Duke Nukem Forever Review

[Triforceformer]

Do not listen to the mean man. I've gotten about 4 hours in now. Mostly the SP with some MP.

Totally. Fucking. Worth it. The second I saw that Alien Commander come in and heard the music start up? Worth the price of admission alone for me. Mothership battle was fun if a bit simple. The multiplayer is...potentially good. By which I mean you have to hope that the server isn't too laggy, and some douchebag doesn't manage to hog the Devastator + Jetpack all round. There are a few good easter eggs so far, the Ego system justifies the interactivity, and there are quite a few good puzzles so far. Also, I have not heard one piece of music that I did not like yet.

Yes, the game is linear as all get out. Not that it's a bad thing at all. The Half-Life series is linear, and I can not tell you how much people suck that series' dick with praise. Duke is surprisingly quiet during "Cutscenes", and only ever says anything when everyone has gotten a word in. Alot of Duke's one liners make me laugh, and the Steroids powerup is fucking awesome. Beer is alright, but it takes a little too much away for what it gives in my opinion. The game also likes to break things up a bit with the odd driving or platforming section (which is a bad thing according to every reviewer in fucking existence). The weapons that I've gotten access to are all satisfying, aside from the Ripper. The Ripper looks ugly, sounds pathetic (Except for the reload), and has some awful firing animations. There are none. The gun just vibrates and has muzzleflash.

Also, I've encountered a turret section, and discovered that use of the actual turret is optional. Which I thank Triptych for many times over.

So far? I'd recommend it. But only for PC or PS3, though. The 360 version is a turd on a bun with a heaping helping of rotten horse radish from what I hear.

 

[puffy786]

If this was gamespot, the reviewer would of this game would have been fired by now, since the background theme is a Duke Nukem Forever advertisement and another DNF advertisement is below the text box i am typing in. A true sign of The Escapist's honesty.

 

[DrEmo]

I still think they missed a trick with the ego health system.

He could have had to do something cool to get his ego back. Like shooting a dude in the dick or something.

The more zaney stuff you do, the bigger your ego bar gets. And when it's low. You have to do something like benchpress an enemy carcase to boost it back up.

The rest of it looks pretty much how I imagined though.

THAT'S what I picture when I hear Duke Nukem. Why didn't they let people like you help with the game?


Oh, right, they wanted to cash in on their 12 year long failure not make a good game. I forgot.

 

[Russ Pitts]

Snip

Wait, why is the escapist still running the giant "Duke Nukem's crouch in your face" adds when you thought the game was awful?

By golly, you're right! It's almost as if our advertisers do not influence our editorial. Shocking!

Can everyone please remember this the next time we happen to have ads running for a game we've highly reviewed and not assume we've been bought off by the publisher? That'd be great. Thanks.


-R

 

[LogicNProportion]

Looks like I'm renting.

 

[AngryFrenchCanadian]

As bad as the game really is, lazy video review is lazy.

 

[BehattedWanderer]

"What if a golden man hath an iron son?"

Plato's argument for hereditary leadership seems to apply well to games. Just because we liked the former doesn't mean we'll like the successor, apparently. Excellent. I find this amusing as all hell.

Snip

Wait, why is the escapist still running the giant "Duke Nukem's crouch in your face" adds when you thought the game was awful?

By golly, you're right! It's almost as if our advertisers do not influence our editorial. Shocking!

Can everyone please remember this the next time we happen to have ads running for a game we've highly reviewed and not assume we've been bought off by the publisher? That'd be great. Thanks.


-R

And because you're not afraid to put up a blatant "Do not buy this game" sign in your reviews of games, I (and hopefully others) love you. All of you. Hopefully more review and editorial sites will take up this policy, eventually culminating in punishing the industry for trying to sell us trash. If games get a good score here, it tends to mean the game was actually good. A dissatisfied review here can likewise usually be counted on to be the result of dissatisfied or unpleasant instances. Not always the case, of course, but as a guideline, it does wonderfully.

 

[blindthrall]

I think this will go on my long list of games I objectively acknowledge as terrible, but enjoy playing none the less

Oh, don't say that, I have huge list of games like that. Dungeon Siege 2, Alpha Protocol, Postal, Deus Ex 2...but not Far Cry 2, I don't care how much people ***** about that game, it was good.

 

[sunpop]

I don't know why people expected anything more than old jokes and nudity thats all duke is about going into this with any high expectation of it being a good story being told perfectly is stupid. But to be fair all modern fps (call of duty and the like) are crap stories too it's just the same generic action hero crap that's been done a million times over.

 

[DerTiger]

what, you took over 1 hour for the queen *****?
damn, you suck. took me about 10 minutes in 3 retries on medium.

don't think DNF is as bad as you're presenting it.

also ACK to Akalabeth. The main activity in the game is not to piss or throw shit or slap walltitts. you CAN do it, if you want. but you don't have to at any time in the game.
you don't even have to piss in the start scene. just press E and you're back in the game.

 

[Alan Fawcett]

Let's be honest here - Queen, at least on second difficulty, is not really hard. There is an obvious safe spot on the left near the ammo crate where she can't hit you at all. Supporting monsters come in 2 ways: a pregnator egg thrown towards you - shoot it with a rocket - or an octobrain. There is always only 1 egg or 1 octobrain, and there is significant time before new spawns so you just sit in the safe spot, kill those 2 monsters, then shoot Queen. In fact, once you realize what you are supposed to do this battle is piss easy, requires 0 effort and therefore becomes almost dull. On my first run I've killed Queen in about 7 minutes on my first try. On my second run I knew exactly what to do and how and it took me about 4 minutes. I play on PS3, if it matters.
Well, there are unfair moments - for example, to reliably beat Battlelord on the Dam you must bring a beer and a holoduke with you for his second phase, then it will take 2 minutes, otherwise it'll be a horrible chore.
I've completed the game and I'd give it 7/10. Really appreciate the gore.
There is 1 alarming fact in the whole review. Only one, but it's important. Reviewer actually spent an hour trying to beat alien Queen. Really? You never even tried to think it seems. It's a disgrace. I can see someone spending maybe 15 minutes - figuring the right spot and minion spawn pattern - but an hour? Sorry, but reviewer sucks at this game. And that is a fact said reviewer basically admitted. It's all right to criticize the flaws, and God knows DNF has them aplenty, BUT if player sucks that bad himself... The criticism becomes largely irrelevant.
DNF - 7/10
Escapist review of DNF - 3/10

re the queen ***** fight eh is it just me but why is everyone waiting for her to open up before you can shoot her? just do what the game hints at when enter the fight chuck pipebombs on the jump pads to the right detonate them when they are near her and she opens up and you have time to stick 4 rockets in her. why are people waiting for the patern???

 

[Charmi the ninja]

I love all the arguments and issues that have come up because of this game. Its a bad game, but it still gets defended cos some people genuinely enjoy it, but its still a bad game. Even I don't know what to think about it.

One thing i can't stand is the amount of people using a subjective arguement to attack/defend an objective statement(and vice versa). And then poo flinging ensues when people start merging facts and opinions. C'mon guys, hasn't "extra credits" taught us better?

Anyway, besides that, I just wanted to flaunt me pervy-ness, by announcing that I enjoyed looking up girl's skirts as shrunken Duke

 

[themilo504]

I knew that his would happen when I played the demo and saw the ego bar. it?s the same danm problem as in bullet storm. Recharging health is not fun it?s not. its overused and it should not be used in every shooter. give us diversity . it seems like every time a new super popular fps appears everybody tries to copy it. I know that?s true of every genre but in the fps market it seems really extreme. Can?t we have a lot of different fps like some war games with recharging health some games that play a bit like half life and some that play like old school fps. But no instead we follow the leader and now duke nukem forever has become a example of why following the leader is a bad plan.
And I thought gearbox could do it ugh whatever .

 

[WonkyWarmaiden]

You know, I never had an issue with the previous Duke Nukem games but after watching that little bit of footage from the game the franchise is officially on my shit list.

Jesus Christ, they should've just called the game Boob Boobem Boobever because that's all it seems to revolve around.

 

[Ulquiorra4sama]

Say whatever you want, I liked Duke Nukem Forever. I actually think this is one of those times where playing it as a reviewer and playing it for dumb fun makes a big difference.

Sure the strip club level was way outta place, but other than that the transition between levels was pretty well done - or horribly done, depending on your own view - 'cause most of the time i didn't pay much attention to exactly "how" Duke got between different levels.

The greatest bother for me was that the intro music was kick-ass, but the in-game music was nowhere near of the same quality, it was fitting for the scene, but i wanted some heavier tunes - at least for the boss battle.

 

[Sean Deli]

Bulletstorm was exactly what DNF was supposed to be:
- silly in a 90's action-cliches sort of way,
- fast-paced and action packed,
- over-the-top in gore and graphical violence.
also - Bulletstorm gave us the word "dicktits", for which we are forever in debt.

If only they would skip the whole emo "My whole crew was killed, my friend is a cyborg - thus I failed as a father" from Grant (or was it Grey?) - it would be perfect.

So yeah, DNF should have been scrapped when it still had the chance to die in dignity.

 

[NKnight]

Oh, boy! Jack Thompson is going to be haaaaaappy! -_-

But really, maybe we are looking at this in a wrong perspective. If we were immature teenagers we'd probably love this! It's like Twilight, it's really, really bad, but it's good for teenage girls... and that's their target audience. So, technically, Twilight and Duke Nuke Forever are really excell... I'm sorry, I just can't finish that sentence! But, do you get my point?

KILL! MAIM! BURN! I'll take your skull for Khorne for such an insult of The Duke! @_@

lol Sorry man, I was just trying to make a point. But bringing Twilight to the table, in comparison to any game, even if it's only comparing the age of their target audience, is just... not cool xD. Sorry about that

 

[The_ModeRazor]

Told y'all, bitches!

Seriously, I did. About 2 months ago. On this site. Whatever.
Played it, 'twas an utter shitstorm. I kinda like Gearwhatshisface company 'cuz they made Borderlands, which I liked. Particularly the 3rd DLC, that was seriously good stuff. But this is unforgivable. And that reminds me:
Where was I going again?

Right. Give this game lots and lots of unadulterated hatred. It deserves it. Maybe the creators will think at least a bit about making better games next time.

 

[MonkeyPunch]

As said many a times, on many a site: totally what I was expecting.

The thing which makes me sneer somewhat are the players saying "this isn't the Duke they knew" etc... No. Just 'no'. This is exactly the Duke you used to know and precisely one of the reasons that the game is like it is.

To be fair the die-hard Duke fans would have called it either way. It isn't the 'Duke of old' if the game sucks and if the game had been OK (that's the best I would have ever imagined it doing) it would have been because it was the Duke of old.

 

[Levethian]

I'm happy Duke Nukem Forever didn't go down the Doom 3 route and forget what it was.

The thing which makes me sneer somewhat are the players saying "this isn't the Duke they knew" etc... No. Just 'no'. This is exactly the Duke you used to know and precisely one of the reasons that the game is like it is.

Exactly.

No idea what people were expecting with this title. It was either going to be childish, or an abandonment of what made Duke 3D memorable.