After 15 years of waiting, drooling and being teased repeatedly, Derek “DSmooth” Nolan finally had the opportunity to play the sequel that almost wasn’t, Duke Nukem Forever. Find out why he thinks Duke himself would shit on it in the full review.
Introduction
To say I'm a huge Duke Nukem fan would certainly be an understatement. I played Apogee's original side-scroller way back in 1991. It was by no means innovative at the time, but it was definitely fun. At some point before 1996, Apogee renamed themselves 3D Realms, and released one of the greatest FPS titles of all time - Duke Nukem 3D. This sealed my love for the character, and the series as a whole. It innovated with crazy new weapons and abilities. From jet-packing around, to planting dozens of laser trip-mines in a room, to tossing out a HoloDuke, it was all new. The level design that was far less boxy and linear than other FPS', and the first time I climbed into an air duct, I was like "Ohhhhh shiiit.... This is how it's going to be." Multi-player was a blast, but took lots of effort to play online due to the lack of familiarity most people had with the Internet at that time. We used to play at the office after work - daily. Of course, the best part of Duke 3D was the man himself. The voice acting by Jon St. John was the hook. He said all this cool witty shit. He was irreverent. He was a total fucking badass.
History
After playing for over a year, in 1997 3D Realms made that announcement that would live in infamy - until now. Duke Nukem Forever was coming, and it was coming soon. In 2001 they backpedaled and told us all it would be released when it was done. We all heard the "perfectionist" development philosophy that 3D Realms had for those years. I remember reading an issue of PC Gamer in the mid-2000's where they had a play-though of several levels of the game and it looked "almost done". Shortly after that we found out 3D Realms scrapped it and started over. This process continued until 2009 when first we heard the game was almost done, then immediately after found that it was dead and never coming out.
Then came PAX Prime 2010. I sat in a small room with Randy Pitchford from Gearbox. He told us about his love for the game, how we all needed Duke, and that he wouldn't let Duke die. He promised a Duke Nukem Forever that would make Duke fans proud. I had a man-crush on Pitchford. He had done what no man could for 14 years. I played an "early demo" there, and was assured that that graphics and gameplay would be much more polished in the final release. What Gearbox gave us, though, is a steaming pile of shit that looks like it was developed for the original Xbox. To quote Duke - "This really pisses me off!"
Load Times
Before I even get into what's wrong with the game itself, I'll start with the most annoying flaw. Load times. Seriously, WTF?!?! As the levels load you see a loading screen, and a little gameplay hint at the bottom of the screen. We've all seen this sort of load screen before. After about 15 seconds the tip changes to another one. You actually end up seeing about six of these while you wait for the level to load. That's fucking right...about a minute and a half. Oh, and it's not just between levels. If you die – load screen. Awesome...
Graphics
Graphically the game looks horrible. It seems like it was developed for the original Xbox, and looks so dated. Textures in the game are so low-resolution it's not funny. Buildings are plastered with paintings and posters. Tables have newspapers and magazines on them. God forbid if you walk up to one to read it, all you see is a bunch of blurry pixels. Nothing to read here. Even the ones they intend you to read, and used higher-res textures for, still look shitty up close, and are just barely readable. Overall I give the graphics a 2 or 3 out of 10 for this generation’s consoles. Hell, some Wii games look better.
Gameplay
Gameplay is equally sloppy. Sometimes you know you need to interact with an object, but when you walk up to it, the little "Press the X button" thing shows up and disappears just as fast. You then spend the next ten seconds strafing and sliding around until you are standing on the one pixel and looking at the precise angle to be prompted for the button push. The shooting and fighting mechanics are decent, but nothing that really differentiates it from any other shooter, new or old. It's a shooter. Now we all expect a certain level of profanity and disregard from Duke, and without giving any spoilers, just let me say there is some seriously offensive shit going on in the game. Not by Duke, but by the aliens. Let's just say it's a form of alien rape and leave it at that. C'mon Gearbox, we can hate the aliens just for being aliens - we don't need that too.
The only redeeming part of the game is Duke himself. Despite looking almost as bad as he did back in 1996, he is still Duke. He spews all the classic one-liners and a whole bunch of new ones. It's fun to take a piss, or to throw shit, or whatever. This is where I got most of my enjoyment from the game - interacting with the environment or objects to get a "Duke-ism". Although it's graphically disgusting, it is nice to have Duke back, being Duke.
Multi-Player
Multi-player is fun, and reminiscent of the old days, but still needs about five or six patches. Lag issues are unavoidable. Whatever is going into the Duke Nukem Forever matchmaking equation isn't taking network latency enough into account. I'm not a fan of CTF (Capture the Babe) or King of the Hill (Hail to the King), so I stuck with Deathmatch (Duke Match), which when not totally lagged out is OK. Oh, and there's no "host migration", so when the host quits, everyone is kicked.
Wrap-up
Duke Nukem Forever is a tremendous letdown to me. It is the Jar Jar Binks of the Duke Nukem franchise. I would almost prefer the game never released, and to just imagine how awesome it would be if it ever releases. Unfortunately, I no longer have that luxury. I saw the legacy of Duke Nukem, and Duke himself would shit on it. Gearbox destroyed a memory I had and loved. I know the primary goal was to release the game, but sometimes nothing is better than something shitty. This is certainly one of those times. My advice - avoid Duke Nukem Forever. Wait ten years, and pick it up then. You can pretend it's a retro title from the mid-90's and enjoy it as such. No need to spend money now on a new release that's already retro.
