Duke Nukem Forever Review – Oct 28-2011

Developers: 3D Realms, Triptych Games, Gearbox Software, and Piranha Games
Publisher: 2K Games
Release Date: June – 14 – 2011 (North America)
Review Date: October 28 – 2011
Reviewer: !FT!Protocal®
Platform: Windows

Intro:
It appears to be a trend with my reviews that I like to do them well after the game has released and I’ve had time to actually play it to its fullest extent, make some notes and form a valid opinion. I could easily say something bad about Duke Nukem Forever and it’s not like 2K and Gearbox haven’t heard it all already by now. However, I honestly can’t say anything overly egregious about it. The game is almost exactly what I expected. The only problem is that it’s what I would have expected back in 2001… 2006 at the latest. Yet again I find myself torn between my own personal feelings towards the game and the reviews and hype both before and after its release. As you sit back and read my review please keep in mind that this is simply my own opinion of the game; I did not take into account any of scores I saw online because that’s simply too easy and I felt yet again, similar to Medal of Honor, many of the critics trashed this game without giving it any real credit.

Single player Gameplay & Experience:
When I fired up DNF for the first time I have to admit I was excited! Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine this game actually coming out. The intro movie is sick, the music is pumping and I was in my glory. I can remember the first time I played Duke Nukem 3D on my buddy’s computer how fascinated I was at the graphics and music and just everything about the game was so damn cool! … Oh how times have changed. The main menu loads and it looks fine, I guess. The music, background and initial presentation are acceptable but I almost expected more from it even though it’s just the menu. For a game that’s been in development since 1996 you’d think the ‘simple’ menu would have been ramped up some to really blast you into the game. Anyway that didn’t really bother me, but I’ll tell you what did; I love going through the options menus in new games, just to see what they have to offer in terms of Audio, Video, Gameplay, Controls, etc. So the video and sound options are fine, I don’t have any real issues with them because it’s not like the newer games are any better and some are certainly worse (*cough* Dead Island). That being said I almost s**t a nut when I opened the Gameplay options and saw the ‘Aim Assist’ option; you have GOT to be kidding me?!. No, they’re not. They actually give you an option for aim assist for an FPS on PC. Should I be shocked by this? No, you’re right I shouldn’t. Many games have it now because they’re terrible console ports or the developers think we’re unskilled idiots. However DNF was actually developed for PC and then ported to console! To me this was insulting and needless to say autoaim remained unchecked. Enough of the menu options for now, time for some gameplay.

The opening level seems to be about as far as most people make it. They play through the ‘intro’; peeing in the toilet, throwing poo, scribbling a giant penis on the whiteboard, fighting the alien and then quitting or at least that’s been my experience. That’s where I stopped the first time too. The graphics during the intro are absolutely disgraceful for a game released in 2011, however since it was meant to ‘look like a console game’ *wink, wink you silly console gamers* I actually found it rather humorous. Once you start the game it does look much better, admittedly dated, but better. I manually enabled some AA and AF filters through the NVIDIA CP to make it look a little less ‘2001-ish’ but Duke is still showing his age.

As I played through each level a noticed a number of recurring themes: crude jokes, disgusting visuals (take that for what you will), over the top humour (mostly idiotic), frustrating checkpoints and ultimately a very linear and poorly thought out story mode. I love Duke’s humour, however I found his one-liners occurred far too frequently to actually add any real humour to his character and to the game itself. Most of the time I found myself laughing because of how stupid they were! But I have to admit, it actually started to amuse me by the end of the game. Maybe my brain was just starting to adapt to his immaturity, or maybe they actually intended for it to be cheesy and lame, who knows … My favourite one-liner is definitely his ‘Christ sake, Leroy’ comment as his so-called ‘teammate’ gets annihilated on a bridge by an alien ship. Other than a few lines that amused me “Duke one, Gears nothing” (Gears reference), “That’s one Dead Space marine” (Doom reference and a homage to Duke 3D) I just found them too tongue-in-cheek. Like your elderly uncle with the stories, ol’ Duke is just trying way too hard. Sometimes less is better.

The checkpoint system is just weird and ultimately I don’t understand it. Now a days most games have built in quick-save feature and/or they have checkpoint system that makes sense; DNF, not so much. I frequently found myself restarting back to a section of a level I simply had no interest in doing over; as in it served no purpose and the checkpoint could have easily been moved up but it’s almost like they wanted us to one shot each ‘challenge’. My favourite example of this is when you have to play as mini-Duke, which thankfully isn’t all that often. Even still, having to take on three armoured Pigs who have rocket launchers is INCREDIBLY frustrating and having to do it over and over and over until you get the timing right, well that just plain made me angry. Oh and I won’t even mention the Octaking fight (a late game boss); that almost drove me to alcoholism. (Ed: I think Proto meant “further into alcoholism here.) All that being said by the very end of the game I actually found that my overall skill had improved drastically since the initial levels. I was very confident in my ability take on virtually whatever they threw into my path, which admittedly at times was a bit overwhelming. I did find that difficulty varied far too much.

Boss fights were all very anticlimactic. Not once did I actually feel a sense of complete accomplishment, not even after killing Octaking. The final boss fight is just a joke, really. It took me two tries to beat him and because I can’t even remember his name I have to agree with the critics, it’s very easy and boring. The only reason I died the first time is because I wasn’t paying attention to everything that was going on around me, not that you’re supposed to because half the time you’ll be trying to not to seizure with all the screen flashing and stuff flying everywhere. Yet even after saying all this I wasn’t really upset by how easy it was. I found it fun but unrewarding, a feeling I’m not sure I can say I’ve ever felt before after beating a game. It’s like I wanted to go back and do the final fight again but not actually ‘win’, I just wanted more; and I think that’s really where I start to draw a line between a good game, and an average game.

The driving sections of the game can be tedious at times, however I enjoyed running over the Pigs, flying off the jumps and stopping at the checkpoints to find gas. That damn monster truck eats fuel like a … n/m almost threw in a Duke one-liner.

The controls are fine, better than some of the more recent FPS I would argue; (again *cough* Dead Island). For me so long as the control feels fluid, responsive and ‘free’ I pretty much give that a five out of five and DNF is good. Not once did I feel like I was fighting with the controls, however I will say that the zoom feature is just whack. Why does it go blurry when you zoom?

Does Duke have something wrong with his eyes? I guess he is getting pretty long in the tooth, but still it just makes no sense so I found myself more often than not just avoiding the zoom feature altogether.

There are some nonsense areas in the game which just made it boring like having to jump all over the damn place in the casino just to open the gate, while you’re mini-Duke. Or having to rescue the waitress in the kitchen, again as mini-Duke and more jumping – but at least shooting Pigs.

What I will say about the game is that I found the load times between levels to more than acceptable. Maybe it’s because the game is so old or maybe because it’s actually decent coding, who knows and who cares, it loads quite fast after the initial load.

Now I want to touch quickly on the load-screen hint system. I honestly cannot tell when they’re trying to be funny and when they’re trying to be serious. Maybe they were never intending to be serious at times, I have no idea. What I do know is that I found some of them very funny. For instance: ‘If you’re stuck you could always cheat and check online …’ and that’s a paraphrase, but mostly accurate. As well, ‘if you fall of a ledge and die, it’s most likely your fault’, that I found quite humourous. Most of the other ones were either meant to be stupid or insultingly obvious.

Something else that bothered me was the inability to quickly exit an ‘action’, IE if I was turning a valve, or moving a crane, etc. This is such a pain in the ass that you have to literally stop for a full second almost, then hit your action key to ‘exit’ the action you’re currently doing. This caused a lot of grief in certain sections of the game.

Quickly touching on the disturbing/gross content in the game, I found something quite distasteful in how Duke is able to shoot women who are trapped in alien goo. His on-liner is ‘nothing even I can do for you now, baby’. To me that sort of contradicts his personality. Duke does everything in his power to save women (and then score with them later of course!) so shooting them to put them out of their misery didn’t sit well with me. The other things I found disgusting were tickling the ‘bum holes’ of the Alien Mother, throwing poo (kinda funny), and peeing in an alien’s eye socket (again kinda funny). Just over the top really … and not necessary, even for Duke. Again with the trying too hard. Duke 3D was fun and hilarious and yet not gross.

Now we come to the weapons and inventory debate; you can ‘only’ carry four weapons at a time, and both types of grenades (pipe bomb & proxy-laser mine). You can also stock up on steroids (tons of fun to punch s**t when you’re hopped on this), beer and a few other items which truthfully I’ve forgotten. You can also get a Duke hologram which comes in handy from time to time when you need regain health in a clutch so you send him out as a decoy. Here’s the bottom line, you’ll never use more than four weapons at one time (be sure to enable ‘Extended Inventory’ in Gameplay Options ahead of time; why this isn’t auto-enabled I don’t know), and the game never puts you in a position to equip any more weapons than what you need; I like this. If you see a rocket launcher on the ground and you’re still carrying around your freezepop gun (why anyone WOULD use this is beyond me), drop it and pick up the launcher; there’s a reason it’s there. And that’s almost a point in itself. I found everything in DNF was there for a reason. Did it make me feel stupid? Sometimes, yes, but more often than not I was glad it wasn’t completely open-ended and I was happy to see a new weapon drop because I knew there a reason. Now that being said it’s hard to say there are any weapons better than the Rail Gun. I don’t care what anyone’s argument is, that gun is so overpowered it’s a joke and yet I thoroughly enjoyed using it. Boom baby!

I have to say that the game was overall very entertaining and enjoyable despite all the little issues here and there. And really, that’s the meat and potatoes of a video game, did it entertain you? Well it certainly entertained me. It frustrated, made me laugh and entertained me like I expected Duke to do and for that I give all the developers full marks. Does it lack in areas? Absolutely but what current game doesn’t? I could criticize a good number of triple-a titles on the market today that don’t meet my expectations however we overlook that because the hype around DNF was bigger than the game itself, or was it? I just feel that the game is true to its roots; lest we all forget the original Duke3D and how long this current title has been in development for. Ultimately I feel the game delivers exactly what we should have expected and not so much from what everyone had over-hyped and analyzed. Is there any real replay value on the game? Not so much, however since you can start at whatever chapter you like it is worth playing through specific areas again to obtain achievements you may have missed or to watch some strippers!

Multiplayer Gameplay & Experience:
Yikes. This is where my review sort of falls of the map. Reason being, I have literally spent maybe an hour in multiplayer. What is there to say about it … not a lot. The only mode I played was Team Death Match. It’s pretty straight forward and reminded me a lot of Duke 3D to be honest. Pick up weapons, run around and shoot people. It doesn’t feel as polished as the single player however that’s most likely because the MP was developed by Piranha Games; it shows. I didn’t enjoy it, however I can’t say it’s complete garbage either. It’s just really boring and felt very out of place; rushed if you will. I’m guessing it was added specifically because console gamers wouldn’t have bought the game if it was single player only.

Wrap-up & Conclusion:
Is Duke Nukem Forever the masterpiece we had all hoped for? No. But it’s here, it’s in our hands and on our screens, something that was never supposed to even come to fruition after 3D Realms went under. It delivers hours of enjoyment, humour and just decent gameplay. It can be boring at times but if you look past that to what Duke Nukem was originally, this game is very much on par with Duke 3D. So what more do we expect? The sounds and lighting are decent, the jokes are lame yet funny, the gore is high, the content extreme and overall it’s just a fun game to play. In ways I almost feel honored to actually be playing Duke Nukem Forever and maybe that’s something we’ve all forgotten amidst all the criticism and backlash. Maybe we’ve all taken for granted that this game could very well have never been released, period. And yes many have stated they’d rather the game have not been released at all but I find that very hypocritical and unfair since all everyone has been asking for since 1996 is its release.

No matter what your feelings are about DNF it’s finally here and it is in fact what we all waited for. Enjoy it and look forward to the next one as it’s sure to be a more polished title. Hail to the King, baby.

Single Player: 75/100
Multiplayer: 55/100
“What we waited for”: 70/100
Overall: 66%