Forever Probably Should Have Stayed Forever.
I will be upfront and say that I did not hate Duke Nukem Forever, nor do I have the sick passion for hating this game as much as everyone else seems to. However, with that being said, Duke Nukem Forever really isn't that great of a game to begin with.
To be honest, I got sucked into the nostalgia when I started this game. I will admit that I've pretty harshly defended this game on giant bomb here, and I did cause quite a stir with my blog about how Duke isn't as bad as everyone thinks, and I still will stick by with that opinion. It isn't. I've played much worse games (Deadly Premonition's pretty bad, but people have blind love for it).
I wanted Duke to be the gigantic kick in the nuts to the industry that Duke Nukem 3D was, but a lot of what I love about Duke doesn't translate well into 2011. Sure, this is a flawed and outdated game, but let's look at this game's history. The build of the game that we finally got is what should have been released in 2004, around the same time as Half Life 2. What really kills me is that this game has some of the same exact mechanics as Half Life 2, yet people will do nothing but bash this game. I still play Half Life 2 from time to time, and yes, I hate to say it, but that game is also outdated. It isn't as outdated as Duke, but if it was released today, it wouldn't be receiving the 9.5 and 10's that it did back then. With all that out of the way, I guess the thing that really pisses me off about Duke Nukem Forever is that Gearbox bought the rights to finish and release this game. These are the dude's that gave us 2009's excellent Borderlands. There is almost no excuse for them to release a game this outdated, and to be fair, I honestly believe that they were extremely lazy with Duke's release. To be fair, Randy Pitchford of Gearbox never said Duke was a great game, rather then he just confirmed it was a game, and they were releasing it. I think deep down Gearbox knew what they were doing, and they kind of swindled everyone out of $60 here.
To be fair, I've always enjoyed this series. Even some of the worse, not first person shooter games. To be fair, Forever isn't as bad as say, Manhattan Project, but it won't hold you to the awesome memories that something like Duke 3D offered back in 1996.
One of the things however that I have to say is that, even though Duke's dialogue is kind of dated at times, honestly I was impressed that he rarely repeats his lines more then twice. I heard a lot of crazy things from Duke, and I chuckled a bit more then I probably should admit.
But let's get down to what really pisses me off and frustrates me about DNF. For starters, the load times. There is no excuse for this game's absurd 1:30 to 2 minute load times. They are excruciatingly awful, and will punish you every time you die. Then, every level is split up into 3rds or even 4ths. Sadly, this game isn't long enough to warrant that, and it doesn't even make sense.
I will mention as a side note here that I have played a bit on the Xbox 360 and the entire game on the ps3, and I have to say that the ps3 version of this game is dominate. The 360 version has even more slow down, longer load times, and frame rate issues. No, everything isn't perfect on the Ps3 version, but it is a bit of a step up, which makes this experience more tolerable.
But I will urge you, that even those die hard fans who have waited 14 years, don't buy this brand new. Seriously, don't fall for the hype as I did. I overlooked all the reviews and yes, I enjoyed Duke for what it was, but at $60, no one is winning here. The game will take you about eight hours, but really you will only be playing about six, as those other two hours are spent for load times. I played through the game on the normal difficulty, and a handful of parts are kind of a bitch to be honest. A final sequence involving slow moving water and multiple exploding barrels being thrown down a flight of stairs you are trying to climb had me cursing as much as the king himself here.
Sadly, after you push the hype and the nostalgia aside, Duke doesn't leave the impression everyone was hoping for. He just simply is stuck in a disappointing game.
