The DNF2001 Restoration Project contains one sole goal: to complete Duke Nukem Forever as it was originally intended back in 2001.
Here's my thoughts after playing the first slice (with the recommend DX9 renderer). It's a mixed bag. Some things are nice while some not so much.
- The Duke model is just off. Looks nothing like I would expect Duke to look.
- The game is still in a very buggy state so random crashes, FPS issues and visual bugs are all there. I kind of expected this to be one of the things they would iron out first.
- The new voice lines are hit or miss but nothing that would break the game for me. The low volume of it all is probably the only issue I have. Hopefully the full release will have options to change volume of different elements. It all needs a bit of balancing.
- Big changes to some maps. Some of them are cool while some of them feel pointless and kind of detract from the experience. Lady Killer was one of the chapters that felt pretty much feature complete so changing big chunks or adding completely new parts seems just like flexing dev muscles. It's cool though since for people who tried the leak before it gives a new twist to it all.
- Some of the added areas seem a bit barren.
- The sprinkler puzzle area kind of ruins the whole point since you no longer see it happen in real time since you need to go over to the other side to activate it (well, you actually need to hurry up to see it work - on my first playthrough I missed it).
- The very first area that leads up to the elevator fuse puzzle completely threw me off. The key card is just laying on the table - having an NPC give it to you seemed more logical and less of a pixel hunt.
- The dark hotel area is now brightly lit. There is no reason to guide the NPC anymore and there is no point to getting the glasses upgrade either since you can see just fine.
- The new pool area is interesting but definitely needs some work. Now it's just a big sprint to activate whatever needs to be activated and then back out. Also a huge FPS drops here.
- The reflections in the final area are overall an FPS killer. I don't remember having any such problems in the original. Hopefully an optimization pass is going to be made for the final version.
Other than this, the demo is real fun and it's nice to see the progress as it's happening. Hopefully the devs will listen to the feedback and see this project through.
It has great potential and what is there so far is really promising.