Duke Nukem Forever

Reading this review is unlikely to make much a difference if you've already got a clear mindset on Duke Nukem Forever. I suppose, given the fourteen years' worth of hype and anticipation, the writing was on the wall for 3D Realms' notorious sequel to Duke Nukem 3D. Yet Duke Nukem Forever has got boobs, unique weapons, dozens of pop culture references and a dirty sense of humour that keeps it afloat atleast for originality's sake. In many ways, the game is fan-service, and to top it off, Duke himself is once again voiced by Jon St. John, returning with the very zenith of one-liners. Had you expected any less of a game in this franchise then you would have been naïve. Although part of the problem surrounding Duke Nukem Forever is that it's a release catered to an entirely different generation of gamers, mainly those fixated with PC shooters of the late 90s.

Atleast in that respect, it shows the game has been in the works for as long as ten years though. People often forget to point out that the engine Duke Nukem Forever was developed on had swapped various times, originally moving between each new revision of the Quake and Unreal engine respectively. With that said, Duke Nukem Forever has probably been two or three different games by this point, with the planning of this present version definitely looking a far-cry from what you might of seen in the 2001 E3 trailer. The story does resonate the time-gap gamers have felt with the absence of Duke, but the way the levels are built feels as if a mish-mash between old gaming sensibilities with new.

Duke Nukem Forever opens up with barely any gunplay. The first scene is a much stylised recreation of the encounter with the Cycloid emperor, made true to Duke formula, but following this the setting is established rather calmly and slowly. The developers chose to embellish the world Duke exists in. There are many distractions in the form of interactive environments, including fully playable pinball machines, whiteboards, consumables and ermm less amicable objects like lady toys and toilet waste. It comes part in parcel with Duke's ironically immature but R-Rated content, which probably now has an acquired taste if that. In anycase, a good thirty minutes to an hour can be wasted on the lead-up towards Duke's first genuine encounter with the aliens, even then Duke's arsenal is limited to a basic laser and pistol for a while.

It's often said that the run 'n' gun aspects to Duke Nukem Forever are fairly limited because of this with large spells of gameplay spent not firing a single bullet to work out puzzles and get your head around the various navigation quirks that would otherwise be irregular in any other shooter. For example, some sections of Duke will shrink him and it's up to the intuition of the player to figure out how to reach the opening of a door which can be done by let's say climbing the sofa, moving boxes to build a platform to jump to. Logic based puzzles, effectively something you'd expect in the more fog filled levels of Turok: Dinosaur Hunter on Nintendo 64 or the crate dominated factories of Quake 2. It's an old school approach to the first person shooter genre, which isn't particularly bad but not what people expected. Although ironically I enjoyed the platforming sections of Duke Nukem Forever more than anything else in the game. If anything should have been different, without going into the convulded technical side of things, it should have been that EVEN MORE of these sections existed in the game. It makes me miss the San Andreas fault level of Duke 3D so very much.

A further departure from Duke Nukem 3D that needs to be mentioned are the vehicle sequences dispersed throughout Duke Nukem Forever. Now these sequences are surprisingly well coded, if a tad too long, with Duke's monster truck mid-way through the game handling how a powerhouse vehicle like it should, and naturally you'll feel an urge to mow down the aliens and use the boost when possible. The RC version of the same truck feels light and springy which made many of the jumps and manoeuvring a joy to experience. Truly if Gearbox had any part in Duke Nukem Forever's development this would be it, as their history of programming vehicles into games would figure (go see Borderlands, Borthers in Arms and their work on the PC conversion of Halo as evidence). It pays off.

The campaign of Duke Nukem Forever unravels to a grand total of ten hours or so overall, making it somewhat longer than the average FPS. To tell the truth, it was still long into the eighth and ninth hour of the game too that I was still discovering new weapons and challenges presented by the game. This sort of design is rare of an FPS. Besides that, the introduction of series standard weapons like the shrink ray and the freeze gun are flexible to adapt to and understandably fun to use. To this day, few shooters have either weapon to be found so its fantastic to be reunited with both at long last.

Yet Duke Nukem Forever is often too brash, too ballsy and too aware of it's place that it becomes sickening in this regard. It might of worked ten years ago but now it's curious that Gearbox were ever sure of sticking by such a provocative design. It's safe to say this game is an acquired taste and a lot of people would (and did) quickly cry foul at the shortcomings of 3D Realms' creation. As suggested, the hate is aimed large in part at the dated visuals, long loadtimes and fairly unpredictable, if tedious, core of the game. I could cry to the heavens about Duke Nukem Forever's graphics with it's rigid animations, low quality textures and often bland or inactive backdrops... But they're not terrible given the software 3D Realms was playing with. Besides of which, the game runs happily on nearly any computer. The time it takes for a level to start although is a whole other matter with short levels and accidental deaths leading to frequent, and relatively long, loadscreens. On a bad day these can stretch out to a minute long in length: the problern with sticking by an out of date game engine.

It was said long before the Duke Nukem Forever's release, that the game had been anticipated so highly that there was simply no way 3D Realms could deliver a game worthy of their fans patience. In the time we waited for Duke Nukem Forever, the first person shooter has gone leaps and bounds. Online interactivity, which was a feature often cast aside in Duke's heyday, is now mandatory for any shooter, and the realistic yet cinematic experience that the HD generation is famous for is prized more highly than ever in the industry. Duke Nukem's humble origins never really demanded either of those key components in a shooter and it's clear that Gearbox made some very shaky adjustments to make it more modern in approach.

Duke Nukem Forever regrettably features a number of fairly common first person shooter tropes because of this There is now: a sprint button, regenerating health and, most controversial of all, the ability to only hold two weapons. This all makes the experience far less enjoyable to play as an old school Duke Nukem fan. Furthermore Duke Nukem Forever has an equally tacked on multiplayer mode which, besides being fairly generic, follows the COD era levels system for unlocking items and bonuses as you level up your character. It's just not suited to Duke Nukem. And naturally the game itself is lacking in depth. The shooting mechanics are a bit bland at times, on occasion feeling clunky even, the pistol, shotgun and ripper all fire how you expect them to but the enemies don't quite respond to the gun-fire as you'd expect unless you're simpy using explosives. What's more, Duke Nukem's boss fights are monotonous and actually frustrating to play, you're given barely any room for cover when taking them on and the only ammo supplied is via crates in the open. This makes the game's difficulty a whole lot cheaper than it should be. Besides of which, some sequences in Duke Nukem Forever drag on for much too long, for example, one portion of the game early on, has you on a turret taking down an Alien mothership and this can extend to ten or fifteen minutes in length – not counting checkpoint restarts from shooting down the same continuous pattern of enemy ships that drain your help. It makes the game's core predictable.

I think it's clear that really Duke Nukem Forever's a case of an entirely confused shooter, caught in major development hell from a whole bunch of insightful yet egotistical ideas that sound good but couldn't be written down in code; not in 1998 and certainly not in 2011. It's a wonder what the game COULD have been if 3D Realms decided on releasing Duke Nukem Forever as it were back in 2001, or 2002 even, but did people care enough about the game's development news even by that point? There was a reason George Broussard, and his company, became the laughing stock of the gaming industry. To outsiders, Duke Nukem Forever will remain as a curious but tainted piece of video entertainment history: comparable to John Romero's 2000 flop Daikatana or the Atari 2600 version of Pacman. However Duke Nukem is such an iconic figure in the gaming industry that to his fans, the fact that this game even exists is testament to the cause. Without the character, there is sly doubt Duke Nukem Forever would even exist, and given what we have, 3D Realms and their associates through Gearbox Software have done what they can to rescue this otherwise damned product. I praise Duke Nukem Forever in the very least for this alone; even with its technical faults, dated gameplay and forgettable multiplayer – this game is immensely playable and entertaining as can be.