Game Review: Duke Nukem Forever

Hail to the king, baby! Still out of gum, he's back to prove that over a decade of R&R has done him good. Roll out the red carpet and hide your women, because Duke Nukem's in town.

  Regardless of quality, Duke Nukem Forever will... well... forever be known as the game no one thought would be seen completed. Which is not odd, to be fair, seeing as the game's been in development for a whooping 12 years. The project got passed between developers, some went bankrupt, some claimed to have stopped working on the game, before it ended up in the capable arms of Gearbox Software (alongside Triptych Games and Piranha Games).

  The game starts off, surprisingly enough, in a toilet, while instructing the player how to take a piss. From this alone I came to the conclusion that this is a man's game for manly men, but if you have ever played a Duke Nukem game before you should already know that fact.

Look at the size of that thing! It's almost as big as the
spaceship over there!

 After playing around with excrements and writing 'murder' backwards on the whiteboard, I headed for the exit, where a certain enemy known as 'Cycloid Emperor' awaited my arrival. This fight takes place at a stadium, a completely re-done version of Duke Nukem 3D's final boss fight. After a very easy fight you even get to kick the monster's eye through the goal on the far side. But that was only the beginning of the journey that will take Duke through Las Vegas and as far as to Hoover Dam in search of abducted women and alien asses to kick. That pretty much summarizes the plot.

  The Duke Nukem series is regarded as a cult classic because of the rather... charismatic... main character. Duke himself is a proud blonde-haired American, supposedly the kind of man that every woman wants and every guy wants to be. In 3D he was loved for his many snappy one-liners, which Gearbox certainly will not have us forget. Right off the bat you are served the familiar line: "It's time to kick ass and chew bubble gum and I'm all out of gum". Throughout the game you're bombed with similar lines, adding next to nothing of original material, which makes me think this game is more of a parody than anything else (except for the Super Mario reference near the end. That made me giggle).

  From what I know, Duke Nukem Forever is supposed to be a nod back to the early 90's shooters, where aiming at a monster's feet would make its head explode, falling together in a gory - but satisfactory - mess. Even if I can acknowledge their ambitions, I can't really say they succeeded, as Duke Nukem Forever reminds me more of Prey and Half-Life 2, both from the 21. century.
  Gameplay-wise, Duke Nukem Forever is nothing but dated, and if Gearbox&Co aimed for this they did their job, although only partially. But did we really miss standing on a rooftop and have enemies drop in two by two in transport ships for five minutes while waiting for backup, armed with an ammo case that never runs dry? Did we miss long boss fights where the only objective is to grab a rocket launcher and squeeze the trigger, hiding every now and again from hostile projectiles? Perhaps we found it fun back in the day, but now I only find it a tedious repitition of little challenge or amusement. There are also a few vehicle sections, but the way the cars handle gave me nightmares, so I won't mention those again. Ever.
  The level and texture design is average at times, but most of time shockingly bad, especially on levels above ground. It seems they did not bother with details at all. While the environments are varied, I still found the level where you save a Duke Burger employee to be the most fun. Kind of reminded me of certain custom-made Counter-Strike levels.

  Taking a break from the single player experience, I tried my hands on multiplayer, Duking it out with other strikingly handsome Dukes online. You'll find the usual deal of Deathmatch, Team Deatchmatch and Capture the Flag (or Babe) here, and for some reason it simply works. There is little of depth to it beyond having a gun and aiming at the nearest hostile, but the formula still works, although some will probably feel otherwise.


"Power Armor is for pussies."
Plenty of cultural references to be found.

    When I had finally tortured my way through Duke Nukem Forever - motivated by the simple fact that I hate to leave a game unfinished, no matter how bad - I was left hollow. The ending was as unsatisfying as the rest of the game, a simple cutscene promising a possible sequel before I was kicked back to the main menu. And that was that. Done. The end. Finito.
  It is understandable that Gearbox&Co were under a lot of pressure to polish a game that seems to have been in development hell forever. Therefore I find it odd that they proudly and confidently present such a trainwreck of a product. I was never one of the fans who have been waiting in line for 12 years, so I'm not basing my score on the feeling of having been betrayed. Duke Nukem Forever simply is a bad game. Ironically enough it seems forever wasn't enough.
  That being said, there are some good ideas mixed in the mess, and throughout the game you get to drive cars, get shrunk, battle tentacles underwater, watch strippers do what strippers do best and try your hands on plenty of mini-games. In fact, the mini-games are so well done I have to ask myself if they spent more time perfecting these than polishing the game.
  Perhaps there is some sense of nostalgia to be found here, but it certainly is buried deep underground. Maybe that is why they tried to appeal to the more mature audience, like 3D did, with nudity and dirty humor. But with cardboard-like models and awkward voice acting, you will soon see there is little to none to find of immersion here, even if being given a lapdance up close by a nude female seemed a good idea in Gearbox&Co's head.

  Rest in pieces, Duke. It's about time you retired.

+: Multiplayer's retro feel
+: Good lightning effects underground
+: Mini-games! Plenty of them!
-: Everything else