Duke Nukem Forever

Although I wasn't expecting a game that had a development time of 12 years I still expected a nice polished game.Sadly I didn't get this.
Duke is still the man we love but the game is anything but. I feel a few decisions made by the people upstairs as well as an actual deadline have caused this game to feel like a rush job.
I still managed to have fun but not the 90 dollars worth of fun I expected from a game that has Dukes name on it.

I'll start with the bad news first- This is not a game for PC gamers.

You have regenerating health, (Meaning strawberry jam all over the screen when you get hit) strange controls, and worst of all, you can only carry 2 weapons at a time with a truly pathetic amount of ammunition. 5 rockets for the RPG is not enough to warrant carrying it around instead of say, a shotgun, given how rare the ammo is and how sporadic the lazy-designer's-shortcut infinite ammo boxes are. The gameplay is disappointing in that regard.

Now I'll go to the good- Duke's style remains. (If you ignore the chance to fling poo in the tutorial)

Though the shooty parts of the game are a disappointment, the setpieces are decently designed, and there is much encouragement for exploration in the form of permanent ego boosts, which increase your maximum health. These take the form of one-off tasks you can perform, like bench pressing 600 pounds, getting a dunk in a basketball hoop, drinking all the beer in one level, finding a hidden adult magazine and flipping through it, and winning a boss fight, which gives the biggest boost.

The humour is definitely Duke. It starts off slow with the first few levels seeming clearly designed to suck you in and possibly draw a newer audience, but once the game gets going, it seems to get a lot more comfortable with itself. A great many of the jokes and jabs Duke makes are aimed at people who would have been old enough to play Duke Nukem 3D in the 90s, and so the youngsters may be scratching their heads wondering what Duke meant by a particular reference. Even if it's unintentional, since the game IS 12 years old, effectively, I think it's good they've shown a bit of love for the audience who have waited for Duke to come back all this time.

If you want a solid game with great gameplay… This isn't it.
But if you want to hear Duke Nukem again, and miss his humour, then I don't think you'll be disappointed in that regard, as long as you give yourself a chance to warm up to it.

Game is nothing like the old school Duke3d. graphics look dated, only things that looked nice was the 1st boss fight and the ladies…

I don’t know who this game is for, but clearly not me. That doesn’t make a lot of sense because I’ve been FPS gaming since…FPS was invented. Juvenile humour, blatant clumsy attempts to cash in on the franchise, and an overall design that is…did I say this yet- Awful-

This game is a relic, and not the kind of relic that you might put in a glass cabinet and occasionally stare at with a glazed over look, thinking about days of yore; it’s more like the kind of relic you're embarrassed about because it lays plain your dubious past.

The fact is, nobody expected this game to ever come out and wouldn’t have missed it if it didn’t. “Duke Nukem Forever” would have persisted as a synonym for vapourware and there would have been no one specific to blame. But now it’s our modern day Daikatana, and we can point the finger squarely at 2K Games and Gearbox for this atrocity. Oh, and did you know they’re making a sequel/reboot-

When the inside story of its development comes out as a book here on mighty ape, I’ll buy it, perhaps in a two-for-one deal with Mein Kampf.

Hard to believe that this took 20 years to write. Mostly linear gameplay, with some hellishly difficult levels. Overall, quite entertaining if not challenging, but incredibly short. Borderlands was probably a better buy.