Well, I've ploughed away at DNF for a second hour - am I still not blown away?  Well, to be honest, no I'm not blown away... But at the same time, I have LA Noire sitting on the shelf begging to be played, I mean BEGGING... I'm desperate to play LA Noire, it has some really interesting core mechanics and technologies in it which I can't wait to have a go of... 
 
But I can't drag myself away from DNF?  Tonight I played from the first boss - the weird helicopter like floaty dude who shoots rockets at you to the guy who gives you the pit lord achievement, the massive thing that fires bizarre homing rockets or something - just before you go into the sewers... And no there's not that much stuff that's really ground-breaking... Okay the environment interaction and the 'Ego Meter' are interesting mechanics, but in reality - as with most of these kind of games there are far more things you can't interact with than things you can, and sometimes that's annoying.  I can't put my finger on one, but from time to time you want to use something, but it's just decor... 
 
That aside though, it really is a fun game... I mean the graphics are nice, but they probably aren't going to win any awards... The Gameplay feels fun, especially with the humor thrown in, but it feels a little bit old school somehow... Like a more polished Unreal with modern graphics and more production dollars thrown at it.  However it's kept more interesting by the little 'different' bits, the RC cars, the turret battles, the bosses, the 'shrunk' sections... It all breaks up the monotony.  The humiliation you can inflict on the boss characters after beating them, it's fun, it's not going to win any awards but it's good old fashioned fun. 
 
I am ready to throw my hands up in the air and shout, 'I like Duke Nukem Forever!' against what a lot of the media are saying about the game... But I dunno - is it the hype?  The bitterness at having to wait 12 years to play it?  I suspect it's a bit of a Gran Turismo 5... That had a 5 year development cycle or something similar, and the tie taken built the hype... The trouble is you cannot take that long to make a game - by the time you've finished, the technology you built it on is out of date and your game looks dated and doesn't do as well as games which took less time.  Duke Nukem's developers tried to resolve this by porting to more modern engines, both game and physics engines... 
 
I don't know what state it was in when Gearbox took over, or what they had to do it to make a game, but I think it needed a new set of heads to make it happen.  It had to be finished quickly so that it actually ended up being released on a modern engine and looking up to date! 
 
The moral of the story, forget the cynical reviews, good/bad - I'm not 100% sure on DNF yet, but it IS fun, and if you give it a chance it will be hard to put down... For developers the moral is simple - don't take too long to develop the game... There are a myriad of reasons for this - but trust me, don't take too long!