So, I was pretty impressed by any design company that has the development chops and guts to pick up Duke Nukem Forever and actually release it. By the time I first became aware of Duke Nukem Forever, it was already a joke, a game no one really expected would ever be released. ![]() You'll get some enjoyment in listening to Duke Nukem Forever tell stories of the glory days, but it's a better use of your money to find a game living in the moment.Like many gamers, I fondly remember Duke Nukem 3D, blowing up aliens, exploring (and blowing up) colorful environments pulled from life, and laughing at Duke’s one-liners. A shoe salesman who can't move past his glory days as a high school football star. Duke Nukem Forever just can't seem to move on.Īnd that's basically the problem. Serious Sam has improved on the formula that Duke Nukem started. Sam takes cues from Duke, for sure, but has shown that one-liners don't have to be dick and fart jokes, women don't have to be objects, and action heroes don't have to be jackasses. Sam has grown with the times and fares better than Duke. Serious Sam has taken over in Duke's years off to be the over-the-top action hero who protects the Earth from aliens while dropping one-liners. "Let's take Duke Nukem 3D and make everything more over-the-top!" Maybe I've just grown up, and can see things more realistically now, but this game is seriously trying too hard. In Forever, it seems that 3D Realms was trying to make a more offensive parody of the Duke that was. Maybe it's because I was in high school, and I'm blinded by the nostalgia, but even playing DN3D now, the humor and crass jokes seemed to be handled better. There's some humor to be found, but most of it is just juvenile. The voice acting is good, or I guess as good as it can be when you're dealing with this script. The graphics are decent enough, but were definitely showing their age by the time the game was released. The shooting mechanics are good enough, even the driving mechanics are serviceable, but the pacing never seems to get back on track and never begs you to keep playing. Only then does the fighting actually start. Has a conference call with the president and a general where he's instructed not to fight. So what does Duke do? Heads to a talk show appearance. ![]() Duke is a hero, and has a massive tower-mansion where he has shrines to himself all over the place, and two twins to service him (and yes, I mean "service" in that way). What little the intro did to build up momentum is totally lost in the boring 30 minutes to follow: It's 12 years later. What happens afterwards is less slack-cuttable. But, it was meant as an intro level, so I can cut it some slack. ![]() ![]() The game starts you off fighting the final boss from DN3D, and while I can remember the adrenaline flowing when I fought that boss years ago, I really felt nothing in Forever- you just run around in a circle waiting for ammo drops, then shoot the boss while continuing to strafe in a circle. All the elements are there, the mechanics are good, the level design is at least acceptable, nothing is broken, but it's just kinda boring. Really, it's the most disappointing kind of game. It's a good game that got bogged down over 12 years of development, ideas that nobody seemed to want to cut, a switch in development teams, and a change in the climate of games. I wouldn't go so far as to call it a bad game, though. So is Duke Nukem Forever as bad as everyone says it is? I've been doing a bit of an experiment over the past week, playing games that have been pretty severely panned to see if I can find the positives.
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