Wow, first proper review of a full video game :)
Ok, we've waited 15 years for this, I'll cut to the chase: Good but not great. C+ to B-, depending on how you like your shooters (and games in general), and how much nostalgia you have for the Duke series in particular.
Having been born in the early 90s and not really getting into gaming until at least 2000 [that's right: the world has been anticipating this game longer than I have been gaming], Duke Nukem did not form any part of my formative years, and therefore has no place in my nostalgia. I'd like to think that makes me a lot more impartial but, while I have played a Duke game, I won't see this through the lens of someone who has been really waiting for this. Whether that's an advantage or a handicap I'll let you decide, but it did worry me that I might not "get" it as much as I otherwise would.
Not so, however. The game is pretty open and broad in terms of what there is to get: the narrative is simple [aliens invade, you kill the aliens], the jokes are mostly pop/gamer culture references and anything that refers to the Duke Nukem games is pretty easy to understand, just like the games themselves I'd wager. The gameplay is just as simple, but not quite what I was expecting. Given it's pedigree, I expected this to be a basic run-and-gun shooter throughout, with all the originality carried by the jokes - yes, the humour is there and it's good, including (Spoiler Alert) a chuckle-worthy send up of Christian Bale's notorious rant - I was pleasantly surprised with the other things to do. The shooting sections are broken up at intervals with driving, platforming and even a bit of light puzzle solving. It got me thinking of all the best shooters of today, particularly Call of Duty and it's ilk: they're good fun, but all you do is kill things in those games. Duke Nukem Forever, while not nearly the smartest game on the market does provide challenges other than aiming, moving and ducking for cover.
The game world is used particularly well for this. The world itself is fun to look at and listen to, with things to see, people to talk to and buttons to push. While this isn't the first game to do this by a long shot, DNF actively encourages exploration of this world with rewards in the form of boosts to your health bar, just for playing slots/benching pressing/admiring yourself in the mirror. The fun doesn't stop at shooting the baddies, which is nice to see in a generation where only still it seem pure platformers and RPGs encourage that kind of messing around, and it doesn't need a massive sandbox to do it.
The tone follows much in the footsteps of it's predecessors in being a very boy's-own tale of heroism, without being at all serious. The developers have recognised the status of Duke Nukem as a character, and play on that well in the game. The events take place in a world that admires the hero for real in the way that his real-life fans admire him ironically. Duke has always been a caricature, a combination of boyhood fantasies, the traditional ideal man and even the American Dream parodied to hell; a completely non-introspective chauvinistic action-man. In this game, however, it goes up a level: Duke has taken all of that, and made something of it. He has the admiration of billions, all the money he could want, women dropping to their knees at his feet. Hell, the game starts with him receiving favours from twins in a huge house filled with statues of himself. He is lionised, in this world, for qualities that in real-life would get him branded a jerk and a lowlife - and that's just funny! It's the level of fame he has in the gamer world, come to life. Practically everything the NPC cast has to say is along the lines of "Thank God you're here!" or "You are the most awesomest thing EVER!" Duke comes back with a pure-90's one-liner, and the game moves on, never losing the feeling that you are God's gift to mankind.
The game isn't without faults, of course. The graphics aren't the best thing going: the textures are occasionally bland and flat, and objects appear blurry at short distances (I had the graphics set on Ultra; the game ran well, but it didn't look as good as that might sound). While enemies vary reasonably well (the fact that they're pigs mostly excuses the no-more-than-adequate AI), the things you kill them with don't. Out of the half-a-dozen-ish weapons I saw, I regularly used only half of them. The particularly special weapons (including a Freeze Gun) are fun at first as a novelty, but were nearly always so badly designed that I dropped them almost instantly.
Still, I can honestly say I have had fun with Duke Nukem Forever. It was a good laugh, and there was always something interesting going on. Whether I was shooting, jumping or getting shrunk to the size of an action figure, I always felt like an action hero. While no-where near perfect, and very little to justify all those years in development, I can't deny that I enjoyed myself, which is no less than I asked for. I'd recommend it to those who like a good varied game without much narrative weight. Can't say how well it would go down with an old-school Duke Nukem enthusiast - depends on how hard you're holding onto those rose-tinted specs I suppose.
At time of writing, I haven't quite finished the game [damn near, though], but I will be getting it done within the next couple of days (got some things going in the meantime) and if my opinions change at that point then there will certainly be a post script underneath.
Duke Nukem Forever is the property of 2K Games, and was developed by 3D Realms and Gearbox
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