Duke Nukem Forever

All attempts to turn Duke Nukem Forever into a fancy scripted shooter look pathetic not only when compared to the Call of Duty series, but even to much cheaper games.

But it is a game, and as a game Duke Nukem Forever doesn't succeed at being a good modern shooter, a good retro shooter, or even a worthwhile successor. The shooting is bland, the level design is uninspired, the jokes and ideas are old and tired, and the synthesis between old-school PC shooter and modern console shooter has resulted in a hideous chimera that rarely works as either. It's not utterly without merit, but it rarely manages to raise itself above mediocrity and often falls well below. Unless you're desperate to once more kill the aliens and save the babes with Duke, there's little here for you.

There are other shooters that offer more, but I do know one thing: Gearbox, now free of the DNF burden, will now be free to create a new Duke, a better one we hope.

It's good to see that Duke Nukem Forever finally made it past the development finish line, but the race to get there clearly took its toll on Duke. He started limping toward the end goal around 2007, and he's looking and feeling pretty rough.

You won't find any lasting qualities in Duke Nukem Forever and it doesn't have anything to compete against numerous modern games that have so much more to offer.

If you're not willing to play a sloppy, cobbled together first-person shooter just because it has some kind of weird historical meaning, though, just forget this ever happened and move on. It's great, in some ways, that Duke Nukem Forever was released at all. But don't be confused into thinking that it's a great game.

I've heard rumors that 2K only allowed Duke Nukem Forever to be resurrected in an attempt to recoup a fraction of the money they spent on the game through 3D Realms, but I don't think it was a good idea to bother. I've also heard that Gearbox knew that they couldn't possibly deliver an actual good game in a reasonable amount of time, so they worked on it for about a year and just tossed out what they had so that they could make their own real sequel from the ground up. If that's true, then I can see a glimmer of good coming out of all of this, but Duke needs to be redesigned and reworked with very little of the old games behind.

Duke Nukem Forever is a disappointment to say the least. 14 years of development seem like a waste of time when you see what has become of the most famous FPS franchise. Sad.

As a bizarre curio of video game history, Duke Nukem Forever's appeal cannot be denied, and there is some entertainment derived from overlooking the end product of one of history's most troubled productions. The main thing we can learn looking backwards, however, is that no game should be like this going forward.

While much of Duke Nukem Forever is embarrassingly bad--the kind of game you point and laugh at--its biggest problem is that it's so tedious.

If not a bit ironic, Duke ends the game with a line about how 'crappy' the ending was. Well Duke, that just about summed up the entire game. There are no redeeming qualities about this game, the shooting, weapons, enemies, gameplay, platforming and driving all combine to be one extremely unrewarding experience. If it were not for the fact this game has had so much hype and been in development for nearly fifteen years, this game would not be receiving any attention, because it does not deserve any.

Dated in almost every way.

Not only fails to live up to the legacy of Duke Nukem, it even fails to be a decent shooter. Don't ruin your precious memories. [Aug 2011, p.60]

They would have been better off just remaking Duke Nukem 3D, as it had some interesting level design at least. If you took Duke Nukem out of Duke Nukem Forever it would have been one of those games you see for sale at discount stores, the kind you didn't know existed and people only buy as a joke.

Petty, nasty and anachronistic. Duke is only relevant as a warning from the past. Avoid these mistakes, developers. [Aug 2011, p.76]