Wow, has it really been 15 years since the game was in development? OF COURSE IT'S BEEN! But the big questions are has Duke Nukem Forever reached expectations and has he aged well. In short No he didn't meet expectations for some but did for me and No he hasn't aged well because he hasn't changed and I like that. I mention that he hasn't reached expectations or aged well because the audience who knew Duke in the 90's have matured and may not like him anymore and the way the new game plays may upset old fans. Well I'm reviewing it now so I hope you haven't ran away yet.
The story of Duke Nukem Forever is what you'd expect. The Cycloids are taking away the women and Duke is out to get revenge. I know seems simple but hey it's Duke Nukem! He's back to take arse and kick names... I mean kick arse and take names. The setup this time is the Cycloids have shown up on Earth and seem to not be causing trouble until they go after Duke for revenge and take his twin hotties away from him. The president blames him for starting the fight and Duke wants revenge for kidnapping his babes.
Gameplay is like most FPS games and I highly recommend changing the settings to Duty(I think that's what it's called) so it has the same setup as Call Of Duty and it's the easiest way to play it, trust me! The game borrows from other popular shooters but it mainly borrows from Halo, Call Of Duty and believe it or not Half Life... really borrows from Half Life in the sense it tells you nothing and you got to work out everything yourself for the most part and it's puzzles. They even make a couple of references to Half Life.
As you know this is a FPS but the game has power ups in it... remember what those are? Throughout the game you'll find beer and steroids along with holo Dukes to use in the game. Beer make you take less damage(and makes you tougher apparently), steroids make you only do super powered melee attacks and the Holo Dukes create a hologram of Duke to take aggro (yes even an Army Of Two reference). There are no grenades in the game but you do get pipe bombs which remote detonate and trap mines which explode when the laser line is crossed.
The weapons are all the basics you'd expect but over the top for the most part. You have the basic handgun and shotgun but the machine gun has 3 barrels and is called "The Ripper", an RPG which looks nothing like what most of you are used too, The Devastator which is a machine gun that shoots rockets, a rail gun which is your sniper rifle... on steroids and some alien weapons which... suck, as well as a shrink gun and a freeze gun which both of them are fun to use but pale against the shotgun.
There are some vehicle sections but they don't have weapons on them and take a while to complete. As mentioned above there are some puzzles to solve but they will seem familiar if you've ever played a Half Life game.
Your health bar(Yes a health bar! Remember what they are?) can regenerate like in every other FPS and it's actually called your Ego. You can increase your max Ego by finding interactive items throughout the game and defeating the bosses... some with hilarious results. Also bosses can only be defeated using explosives or turrets... you have been warned!
The game is also fairly long, taking me over 15 hours to complete over 2 days... yeah it's the length of 2 Call Of Duties! One of the real hooks of the game is Duke's one liners... they are PRICELESS! I couldn't help but laugh my arse off throughout playing this game, his comments to picking up a turd are just hilarious! Duke makes various references to other games and there are a couple of Easter eggs in the game you have to find that also have one liners attached to them.
The game has online multiplayer matches which are the same as every other shooter but with a Duke Nukem twist and unfortunately Christopher Sabat's voice for the announcer... am I the only one sick of his and Steven Blum' voices? I didn't get much of a lag when I played but since only the PAL region has it as of me typing this so if Halo is anything to go on it's going to be bad when the rest of the world gets it.
Duke Nukem Forever is a hard game to recommend because I feel the audience who'd get the most fun out of the game aren't in the age bracket to play the game. Seriously even though I had fun with the game I fell that 13 to 18 year olds would enjoy it more then the adults it's suppose to be targeted at. Is Duke Nukem Forever a good game? Yes. Is it a great game? Hard to say to be honest. Let me make it simpler. If you are a fan of Duke Nukem you have a 60% chance of liking it, depending on how you grew up and if you're easily blinded by nostalgia. If you're under 20 and above 12 you'll love it!(I don't encourage under 20's to buy or play the game without parental permission) I loved the game myself. It's nice to finally see Duke again after so many years. I was 12 when I played Duke Nukem 3D on the PlayStation and he hasn't changed a bit.
Digital Foundry : Nintendo's worried about the next-gen transition, Xbox Online DRM causes a major outage, Gotham Knights gets an unconvincing gameplay reveal, Concern over so many games using Unreal Engine 5 and the legendary Duke Nukem Forever build from 2001 has leaked.
Recently, a user leaked the 2001 build of Duke Nukem Forever on the forum and also shows us some gameplay footage from this version.
I remember that trailer very well, it was epic back then, same for the first Prey trailer from 1998, nobody seems to remember that one.
Take a look back at Duke Nukem Forever, and why you should maybe give it a second chance!
I really enjoyed it, although I never did finish it. I didn't understand why so many people were trashing it. Sure, the gameplay wasn't revolutionary or anything. But it retained a lot of that Duke charm that I've come to love since the early days of gaming.
I don't know. I'm not against janky games. I'm a big fan of Eastern European rpgs like those from Piranha Bytes and Spiders. I've enjoyed fps like Legendary and those of that vein.
While I didn't hate Forever like many did, the game had a whole lot of faults, and not just its lack of polish.
I too found it enjoyable but then again I was a fan of the original Duke 3D on PC. I think most of the hate was all that time in development hell and it emerged as it did. They tried, they really tried with what they had to work with and it ended up being a decent game but nowhere up to par with all the other offerings at the time. That game, exactly like it is, had it released 3-4 years sooner then it prob would have fared better in terms of critical response.
Really fun game with lots of glitches but still very fun, that slapping level was ridiculous
Just a few will understand it , because it was so wrong yet so right XD
Would love to see a remake with lots of physics lol
The game was a good Duke Nukem. The same kind of immature humor, gameplay and plots from average to bad. The blame for perception is not Forever's. People need to reevaluate the perception about the series, which had just one good game among all the releases and a lot of people made the exception rule.
This was the WORST game I have ever played in my life. I bought it day 1 and traded it in day 2. I had it on the 360 and the first level showed promise but as you went further into the game, there was more and more missing and not working. There was 1 boss fight that the draw distance was so bad if I walked too far away from the boss it would disappear but could still shoot at me and hurt me and all I was able to see was the walls to the sides and the skybox ahead of me. SO SO BAD. I finished the game and I had no desire to keep playing it, even tried online but it was lame. DUKE 3D was great, ran good on most PCs, had interesting levels and was in some ways ground breaking. DUKE FOREVER was in so much development hell that at the end they just wanted to release this and be done with it. Gearbox (i think it was gearbox) polished up the first level and a few parts of the next few levels but as you got to the end you can see that they either gave up or expected the player to give up and never make it that far.
I am playing this game for cca 8 hours and having great fun. I find it pretty suprising, because I didn't expect it. I just wanted to trade-in horendous DA 2 for any game, and Duke came out in the same time, so I choosed "the King". I think that the review pretty much sums up, what I think about the game, but 8.5 seems too high to me. I would aim for like 7, but that doesn't matter : ) Great review overall : )
Please explain to me why you gave it an 8 to the graphics. Some PS2 games have better graphics.
graphics should have been 4 for this gen
I think people forget what the graphics were like on the last Duke Nukem, plus for being able to do alot in one game.
Who cares about graphics, its like Shenmue with Duke Nukem.
IDK how anyone can justify th score you given DNF here. I'm not ne for agreeing uth teviewing concencus and feel that Metacritic has led to a lot of critics sticking together for fear of losing crediblity bewfore they're fully secure n themseves as writers and this makes a lot of niche titls suffer because if the first two aren't dreat/done by someone who in't big on said niche the rest tend to follow suit. Well, though DNF isn't really a niche title(only in the sense that Dyue himself IS anachronistic in many ways and my wife simply refuses to play the game as she despises his haircut so much and wouldn't ever wish to be him in any form she's also a bigger gamer than I am if anything so she must hate the guy and always has and nowt to do with feminism either she just hates the bloke)I HAD hoped the low mta was just one ofd those fashion things among writers or it was paying the price for the long development and not being given a fair crack.
With that in mind i'd reserved it for rental and gave it a fair go as a SP game(the MP is just a bit lacking for today's world)on it's prompt release day arrival(shocker for Lovefilm and me!)and fouund it a 5/10 game. The one ners start off TOO corny and though things improve a little as you get more used to Duke again later on it's still over done and could have been well advised using a less is more approach with the off hand commentary.
The game looks AWFUL in places and average, at best, in others with nothing of new or outstanding, revamped design in terms of character models and enemy types. Worst thing about it's looks(and it DOES look like a badly done HD rescale of a "never top of the line in the looks dept PS2 game" to be frank to me),though, was, to me, the odd sheen things have making it all look a bit, well, placcy.
The campaign was long and they shoehorn a lot of stuff in there but it's just never very interesting or inspiring and I couldn't get away from he fact this game managed to get made despite not shining aft a milion years yet we see so many more attractive and slick looking games and game ideas die every month and i was left feeling Duke should have stayed an enigma and DNF never released. Certainly it's not worth the wait as though the core shooting can make for some good fire fights it's nothing you can't get better done elsewhere and nostalgic gameplay doesn't ,always ,mean classic gameplay and Duke's lack of amazing new guns or any progression in his own character makes it a bit of a grind to finish the game-and not much of a challenge either.
So, while i'm genuinely happy some gamers have found DNF to be their hero returning in some kind of decent form I just cannot find it in me to agree ad find myself in the unenviable position(for me) and falling more in line with the reviewers and critics who've averaged out around the 5/6 out of 10 area for the game. Can't see how it lays much like Halo, either, to be honest and would say a second division UT3 would be closer to the gameplay mark. Anyway-we can't all love the same things even if I'm surprised to see people rating this as highly as you have geezer. Enjoy yourself, though, it takes all sorts and all that!