Duke Nukem Forever

That is the question that's been on my mind ever since I bought the game from day 1.

After 12 years in development, and a record sum of money that was used in that development process(details of which remain unknown to this day) Duke Nukem Forever has seen the light of day. From the looks of it, it's a fun game to play and has the attitude and action that made Duke famous since his first 3D outing.

But sadly this is where the game reaches it's peak in awesomeness. While that game does offers some very nice and creative action-set pieces, they are too few and far between. In Duke Nukem 3D, it was straight-up balls-to-the-wall action that never skips a beat; even when pummeling pixel aliens and bosses. That with the exploration of secret rooms and levels with quips to popular culture made the game a classic and more enjoyable.. In DNF however, there's very little of that in the game. You never get the sense that the levels are grand in scope and clever sophistication. That is one of many of the problems that plague this game, which I will get into in more detail.

The first sign that this game isn't going to live up to the hype is it's infamous development cycle. As a direct sequel to DN3D, the game is undeniably average looking; both in it's content and overall design. Unlike the original game, where often the puzzles became more complex, intuitive, and creative; giving you the satisfaction of completing them, DNF's puzzle sections feel too simplistic and generic. It's a terrible waste because not only does the game suffer for it, but the player as well who likes a stiff challenge on a mental level. It's like the developers didn't have a clear sense on how to immerse players in the game like several other games of this caliber does and afterwords, the player is left with barely anything to chew on.

Another one of DNF's weaknesses is how cheap it looks. For all the time spent on development, DNF looks painfully average. I'm not talking just the visuals(which in some spots look really nice)but also some of the animation. Some of the animation is really impressive; especially the boss characters, but the character animation on the aliens and shockingly, humans, is robotic and stiff. It is simply inconceivable that a game such as DNF could be of this poor quality;even by today's standards where cutting edge game design and smooth game-play is the rule. Add to the fact that characters barely interact with the main protagonist, let alone in an entertaining and clever way, and you have characters that are equally lifeless as the game's atmosphere.

The most important aspect of any game's success is it's playability. DNF does not have this nailed down in any way. It takes forever(pardon the pun) to perform an action; particularly in interacting with the games environment. Why you have to press a button to open a door, flip a switch, pick up a weapon is beyond me. DN3D didn't have any of that so why was it not implemented in this latest release of the titular hero? Even the driving sections are generic. There's no real tension or sense of excitement when mowing down aliens with a monster truck. It would'v been more exciting if Duke was able to take a vehicle(be it land, sea, or air) in the game and use it against his enemies in much more creative ways. THAT is the biggest problem with DNF. There's too little ingenuity and creativity. Bulletstorm, Crysis, and to a greater extent, Halo, gave you the option of engaging your enemies in creative and exciting ways that were never before seen in gaming. In DNF where there are few moments of creativity here and there, it's too little and too late in immersing the player in the game's environment and as a result, the end experience leaves the player cold.

One thing that this game has right is the multi-player. All the modes are there from Capture the Flag, Dukematch, etc. There is a neat twist where(I kid you not) you slap a babe on the rear end. A tasteless treat for the raunchy side of things, but it does little to save what is at best an average game.

Honestly, this game was not worth the wait. There was simply no way the game could live up to the hype. 12 years of development and this is the end result? Instead of trying to build on such outdated game design, they should'v started over from scratch or at the very least, strive for innovation that some games have done in this day and age of gaming. For such an anticipated game that was decades behind in design, DNF disappoints on every level. I admit I enjoyed some parts of it but in the end I have no choice but to give my grade for this game and it's a C.

A shame. Such potential utterly wasted.

Caught up in over a decade of delays and a company change, Duke Nukem Forever finally sees the light of day fourteen years later. Duke is back, full force and still as vulgar as ever, to take on aliens that are now taking Earth's women away. Especially the hot ones.

You control Duke, obviously in first person, going from place to place shooting aliens, pissing, collecting weaponry, driving a monster truck, shrinking in size, and so on. There is a lot of variety, but it isn't utilized to the fullest. The big problem is the control.

The controls take getting used to, flickering occurs sometimes, and the screen ripples when turning. After about an hour of straight forward playing I really didn't notice it at all. The graphics, while nice and colorful, aren't very elaborate. It looks like first generation Xbox, but again, they could've been a lot worse. There is still major detail in places like the strip club and on food containers.

What's one thing you hate doing in any game? Dying. Well, in Duke Nukem Forever, I hate dying for the wrong reason; the loading screen. It takes a good thirty seconds to jump back in the action. You're mad not for dying, but for having to deal with the loading screen. Being that Duke Nukem is an action game, you naturally want to respawn as fast as you possibly can to get back in the action. Doing that here is impossible. You must cope and wait patiently for the game to load.

So far, after two days, I find myself on chapter seventeen ("The Shrunk Machine") with a 360 gamerscore in the game. Getting the achievements aren't very hard. Again, you are awarded for things you're expected to do. Kill ten, twenty, fifty, one hundred, two hundred and fifty aliens and you already have over one hundred points.

Though it has its share of peculiar achievements. Pick up a piece of crap, quite literally, and you have ten points. Watch the end credits all the way through, five points more. And so on. This is a game where you really don't need to try and get the achievements. They come to you.

The two most frustrating levels of all, are "The Duke Burger" and "Queen Bitch." In "The Duke Burger," you have to rescue some blabber mouth woman who is stranded in the middle of the restaurant's kitchen with electricity going ape on the floor. You try to concentrate, but she will not stop talking stupid things; "Be careful, Duke!" Gee, thanks for the tip. That's what I was trying to do.

In "Queen Bitch," you must kill the alien queen. It took me four times and the course of two days because of how frustrated I got. I could get her down, but then she'd spit aliens out at you. Two hits and you're dead. No recovery time. But after you defeated the three-breasted beast you go to Duke Nukem's Titty City. The title speaks for itself.

The nostalgia value is high, but outdated. The fun is there, but not at full force, and the replay value is medium depending on your satisfaction. Maybe if I waited all fourteen years for this followup to Duke Nukem 3D I would've been letdown greatly. After three days of almost constant playing, my time was well spent. For a shooter it's good, for a sequel it's fair, for a fourteen year wait it's a fail to the king.

I just have played this game quite a lot, still haven't finished it yet but I have already killed the three or four first bosses which means I'm fairly long into the game. (I have no idea how long this game really is.)

Anyways, on with the bad things first: Okay, I do understand that games usually force you to watch the first intro videos et cetera because it took them a lot of time to do and they want to show it to you, but even so you usually are able to Esc them away the second time. Well in DNF it seems like you are forced to watch every single cut-scene, intro, character introductions and so on every single time. This game isn't Final Fantasy so it really kills the game a bit. Even in Max Payne you can actually fast-forward the cut scenes or press Enter to quit them instantly.

Second bad thing is that I haven't found any way to save your progress, you simply ONLY have save check-points, which is stupid. My brother first played the game for about the second boss, then I wanted to start a new 'game' and had to play from the beginning all the way to the part where my brother left it off at. Let's say we are in the final boss and then someone starts a new game... well you just got f'ked. And you have to play through the whole game again.

Things like these really kill the re-playability, I REALLY don't think I can bother playing this game over one more time, because whenever a cut scene comes in, I would probably just go take a dumb or something to wait over the time...

However, the good parts, well they are all there, plenty of them. Finally we got a game for people who like to explore and goof around, basically after every action scene you will come into a room filled with games (maybe as a reward?), and you can gain your Ego boost bonuses by playing mini-games; beat the high-score in Pinball, clean a table of Pool, throw a basketball into the net, lift weight, beat a guy in air-hockey etc. I probably wasted 20 hours or something just on these silly mini-games, really love them. But of course, there's also plenty of Shoot 'em up moments, and half-naked girls.

Another fun thing is how the environment affects the gameplay, like you can shut down the lights and the poor girls will get afraid of the darkness... though, if you are that guy who likes to SPEED-RUN through games then you will probably miss out 80 % of the fun.

I will give this game a solid 7 because it really is super fun to play this through, the 3 numbers away from a 10 is because of the re-playability, why screw a otherwise good game over with non-skip-able scenes.

Going into this game with low expectations, I expected a first-person shooter game with, of course, the man himself Duke. What I actually found while playing this game is that it reminded me of Half-Life a lot more than any of the classic 90's shooter games. While the combat can feel a bit clunky at times (like Half-Life), and sometimes the puzzles can be too tricky to solve without referring to a guide (like Half-Life), I have so far enjoyed playing this game, with the Duke Nukem humor being one of my favorite aspects.

I really, really thought... here it is, a FPS Duke Nukem with new 2010 graphics, I thought, let's take a look at it, why not. And I was disappointed. By much of it. Graphics were good, but not that great, some of the ideas where Duke can interact with other objects like in mini-games to upgrade your health... actually, your ego. So, instead to look for medkits around you look for some "manly" stuff to boost Duke's ego... kinda ideal. But still, the old look for medkit idea was better. Other ideas were taken from the 1996 game and just enhance it. The new thing is that Duke can drive a car. Why? and he can carry only two weapons. Why? Why driving and carrying two weapons. I think that they were trying to imitate Halo. The game that also move standards. Why do I feel that they spiced it up with the reality in a way? The game play could be much more better. Duke could be more agile, but here, he is just clumsy, he is stiff as a board, you can barely move! You really get your butt kicked on multiple occasions and when your, here I dare say it "ego" is low, you don't have a medpack and you can't move. You are really easy target, and you are pretty easy to kill, or to get hit, no matter the difficulty. I heard that PC version is better than XBOX or Playstation... I played it on PC, and I gotta tell you... It's not that much of fun. This game repels you. It really does. You are just not that happy to go back to it. Jon St. John is still here as Duke, well they kept that element right and he did a good job as always. Duke is a real badass. But, the humor is basically old and not that rich, also, the Duke's character is also pretty dry and outdated. Duke is pretty much... an a-hole. He is one big egoistical jerk and you just don't feel connected to him. He is loved by all people and they are all in shock and awe when they see him. OK, it's not supposed to be taken serious, but they could have make him more richer and more developed character. In the 1996 game, it was simple, and it was obvious, and it was cool in controversial way. Wall boobs? What a hell? Your opponents returns as enhanced, more powerful than ever, I don't recall seeing any new one... maybe a few. And also what I find irritating... is politics. President is more often here than before. That was not necessary. Game levels looks pretty cool, weapon design is also good, the idea that Duke can go around do some macho stuff as taking leak, playing pool, basketball, pinball and other "manly" activities. It has some good fun, but still, it's not that playable, if you ask me...