Duke Nukem 3D, was one of those games that practically screamed 3rd person shooter. It was hard knuckle action with a lude sense of humor. The star was a combination of every action star that ever existed in the 80’s. It is brutal, hilarious, and downright entertaining to this day. The sequel was shown way back in 1998, but due to delays and constantly switching hands…. we get it 12 years later. I’m going to go into this review without high expectations, so Duke Nukem Forever… here I come.
Duke Nukem Forever, will instantly dash the hopes and dreams of those who were anticipating it. While those who don’t even know who Duke Nukem is, will be immediately turned off by what they are playing. The opening sequence starts off with our hero at his finest, destroying the giant cycloid at the end of, Duke Nukem 3D. When you finally get to the real game, for about 45 minutes it is completely devoid of action.
Duke will have an “encounter” with, The Twins. He also watches a bit of news to find out that the aliens have returned to earth. He then rises from his seat and walks through his casino to record an interview. Unfortunately for Duke, it turns out that this interview has been cancelled due to the presence of the aliens. So with a bruised ego, he walks off into the back and handles an overreacting actor. The Casino begins to rumble a bit, and patrons start to scramble for their lives.
Eventually our main man Duke Nukem makes it to his, “Throne”. He encounters a man that will not move from the seat unless he gets his
picture taken. So our friend Duke helps him with that, before having a seat and going down into the “Duke Cave”. Upon entering, Duke heads over to his console for a conference with the President. He tells Duke that he will continue negotiations with the aliens, and that under no circumstances should Mr. Nukem get involved.
It was at this point that I paused and quit out of the game. I checked my steam library to assure myself that I was still playing , Duke Nukem Forever. I realized, that I had gone about forty plus minutes without killing a pig cop. It was right at this moment that I knew something was wrong with this game. Regardless, I rebooted the game and continued deeper into the Duke Cave. I noticed that the aliens were sabotaging weapons, and finally thought I would get my chance to blow off some heads off.
Aha! An alien finally attacks me from the door way, I punch him in his face and look around for a gun. Le sigh, no gun in sight just yet. So, Duke is reduced to throwing trophies of himself at bad guys. Finally, I enter a room where the enemies have guns… things were looking up, folks. I throw a few things, and punch some guys out. Only to find out that the guns seemed to have vanished, this is at the point where I decided to play some pinball.
Let me just stop here, because I can go on about this all day. This is the main problem with Duke Nukem, far too many times where you’re doing something rudimentary. Each zone has a point where the action just stops in its tracks, and that’s assuming that you were given a lot of action in the first place. There are tons of boring puzzles, or areas where Duke is platforming as a shrunken version of himself. Duke will even go through areas that are supposed to be creepy. In which he’ll explore alien caves with very little interaction, and kill defenseless women who are pregnant with alien babies.
A lot of this content just isn’t needed in my Duke Nukem game. A good example is how many times you have to drive vehicles. These sequences just have Duke plowing over dudes, and jumping over stuff with turbo boosts. One level in particular is stretched out because the truck keeps running out of gas. I mean, this literally happens for four different zones. Shoot some guys for about 6 minutes, grab a gas can, hop back in the car and do something uneventful… repeat.
Some of the puzzles in the game will actually make you say… “Did they put this in the game just to make it seem longer?”. There is a puzzle where you move a wooden plank, jump to the other side, climb up a ladder. Put the ladder down on the other side, jump down the ladder, go to the plank and move it again. Climb the ladder again, go to the other side, jump over the plank, and grab the gas cans. Really… really… is this necessary at all?
I’ll tell you where I had the most fun in the game. Right in the strip club, well… not the Strip Club in particular actually. More like the Game Room inside of the strip club, in which I faced off with the best part of, Duke Nukem Forever. That’s right folks… ICE HOCKEY… while the opponent could have been more challenging. It was a pretty good representation of how you play the real thing. But… I digress.
Duke Nukem isn’t exactly an attractive game either, but I’m going to be lenient for a game that is 12 years in the making. It holds up well, but on the PC it seems to use up way more graphics then it is actually pumping out. I was getting some mixed frame rates, when I can play The Witcher 2 at 60 frames per second on Ultra. So this game giving me any kind of issues on my video card, pretty much made me confused.
I’m going to apologize if I seem like I’m being harsh on the game. In reality, I think it isn’t horrible… but it sure is pretty mediocre. It is hard to see a game like Serious Sam, or even Bulletstorm, look more like a Duke Nukem game… then the actual Duke himself. I could 
actually rant all day about the issues of this game being a throwback… with none of the back. It has regenerating health, Duke can only use two guns, they run out of bullets in 5 seconds, the classic boot is only used in executions, almost all of his quips are from Duke Nukem 3D, and the boss fights are some of the most boring of all time.
I mean… this game actually is really not what we expected or wanted. Duke Nukem Forever, receives a C- from Half-Ass Gaming. The upside about this game finally being released, is that we can probably get a re-imagined Duke Nukem game… that will actually be pretty damn good.
