Duke Nukem Forever

It doesn't get much more polarizing than Duke Nukem Forever right now.  It's most defining feature is it's absurd production length.  It's only equal comparison is GNR's Chinese Democracy.  Like that album, the question on everyone's mind is 'Is it worth all that time?'  Easy answer- Of Course Not.

That being said, to review DNF is not only to look at the game itself and rate it's pluses and negatives, but the entire gaming landscape since the late 90s, when Duke Nukem 3D released and helped define modern gaming by providing a highly interactive world, a lead character that was much more than the gun pointing out the bottom of your screen, and all those wonderful toys.

A few months after 3D's release was Quake- the first game with true 3D environments and enemies, and along with Duke3D created the competitive online environment.  Quake 2 almost single-handedly popularized expensive 3D hardware and made online play a required feature.  Then we have Half-Life, which I can't even begin to talk about all it improved about gaming in general.  That's all still in the 20th century.  Through all that, Duke Nukem Forever has been talked about.  I'm nearing 30 years old, and I still have the PC Gamer issue from my 8th grade year with DNF as the cover story. 

So that's a eety-beety bit of history; of gaming legacy.  The entire landscape of gaming has evolved.  Has Duke evolved with it?  Or has he, as I hoped, remained gleefully anachronistic?

Unfortunately the answer is: Uh, kinda... on both counts.

Duke3D is the kind of game where the player enters a level, lithely moving through a maze, battling waves of aliens with a dozen weapons- each unique and useful to some degree- and finding secret routes and item caches around every corner.  Each stage tended to have a theme and a gimmick, making most of them unique and memorable.  This is with a game engine that couldn't even have a room about a room, folks.  It's arcadey, straight-forward game play remains to this day very entertaining and easy to pick up and play a level or two.

This is what I hoped Duke Nukem Forever would be like.  Some people would've dogged on it for not being anything like Call of Duty or Halo, and I would've cheered for the very same reason.  Old School gameplay is not irrelevant, only niche.  It very much still has its place in gaming.

But the first major blow came with the demo, released to only those with Borderlands GOTY edition (and those with a torrent client).  With it, we found that Duke was now hindered with the arbitrary two weapon limit.  For a guy who can bench press 600 lbs, and easily carried an arsenal in his last outing, this was unnecessary.  The Halo influence doesn't end there.  We also now have regenerating health, referred to as Ego.  This would've made sense, had the wanton destruction of enemies been the reason ego (health) regenerated.  Instead, our macho hero has to run and hide from foes to refill his Ego.  It simply does not make sense, as well as just not "being Duke".

Another big change is the vehicle stages.  That, in itself, is not a fault.  But the introduction of driving an RC car through a casino is timed horribly- after only a couple small, easy firefights- and far outlasts its welcome.  Later, Duke drives a monster truck and has to periodically stop to find a gas can to fill up.  It's not as bad, but is still too long, much like Half-Life 2's vehicle stages which are the obvious inspiration.

This is the main issue with Duke Nukem Forever.  It's inspired by the greats, seemingly without understand what made them great.  It also seems to have forgotten what made its predecessor so great.  Along with this, it takes every opportunity to mock these games, then turns around and weakly mimics them.

The campaign moves along fairly quickly, filled with mostly forgettable set pieces.  A few highly telegraphed boss fights pepper the story, but they're fought ONLY by standing back, dodging easily telegraphed moves, and firing rockets.  In fact, only explosives or turrets can damage bosses.  In all, each boss fight is exactly the same as the last, tired encounter and all are instantly forgettable.  There's not on degree of design cleverness that Duke3D made it's bread and butter.  After the final boss, who's only surprise is that it's EXACTLY THE SAME THING YOU FOUGHT RIGHT AT THE BEGINNING, the ending lands with an equally weak thud and a crack about how the ending was shit.  There's a post-script after the credits, but it does nothing to change the fact that the ending is, in fact, just shit.

I suppose I should mention the graphics.  Really, I'm only ever impressed when a game looks good and runs at a steady framerate.  So I'm usually not too impressed with anything these days.  Except Crysis 2, that game looked and ran fantastically, and left me wondering why we give a shit about DX10 or 11... another day, maybe. 
Here, Duke is less than adequate.  It's somewhere around the range of Doom 3, but lacks any realized aesthetic.  This game takes place in Las Vegas, and completely flops at capturing the neon "paradise".  It's set entirely during the day!  That's just simply a failure.  Sure, an open desert level would be comfortable during the day, but everyone knows the real Vegas is at night.  It's baffling.
To note- I played on a PC, while most reviewers went with the Xbox 360.  Word of mouth is, don't bother with the console versions.  That's kind of a rule of thumb for me, so I'm not upset.  I had no trouble with load times, and maxed resolution with everything turned on ran A-OK.  That's more a testament to the underwhelming visuals, rather than wizard-level optimization.
But if you're gonna play Duke, play it on the PC.  No contest.

Multiplayer I'm not really going to bother talking about.  More because multiplayer experiences vary wildly on an individual level, except a case like Brink, which just plain stunk and didn't work properly for just about everyone.  DNF brings nothing new or interesting to the table, which is a damn shame.  A couple months from now, maybe sooner, multiplayer is going to be a ghost town.

All around this review is pretty negative.  Really, the only positives are the things that remain from the greatness of Duke3D.  Problem is, none of those things are BETTER, they're only as-good-as with the exception of weapon sounds, which are beefy and well-realized.  There are no notable new enemies, or weapons, which is a damn shame.  They didn't even bother to try anything new there.

What should've been a love-letter to classic gaming instead tries half-heartedly to be a me-too game.  The internal universe worships Duke as a demigod, but it feels like the developers themselves don't buy into it anymore.  The Duke Nukem Forever we'd been hyped for, and a lot of us were still hoping for, failed to materialize in the least bit.  Duke's nature is analogous to the action heroes of the 80's and 90's.  But these days, nobody wants to see a shirtless Schwarzenegger- he just got old and flabby like everybody does.  Duke Nukem Forever should not have the same issue, but he does.  Time has taken its toll.  14 years, to be exact.