Too Much Gum
Duke Nukem Forever is out, the reviews are in and the game — failed. Miserably. The game is certainly playable, though it plays like a game made seven or eight years ago, even looking so in 2011. After playing through this messy frat-boy adventure, I came to the conclusion that “it will get better.” Duke is not dead, even after a shoddy, ugly messy entry that should have been released years ago so that it could have possibly had a chance at shining on last generation consoles.
The single player adventure is decent. You get a wide array of weaponry to choose from, and these guns do a decent job of killing aliens. Are they fun to shoot? Kinda. Do they look cool? For the most part — but you will have some weird sense of dissatisfaction when firing some of the more basic guns. The shotgun for instance has a terrible blast radius, and a reticule that feels way out of place, the pistol is good but enemies remain difficult to take out with the gun due to the inconsistent speed of the a.i. The alien weapons seem more effective and accurate in combat. At the same time they feel like they were ripped right from a Halo game, and don’t correlate well with the Duke universe.
With that being said, the aliens are back, and not only are they inconsistent with the environment, they take Duke’s chicks too. The aliens are also back for Duke of course. They are pissed that he dominated their race in the previous installment, and they want their revenge. Which makes me wonder why this universe is up on Duke’s jock. Why do they all love him so much? The aliens are back killing innocent and taking names because of his attitude and ability to kill these aliens in any given situation. Why would they come for Duke again? For the reason to give him a bad name. They wanna make his fans hate him. They want the fans to realize that they are going to DIE because of this alien murderer.
These aliens are annoying. They jump at you from out of nowhere and kill you in seconds, they fly around the level shooting at you with brilliant accuracy, and they impregnate Duke’s babes with a nasty form of their race that will shoot alien cum at Duke if he gets close to their unholy practice.
Duke doesn’t care. He continues to spit bizarre one-liners with a shrink-ray in hand, and takes steroids and drinks beer in the process of saving his beloved babes. Duke does have some wit, and he looks cool, but I’m trying to decipher how his character can be refreshed to make sense in this new generation.
Like all FPS games, Forever offers multiplayer. It’s not bad. Sadly, the game suffers from some really crazy lag half the time, and it doesn’t offer enough content to make it too appealing to FPS vets. There are a lot of unlocks available for Duke’s mansion, an adult online play house that is fully customizable, but outside of that, there isn’t a lot more to keep you coming back if that does.
When the shooting is fun, there are too many annoying little things that interfere in the midst of that said fun, such as: terrible load times, crazy spawn points for enemies, uninteresting puzzles and annoying dialogue throughout.
Duke Nukem Forever had to come, it was imperative. Now that it is here, we can put it in out collection and let it collect dust while we wait for a new Duke Nukem created by Gearbox. Forever “Belongs to 3D realms” and it’s a guarantee that Gearbox will work on a game that’s far more competent in terms of graphics and playability.