Duke Nukem Forever

We all wanted this game to be good, and perhaps that sense of expectation has proven to be too much. But even then you can look at the shabby graphics, woeful humour and dull gameplay and realise that this game would have been underwhelming whenever it was released. A real shame.

Duke Nukem Forever should have been released as an XBLA or PSN game for around 1600 - 2400 points which then you could have overlooked the fact that it really cannot compete with the big boys. There is fun to be had here if you're a Duke fan, but whether it's worth the price of entry is debatable and whether it was worth the 14 year wait is something for the history books to document.

An 18-rated game made for 13-year-olds, and yet it is the gameplay that is the biggest disappointment. [Issue#74, p.82]

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.

Today's gamers have become used to enjoying a much more balanced FPS experience when playing online and many of us find it frustrating if our game of choice doesn't maintain a fair playing field. The Duke Nukem Forever multiplayer seems so outdated in comparison which is a real shame, as both gamers and (in fairness) the developers, were really hoping that it would just be good chaotic fun.

DNF plays like it's been developed in a vacuum, serving more as a time-capsule of mediocre PC games from the first half of the last decade than a certifiable, modern-day FPS.

In resurrecting Duke in this way, dropping him from 1996 into 2011, with uninteresting levels tethered together in a loose way, middling gunplay, and offensiveness trying to hide behind parody and satire, even the thickest rose-colored glasses of nostalgia won't hide the fact the game's not good or even fun to play.

Probably the biggest joke in Duke Nukem Forever is that the game was released as a top-tier title at a $60 price point. The game that was supposed to reboot the franchise has without a doubt rebooted it to a BSOD, and it will certainly take some time for the Duke legacy to recover from this fiasco.

Quotation forthcoming.

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.

It's just a bland set of predictable first-person shooting levels, not much to look at and not engaging to play.

Some will be satisfied that merely having Duke's name attached to the box equals a safe punt. Those suitably enamoured in this respect may possibly be content long after the end credits roll. However, casting a critical eye to this title reveals serious fundamental flaws that Duke, by the mere virtue of being Duke, cannot possibly fix.

A deeply flawed game that I would have stopped playing after five minutes were it not a requirement of my job to play longer. Although no amount of money could have convinced me to press on all the way to the end.

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.

Duke Nukem Forever is a strange enough novelty all on its own, but when all is said and done, it is a vastly aged shooter that is left trailing in the dust of its modern contemporaries.

What has, at long last, been committed to a disc and placed into a box might have been alright a dozen years ago, but by today's standards it simply doesn't hold up.

A mark for nostalgia then – it's the Duke, after all – and one for the game. If this was 15 years in the making, it makes you wonder what they did for the other 14 years and 10 months.

Tries to coast by on nostalgia, but even fans will see this as a total waste of 14 years. [Sept 2011, p.86]

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.

There's just uninhibited hubris masquerading as knowing, swaggering braggadocio, a technological Frankenstein's monster. [Issue#111, p.98]

"It's time to kick ass and chew bubble gum ...and I'm all out of gum". Someone get Duke some bubble gum, cause he's all out of kick ass too.

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...This game takes an icon and turns him into a laughingstock. Except, no one's laughing.

This is a sub-par budget title that's pretending to be an AAA game. Shame on Gearbox for wanting their name on this stinking pile of crap! If you do enjoy playing terrible games, please rent instead of purchasing as the publisher doesn't deserve a reward for this.

We at least have a chance to marvel at the hectic cost of ambition, and to be mystified, once more, at the strange, stupid, painful things that some of us will do for love.

In the end, you feel every year of Duke Nukem Forever's ridiculous, fractured development seeping out of each unsatisfying frame.

No game could've been worth this long a wait but the sheer level of incompetence and inanity is the only way that Duke Nukem Forever impresses.

A festering irrelevance with nothing to offer the world. It's a game with an odious personality, one that could only endear itself to the sociopathic and mentally maladjusted. There may be life in Duke yet, but not his current incarnation. Not while his developers legitimately think he's cool and hilarious, rather than creepy and nauseating, and not while he's starring in games that can't even compete with budget titles.

I could go on at length about the bad level design, the repeated attempts at humor, the shockingly poor and limited multiplayer and more examples of the "nothing new here" gameplay but it is best just to forget about Duke Nukem Forever. Forget about it entirely, because you're missing nothing.

It's bad because it's stupid, ugly, and mean...Duke Nukem Forever is horrible.

Even if you can get past the terrible graphics, lame story, horrible gameplay, bad level designs, outdated mechanics, cringe-worthy one-liners, bare bones multiplayer and abysmal mini-games, Duke Nukem Forever would still be a terrible game. Factor in the long list of performance issues and this becomes one of the worst games of all time!