Duke Nukem Forever

Game Info

It has been 15 long years in the making and the day has finally arrived, Duke Nukem Forever has been released.  Many people believed this game to be vaporware, but 2K Games and Gearbox have teamed up to resurrect this franchise.  Duke Nukem Forever has been in development since 1997.  It has gone through many developers, has had countless delays, and even was momentarily canceled in 2003. The first two titles in this long running series started off as a side scrolling shooters.  Then in 1996, Duke Nukem 3D released and was hailed as one of the best shooters of its time and paved the way for the first-person shooter genre.  Since then only rumors have surfaced as to when another game would be released.  Well my friends, the famous wise cracking Duke Nukem is back in business.

Duke Nukem Forever starts out showing off how famous “the king” has been over the last fourteen years since the end of Duke Nukem 3D. He has since then starred on his own talk show but this show gets canceled as the aliens from fourteen years ago have come back to earth.  Despite being told not to get involved Duke does anyway, because he has got to save the ladies.  The basic gameplay is shallow, the standard shoot everything that moves variety, which is fun at times but gets old rather quick. Luckily, Gearbox throws in a few puzzles such as having to find a condom and vibrator in Duke’s strip club to get a lap dance. Another great addition to the game is the interactivity with different items in the environment such as being able to grab a dumbbell on the ground and curl it to boost Duke’s ego.  Putting in vehicle levels, such as driving around in a remote control car or a monster truck, was another excellent way to break up the monotony.  The boss fights that Gearbox has created are filled with awesome, over-the top action and lots of fun. The real greatness of this game is Duke himself and all the humor and sayings through out the game that really keeps the pacing of the title. The voice acting is well done and very humorous.  The downfall though, would be the graphics.  The graphics are reminiscent of launch titles for the Xbox 360 with very few effects that are even up to most first-person shooters today. Duke Nukem Forever will take the average gamer between eight and ten hours to complete with barely any reason play through it again. Gearbox opted to not put in any co-op mode, so if a friend is over, you are stuck only being able to play against each other via split screen or taking turns playing the single player.

Multiplayer was fun but nothing too special. It is a mixture of good old fashion fast pace shooters like quake or unreal and has leveling up and weapon unlocks similar to Call of Duty. Present are the standard game modes, but Gearbox thankfully spiced it up a little with deathmatch modes in which everyone is shrunken and running around killing each other. There have already been new map add-ons announced for the game, which hopefully can help get more people on the multiplayer.  The community as of this review was not where a big time release like Duke Nukem should have been, but it is going to be tough for any game to pull away the hardcore Halo or Call of Duty Gamers. Overall I would say rent Duke Nukem, it’s not really worth a purchase unless your like me and are a big Duke Nukem fan and have to own all of his game or are just wondering what all the crazy hype is about. The game play is repetitive and the single player is short. It is a good game to have mindless fun shooting a bunch of bad guys and save some good looking chicks. For big collectors out there like myself, 2K Games also released the “Balls of Steel” edition of the game which includes a 4-inch Duke bust, a miniature deck of cards, dice, poker chips with the duke logo, a comic book, post cards, a Duke Nukem Forever sticker, an art book, and paper craft along with the game of course.