Duke Nukem Forever

So!  The Duke has finally returned!  After 14 years in development hell, he finally sees the light of day.  But has the wait done him any good?  Well, much like the aliens invading Las Vegas I have some bad news for you.  Duke Nukem is here, all the way from 1997...

So 14 years?  A lot has changed since Duke Nukem 3D was released; we’ve had Halo completely redefine the first-person shooter, then Call of Duty re-redefined the FPS, Gears of War 1 and then 2 set the standard for graphics...  A lot for the Duke to live up to then?  Unfortunately his ego gets in the way as he seems to have ignored all of these benefits.  It’s hard to tell whether the game is intentionally poor, as a throwback to the olden days:  The graphics are grainy and textures are flat, but there are issues within the game’s core too.  Enemies often freeze completely or run into walls and the game is sometimes unsure if you’ve actually shot an enemy.  Basic enemy and NPC animations are amateurish...  Really amateurish.  If you look in a full body mirror Duke doesn’t even stand on the floor properly.  Some of the texturing is passable, maybe even decent e.g. the blood and water hitting the screen.  The word that comes to mind though, ironically, is ‘rushed’.  But my biggest grind of all is the EPIC loading times:  Even installed to my hard drive, on the 360 S, it still takes a good 30-45 second to load.  This isn’t too bad if it were only when loading the levels for the first time, but no, it’s every time you die.  That makes boss fights really annoying.

Ok, so we all know about this game’s troubled history (Duke Nukem Taking Forever etc) and I have to commend Gearbox for picking up the pieces of a game that looks like it’s been finished since 2003.  They did well to even get the game out there.  A little developer diary, unlocked for completing the game, shows that it was pretty much finished by 2008, but there were problems with the game companies.  The script clearly hasn’t changed since 1997, but this is where I can begin to like this game.  For all its flaws, this game can be quite enjoyable.  Duke’s one-liners are hilarious and the humour is crude and laugh-out-loud.  So many little touches have been added, for example; signing a kid’s autograph book, but you don’t just press a button and Duke scribbles his name, you actually get to move the pen around the page and draw what you like.  Ok, I drew a penis, I’m not ashamed to say it!  The weapons are fun; they include all the classics like the freeze ray and the shrink ray.  Stomping on tiny, shrunken Pig Cops never gets old.  Every action you take, like lifting weights, admiring yourself in the mirror etc. all boost your Ego (read: health).  The set pieces are pretty fun and very epic in scale.  This has the makings of a great game, but is let down by basic, but large errors.

There isn’t really much of a storyline here, which I feel doesn’t really fit into today’s modern gaming; even Bulletstorm had a better storyline.  This is the closest game we can compare Duke Nukem Forever to.  They both have a similar style and attitude, but Bulletstorm pulls it off so much better.  The locales are pretty:  Ruined downtown Vegas and an epic drive through the Mojave to Hoover Dam, to name a couple.  But yet again, they are let down by poor texturing, particularly on the background imagining.

The online multiplayer isn’t much better.  Many Dukes battle it out for supremacy in poorly textured arenas.  Guns are spread around and a least provide a bit of entertainment, freezing or shrinking your enemies is even more fun when it’s a real person you’re playing against.  But, again, the game’s old, old engine just can cope, to the point at which you’ll be shooting an enemy, only for him to disappear off elsewhere.  The unlock system is cool; you unlock different customisation for your character, namely hats, glasses and shirts and there is also something called ‘My Digs’.  This is your own personal penthouse where you can chill and play with stuff you have unlocked.  To begin with there is just a French maid to ogle, but later you can unlock pinball machines and other games, weights and other fitness items (why?), paintings and other babes to display in your suite.  This is fun, shame I’ll probably never see 90% of it.  The online is just not playable enough.

On the whole the bad stuff outweighs the plus points, which is really unfortunate.  I really wanted to like this game; I wanted it to be good for all the time it has taken to make.  There are a lot of nice little touches in the game, and driving the RC car when shrunk is a cool feature, but the basic game mechanic and AI is poor and the textures are just horrible.  As I mentioned, the poor textures could be a throwback to the old, blocky Duke Nukem games but why risk being slated for it?  It is just outdated, simple as that.  But, with the release of this game a chapter of gaming history closes and we can look forward to the future of gaming, while Duke Nukem can rest easy.

What this game is, is a B-movie, a guilty pleasure.  The world needs guilty pleasures.  One of my favourite ever films, The Evil Dead, is a B-movie.  Duke Nukem Forever is the gaming industry’s best ‘B-game’, which unfortunately makes me a little sad to pay £40 for it.  I played it and enjoyed it, even knowing it was piss poor.  The game’s mood and feeling is totally tongue in cheek and exactly what you’d expect from Duke Nukem.  However, with today’s modern climate it may not be so well thought of:  Today’s heroes are gracious and have human flaws.  Even though Duke’s personality is a parody, new players may not get it.  It has everything Duke fans will love, but if you’re a hardcore gamer, chances are that the novelty will wear off pretty quickly.

Score Breakdown:

Visuals – 3/10: There are one or two places where you think, ‘ah it’s not that bad actually’, but then you look can look in any direction at random and find what looks like an unloaded texture, or a poor, blocky piece of environment.  NPCs even lack shadows...  ‘Nuff said.

Presentation – 3/10: Storyline?  What’s one of those?  You shoot bad guys.  That is the game.  More than once, I found myself wondering where to go next, even with the helpful objective glow for when you’re stuck.

Sound: - 7/10: Duke’s bad-ass voice is in full glory and his one-liners are epic.  Even better is hearing them in a squeaky voice after Duke gets miniaturised.  The soundtrack however, is typically Duke Nukem and gives a good, nostalgic feel.

Gameplay – 5/10: Aiming is dodgy and moving around the environment can be tricky, particularly when you need to avoid falling.  The AI is disappointing too; enemies will often just stop and be shot at or run into walls.  The minigames are fun and the shrunk sections are amusing.  The online play is pretty poor.

Overall – 5/10: Personally, I really enjoyed this game, but unfortunately there is too much wrong with it for it to be considered good.  Against today’s market it is poor at best.  I can only recommend this game if you’re a big Duke fan, or just want to pay homage to the gaming industries’ biggest in-joke.  The humour is excellent there, but if you’re looking for a bad-ass game which breaks all the rules, then maybe you should be looking at Bulletstorm.

Posted in: CDS,Duke,Forever,Nukem,Sam