Duke Nukem Forever Review
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Duke Nukem Forever is a game that, by all accounts, should never have seen the light of day beyond closed-door previews at long past E3s and brief playable level sections on a handful of programmers’ computers after the downfall of its primary developer 3D Realms. When it comes to vaporware, Duke is king and yet here I am, reviewing a full retail release. Duke Nukem Forever finally hit stores shelves this last week after being initially scheduled for release in 1998, seeing a number of massive revamps, passing from developer to developer, a number of cancellations, and the death of one of gaming’s most well-remembered game studios.
Normally when games see even two or three delays, it is not a good sign for the end product. It often means there are problems that need to be addressed but that the studio is having problems addressing them. At the same time, certain games and certain developers (Valve, for example) can take long breadths of time to develop a game and have all of their time and investment pay off with an extremely well-made and well-polished game. So which is Duke Nukem Forever? Is it an unfortunate bastardization of a much beloved game franchise ravaged by the torments of development hell, or is it something in which a return on all the years of investment can clearly be seen, something great and unique?
The very first thing you’ll experience in Duke Nukem Forever is the game’s lengthy load times. Between every one of the fairly short levels, you’ll find yourself sitting, waiting, and wandering around before coming back to play the game. There is even a stutter between the Press Start command and the actual main menu coming up as if simply displaying a few more lines of text may be a bit too much for the Duke.
Before and after one brief firefight, players are treated to a pretty vast number of interactive objects in what is probably DNF’s best integration of a Duke Nukem game mechanic standard. While here it is mostly useless from a story or gameplay perspective, there are certain special items that you can interact with which will give you an “ego boost,” raising your maximum health. This is a fun way to work in collectibles of a sort, while also giving players an additional reason to mess with all of the objects available. Most of them are somehow tied to either Duke’s personality (such as bench pressing 800 pounds, shooting a basket, and admiring yourself in the mirror) or its downright ridiculousness/offensiveness (microwaving a rat). It is undoubtedly the most unique mechanic in the entire game and something I hope they hold onto in future Duke Nukem titles.
Unfortunately, not much else in Duke Nukem Forever is very well done, unique, or redeeming in any way. After the first few levels, a vast majority of the interactive objects have already been passed and the game is required to stand on its gameplay mechanics, enemy AI, and level design to keep the player entertained. DNF fails at this in almost every regard. In what feels exactly like the mix-matched game of mechanic and design catch-up that it is, you’ll find yourself playing through bland corridor shooter levels, vehicle courses, jump pad levels, momentary physics puzzles, and much more (trust me, the list goes on and on). While variety may sound good on the one hand, it is the fact that Duke Nukem Forever fails to ever do any one of these things well that is its ultimate downfall. Coupling this with the game’s extreme spikes in difficulty and lackluster graphics, I found myself losing any and all interest within the first three or four levels, forcing myself to continue on simply for the sake of this review.
Gameplay aside, one of DNF’s biggest problems is the fact that it doesn’t seem to understand its protagonist and even its own franchise’s history at a fundamental level. The Duke Nukem of years past was a walking over-exaggeration of the clichéd 80s action hero with a love of all things manly. This love of manly pastimes can be traced back as early to Duke Nukem’s very first entry, a 1991 DOS sidescroller in which you could collect footballs, entire turkeys, and soda (which would later become beer as gaming matured). In Duke Nukem 3D, the humorous and tame portrayal of a strip club under attack became a quintessential part of the franchise and even spawned the wonderful line “shake ‘em, baby!” In DNF, almost all of these components are here, but for one reason or another, the developers decided the ultimately innocent portrayal of the nipple-tassle-laden strippers in DN3D just wasn’t enough (sexually, offensively, or graphically).
Replacing that memorable moment here is a wide and nearly ever-present array of bare breasted women, glistening and moaning. Whether it is within the confines of a strip club (found here with a much more realistic and adult atmosphere) or partially fused to an alien penis plant, you’ll find it hard to avoid the awkwardly animated and embarrassingly over-the-top women of Duke Nukem Forever. It’s a shame too because here Duke Nukem comes off as much less of a funny man and more of a disturbingly chauvinistic pig.
Aside from the game’s singleplayer campaign, there is a standard multiplayer suite that was, quite literally, tacked on after the fact, and it feels like it. All of your standard deathmatch, team deathmatch, capture the flag (capture the babe), and control point modes are here along with a modern, persistent leveling system. Because all of the power-ups and weapons (besides the pistol) are scattered around each map in typical old-school shooter fashion, raising levels in multiplayer does not unlock new weapons or perks a la Call of Duty but instead, unlocks new items (and babes) for display in your apartment. Dubbed “your digs” by the game, this apartment is essentially useless. While there is a lot to unlock here, the reward for playing and doing well being a new rug or chair pales in comparison to a new weapon or in-game ability which has become the genre standard. DNF’s multiplayer could have been far more fun if it had dropped these shreds of modernity, let you hold more than two weapons (so you didn’t have to stop and press X to pick one up), and stuck with its roots. Instead like most things in this game, it is a mixed bag of mediocre components leading to a fairly forgettable experience.
Duke Nukem Forever is the ultimate mixed bag. There are brief moments where some old school FPS fun seems to bleed through and when it does it is extremely refreshing, but these instances are so few and far between and have such a hard time finding a foothold amongst the game’s ever-changing level and game design that you’ll find the experience wearing thin prior to encountering the next genuinely fun moment. If it’s vehicle levels, jump pads, destructible environments, physics puzzles, huge boss battles, turret levels, dated pop culture references, unnecessary fetch quests, more overly-shiny breasts than you’ve ever seen in a single game and extremely interactive environments that you are looking for, you will find them all and more here. Unfortunately, only one of these many, many design initiatives is executed properly or for long enough to feel like a cohesive part of DNF’s overall gameplay experience.