought InFamous 2 instead because I know that it’ll live up to my expectations.
I went into a GAME store this afternoon at about five past 4 on the hope that the street date had been broken, and was told by the attendant that Kotaku just posted that the street date had been broken, so they would sell me a copy hahaha. Thanks Kotaku!
The Rapture!
Well this sucks, how often do you get the chance to count down the release of a game that took 14 years to make!? I was going to a midnight launch with friends and snacks and everything! Oh well, maybe Gearbox will delay Borderlands 2 as a joke or something…
Some of the marketing comments made me nervous and then the exclusive demo comments worried me even more. There was the odd person who loved the demo. I can’t help but wonder what they love about it. I’ve got nothing but fond, faint memories of when Duke3d came out. It was so polished, and was set in identifiable settings instead of drab prisms like all FPSes before it.
Don’t get me wrong, I expected this resurrected project to be maybe a 6/10 (and not a Eurogamer I’m-a-tortured-journalist uni-student-but-not-much-else sand-in-vagina 6/10, but a gamerankings average of 6), but something with mediocre graphics and unpolished gameplay. Something with perhaps plenty of character and humour even if it wasn’t competitive everywhere else. It’s worse than I feared. I’m a nostalgic duke fan and played a ton of Duke3d multiplayer with my mates back in 96. I was always going to buy this, even knowing that it wouldn’t be so hot.
Just so you know where I’m coming from, I am an FPS junkie. I’m not a COD fanboy, although I do love that franchise. There’s no denying what Infinity Ward/Treyarch do well. I love Bad Company too. I’m not a fan of the Unreal engine because all games on this engine lately look the same. Maybe it’s a personal aesthetic taste, but I think Unreal 3 looks horrible. Still, I did enjoy Rainbow Six Vegas. I even appreciated the good qualities in Turok (which cops a worse rap than it deserves). I loved The Darkness for its polish, artistic qualities and emphasis on details that Unreal 3 games tend to ignore. My point is that I don’t think I’m unduly critical of games that are considered sub-par gameplay-wise if they have other merits.
This obviously isn’t a review, but I’ve played the game for about 2 hrs and my first impressions were so bad that I had to comment. I had a play of Postal 2 when it came out and it gave me the exact same vibe. This game is more than a generation behind. Duke himself barely talks. I was hoping for his over-the-top persona wouldn’t become repetitive, but he barely ever reacts to other characters so I needn’t have worried. The title screen and certain in-game menus are far superior to the rest of the graphics.
No one probably remembers this, but 3d Realms released something like an alpha version of Duke3d AFTER the success of Duke3d. They had basically built a really lousy game, scrapped it, and then somehow through hard work came up with Duke3d. They basically wanted to show the public what Duke3d used to look like. I had a look at it back when it came out and was amazed at how horrible it was compared to Duke3d (no mouselook and huge performance issues). It made me appreciate the polish that went into the final product. Well Duke Nukem feels like that alpha, as if some final product had came out in about 2004.
I hope the franchise isn’t dead, because I think it has appeal. Seriously, they could knock up something better than this in 2 years. Perhaps they should have released this as a downloadable title and developed a new title with current technology. Maybe they are. But they shouldn’t be charging $90 Australian for something of this quality.
This will be historical for how dodgy it is. If it was downloadable content, the review scores might be fairly mediocre. But this is something else.
I’m not going to lie… It is such a bad game.. I really wouldn’t recommend it to anyone unless they played Duke3D back in the day (like i did).. But you know what? I’m enjoying it for what it is so far, a no brainer shooter. I love the fact that i’m playing as duke again, it makes me smile..
Now bring back a new Shadow Warrior or Blood thanks.
ozgameshop has the Balls of Steel Edition for all platforms at an absolute steal of a price:
$74.99 for PC, $99.99 for X360 and PS3.
As of writing, the PS3 version is sold out, and the X360 version is down to the last one… (Hurry!)
Just bought it from JB HiFi and installed it seemed to take forever for steam to load, then finally in anticipation go to load the game and its says game not released yet, what a crock of shit man we pay the money and some dumb ass Hitler says we cant play our own game we have paid for steam sux balls
Remember when you saw Terminator 3 and you thought “Wow, Arnie sure is old now”? How most of the lines felt forced to cash in on an old successful franchise that’s long done and dusted? That’s the feeling you get playing the new Duke Nukem. Game is garbage, only pre-sales nostalgia will drive purchases.
Been playing a few hours. I want my hours and my money back.
Game feels less than half finished and the extras in the balls of steel pack were poor with the exception of the bust and artwork book.
-playing cards are half size with the only feature being a duke logo on the back
-comic was torn on the last few pages OUT OF THE BOX!
-dice had a paint defect that makes it look like they are cracked
I’m not normally this bitchy but if you are desperate to play this game wait a day or two and I will guarantee you will find enough copies on the second hand trade in shelves to give a copy to every member of your family, if you want to torture them.
Lord Bob sad 🙁
Seriously. I don’t think I can leave it at that.
DON”T BOTHER
I don’t make much and that stupid game cost me all my spare “me” cash for the last month. I should have saved my money and bought my daughter an extra birthday present. It would have given me more enjoyment to watch her open it than I have gotten from this game.
I think I’m going to go to bed and cry now.
Based solely on the Demo I thought the game was basically exactly what I expected it to be. Nothing particularly ground-breaking… just the return of Duke Nukem and all that that entails. My only issue was the 2 weapon limit… that makes no sense to me.
My biggest hope for this game is that it is at least successful enough for Gearbox to go and create their own Duke Nukem game(s) from scratch. This is the last hurrah of 3D Realms, courtesy of Gearbox.
I wanna see Gearbox’s Duke Nukem now, and I hope they get the chance to show us what that is.
Jon St. John voice of Duke Nukem teased about DLC involving singing in an interview with http://voice123.com.
You can see the interview here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8PAHfqhVec&feature=player_detailpage#t=207s
I bought it last night and gave it a good 2 – 3 hour play. It’s completely rubbish. The graphics are bad, the frame rate is awful, the loading times are long, and the jokes just aren’t funny in this day and age. Really really disappointed.
…and there’s actually television advertising to support this game.
When I think of all the brilliant games for which advertising is left to web sites and word of mouth, I weep. Way to put your best foot forward, game distributors.
Nope. EB are balls. For real. Did you let the customers know they wouldnt be able to play a PC version of the game before you took their money? No.
Obviously you dont give a shit about gamers. Money hungry wankers.