Duke Nukem 3D was released in 1996 and was the milestone for First Person Shooters(FPS). It was basically an improved DOOM. The game was a hit, and the voice of Duke (Jon St. John) has had a life of it's own. Duke Nukem Forever was announced a few years after 3D, and it took until 2011 to actually come out. Was it worth the many years of waiting? No, not really.
Let me start by saying that Duke Nukem Forever is a decently fun game. If your a fan of the series then you will find some enjoyment here. The parts of the game where you are running and gunning, is satisfying. The only thing is that those moments don't happen as much as I wanted. I'll get into that a bit later. The story of the game is that the aliens from Duke 3D are back and are taking the women of earth to produce aliens, which is not much different from the story of Duke 3D. So, pretty much Duke is trying to save the babes, and kick some alien/pig ass in the process. Don't come in expecting a good story, but I didn't expect one. The game does not take it's self serious, and thats a plus. There are jabs at Halo, DOOM, Dead Space, Gears of War, and Valve games throughout the single player. The Halo one is funny, but the others just felt forced and low. The only complaint about the story is the ending, very lame for a game this much in development.
The graphics are just ugly, very ugly. It's running on the Unreal Engine, and it's showing it's age. There is a great deal of pop ins, and the frame rate is quite awful as well. To me, these are just unacceptable flaws for a game in development this long. The gore is pretty nice though. If you shoot an enemy point blank with a shotgun, body parts will fly off. It looks like a late Xbox, early Xbox 360 game and just does not hold up in 2011 with games like Uncharted 2 and Final Fantasy XIII to compete with.
The gameplay is just boring. It's about 60/40 with shooting/platforming and that's waaaaaay more platforming than I wanted to do. The game is broken off in chapters, and each chapter is broken into sub chapters. You will sometimes go 2-3 sub chapters in a chapter without shooting anything. For a game that promotes action as much as it does, it really has a slow pace to delivering on it. Some chapters are packed with action, and they are fun, I just wanted more of them. The water level at the end, is just plain bad game design that should have been cut. The load times are also horrible. I downloaded the game to my Xbox 360 hard drive and it still took about 20-30 seconds to load levels, and when you die you'll sit through them as well. The game is quite difficult on the normal setting, but that's fine.
The game is rated M for mature, and it definitely has mature things in it. Your in a strip club at one point, loads of fouls language, nudity, drinking, and violence. I've heard some other reviews say that some of the things are offensive, and that the humor has aged. I don't agree with this. The same humor in Duke 3D, is in Forever. He calls girls babes, does dick jokes, and drops movie lines as he kills. That IS Duke Nukem, I'm not sure what they were expecting. Maybe it's just that I don't get offended by anything, I'm not sure. I liked the filth aspects of the game, it gives it a weird kind of charm.
The single player will take around 7-8 hours to complete, and then you can jump on the multiplayer. I played on the Xbox 360, and it was so laggy that I couldn't hardly play. I hear the PC version does not have these problems, so I would get the PC version if you want to play MP. What I did play was an ok experience, and a frantic break from Halo or Call of Duty.
If your a fan of the Duke Nukem games, you will enjoy parts of this game. If the action would have been amped up, and the graphics not be such a mess this would be a good game. The game did change development hands a few times and Gearbox just polished the game and released it. I would recommend to play the game, just to say you did. It's a part of gaming history, just for being released....even though it sucks.
2/5
Comments
Post a Comment