Duke Nukem Forever Review

I don't know what I was expecting after 15 years, one of the, if not the longest development cycle for a game in all of videogame history. Having been developed on every conceivable console since its announcement in 1996, there was no way the story of Duke Nukem was going to end well. Here we are almost 2 decades and 3 active developers later and Duke Nukem Forever has finally been released, and frankly they should have left it dead and buried. Unfortunately Gearbox felt the need to save Duke from his endless development hell after the closure of  Duke Nukem creators 3D Realms. And thus we are given a game that would have more appropriately been released around 1996, which makes sense, given that was when the games bullshit macho posturing was relevant.

Duke Nukem is a one of the worst games ever released and its only accomplishment, though in retrospect is kind of a big one, is its release. What we are given after 15 years of waiting is a half-assed first person shooter with all the markings of what qualified as a terrible game back when it was announced. Duke's shooting mechanics are shoddy at best, and are almost never accurate, the game tries to vary up its mechanics by introducing driving levels, underwater levels, and areas where you find yourself shrunken down and trying to traverse the environment. Its a good idea, but poorly implemented, each of these divergences go on to long, and having to stop the driving mission, to fill the car with gas is excruciatingly dull. Graphically the game fails utterly, with low texture quality and low polygon counts serving as constant reminders as to this games original intended release date.

The Duke is back, is a factual statement, but he is bringing his perverse and outdated one-liner with him. While Duke was funny, in his most memorable appearance back on Duke Nukem 3D, his movie quotes are 10 years too late. Its sort of funny to think of the character as a sort of relic of an era long since forgotten, but the game doesn't position him like that, instead portraying him as the same "badass" and ladies man he was back when he was relevant. Instead he and the onslaught of crude jokes come across as immensely unfunny and then mildly offensive.

Duke Nukem isn't without merit, well in actuality the game in fact is, but as a history lesson into one of the most delayed and resurrected videogames in history its quite fascinating. You can often see elements that, had this game been released in a timely faction would have blown peoples minds. When compared to today's current crop of games it is a testament for how far the industry as come. For that sole reason this game deserves a look, to see what games used to be, what they are now, and for the now legendary story of this games development. As a history lesson its fascinating as a modern videogame its laughably outdated.

(1 out of 5)