Come get some....or not.
The back of the box states that I should be prepared to embark on "the most bitchin' and bodacious time you're likely to ever have." If you were to use the words "bitchin'" and "bodacious" in front of me, I would recommend that you be institutionalized. As such, if I hadn't known the fact that the game had been in development for 15 years and was passed around to different developers with different ideas/mindsets, I would recommend that all involved with the production of this product be institutionalized. It's just that this very fact excuses it, if slightly.
If I were to sum up this game in one word, I would say eccentric. It wants to be a platformer/puzzle game that happens to include first person shooting. Most of the gameplay revolves around walking around dimly lit environments and figuring out where to go or what to do to proceed. Occasionally, a group of enemies will come out, or a scripted event will occur and you have to defeat all of the enemies to proceed, but that's really it. It seems like they wanted to make a platformer, but forgot that they were making a shooter and thus decided to randomly have enemies spawn in.
To be fair, the game is more varied then I make it out to be. There are driving sequences as well. All you do is boost over ramps and if the physics decide to behave, you get rewarded by landing on the other side of the cliff. There's no skill involved, only frustrating luck. These sequences are broken up by combat as well. The gas in Duke's "bitchin' and bodacious" monster truck runs out of gas. Then enemies appear and you actually get to shoot!
The best way I can describe the shooting is that it's Duke Nukem 3D, instead with Call of Duty like controls. Granted, I didn't mess with the control settings. The shooting is okay-ish, it's loose and doesn't have much of an impact, making it kinda hard to tell if you're hitting enemies. I would've probably preferred to play this on a PC, if I had the choice.
There are bosses too, but with the exception of the Hive Queen, they are all pretty much the same. A boss appears, you grab an explosive weapon, the boss spawns enemies, you deal with the enemies while dodging the bosses projectiles behind cover, keep shooting the boss while remembering to refill your ammo stock, and that's it. They can be fun, but the fact that there's little deviation between them is disappointing.
I'm going to be perfectly honest, if this were a budget title selling for $20, I would've been satisfied with my purchase. Nothing about the game is hair splittingly frustrating and the whole experience is mostly just mediocre and weird. I can see people enjoying their time with this game and as something to waste time, it's not that bad. Maybe it's just the fact that I waited 15 years and finally got to play it that helped make the experience more positive for me. As for a recommendation, I can't honestly say. If your looking for something really different that has a good amount of variety (albeit weird and not really in the good way), rent it. If your looking for a quality product, look elsewhere.
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