Duke Nukem Forever

Let’s skip the formalities shall we? If you’ve followed video games in the past decade and a half, you know what Duke Nukem Forever is. The game that wasn’t there. The punchline of every ‘this game has been in development so long...’ gag. If you haven’t followed video games and aren’t familiar with Duke Nukem Forever it can easily be summed up in 3 words: Not worth it.

Not worth the mind boggling amount of time and energy and work put into it by 3D Realms. Not worth whatever Gearbox paid to haul it out of the garbage and revive it. Definitely not worth the further time, energy and work Gearbox put into finishing it. And in no way is it worth any money whatsoever. At it’s best, Duke Nukem Forever is a below average First Person Shooter with a bunch of half finished gimmicks thrown in. At it’s worst, Duke Nukem Forever is a horrifying mess.

To get the good stuff out of the way, the shrinking mechanism is fun when it’s used and pretty impressive technologically. If 3D Realms would like to get back together to make a first person action platformer implementing the shrinking technology and a mute protagonist, I say go right ahead.

Ok, now that’s out of the way.

Duke can only carry two weapons at a time. Why he can no longer carry every different weapon under the sun is never explained in game, although in reality the answer is ‘because that’s what happens in Halo.’ A similar argument could be made for the dull driving segments broken up by specifically positioned firefights - except that Halo didn’t have you driving across the ugliest in game desert you’ve seen since before 2005 for long stretches with nothing but the very rare pigcop to kill.

Duke needs to reach clouds of bubbles underwater to refill his oxygen. The irony of Duke Nukem Forever taking tips from the Sonic Team should be easy to see. The under water segment isn’t just about moving from bubble supply to bubble supply however - it is also about doing it very, very slowly. Moving slowly from bubbles to bubbles isn’t frustratingly tedious enough however, so you have about ten enemies to kill along the way. It equates out to about an enemy a minute, if you do anything stupid like explore the barren under water landscape.

Those are just two of the examples of Duke Nukem Forever’s predilection towards borrowing gameplay. Physics puzzles were big at one point in the 14 year development period, let’s throw them in. Nobody has health packs and a finite amount of health anymore, so neither does Duke. Apart from Duke Nukem 3D - which it was bound to take ideas from wholesale in its desperate attempt to recapture some of its glory - DNF borrows from all over the place.

In the end though, they would have been better off just remaking Duke Nukem 3D, as it had some interesting level design at least. If you took Duke Nukem out of Duke Nukem Forever it would have been one of those games you see for sale at discount stores, the kind you didn’t know existed and people only buy as a joke.

And it would have been a better game.

The desert is just one example of how poor Duke Nukem Forever can look - and you aren’t supposed to see much of it, given you spend most of your time driving. Out of the car though, the desert grass might as well be two crossed sprites for how good it looks - which is at odds with the mediocre, but not entirely horrible wooden huts you can pointlessly drive through.



The rest of the game is better if only for added variety - in general the graphics look only slightly worse than F.E.A.R. 2 say, but throughout are low res textures which could have been pulled from the original Half Life. Mixing cartoony-but-mediocre graphics with ugly low resolution graphics doesn’t help what little atmosphere the game has - leaving it up to the soundtrack alone.

For fans of the original game, the soundtrack will be a highlight, if only for the inclusion of familiar favourites. Anyone else however, will just hear a mixture of eighties rock and generic tension building music - not terrible, but nothing to write home about either.

Multiplayer could be the game’s saving grace - after all it was the best thing about the original game. Unfortunately, while the PC version does technically have dedicated servers, they are not officially supported and are... a travesty. Best assembled by creating a batch file in your favourite text editor, your new dedicated server can’t be modified or administrated in any way, as there is no console - either in game or out.

If you get a decent enough ping, multiplayer is not bad - if plagued by hacks at the moment. Duke Match and Team Duke Match do a good job of replicating the old multiplayer feeling and the addition of mutators like railguns only and heavy weapons makes for some frenetic firefights. If it ever gets proper dedicated servers and some sort of mod support, Duke Nukem Forever could be a worthwhile purchase for old school multiplayer fans. Especially since in multiplayer you can pretend you aren’t Duke Nukem.

Duke Nukem is like a foul mouthed misogynistic version of David Brent - the problem is I can't work out which side of the curtain the developers are looking from.

I think at least part of it is satire. It has to be. Duke’s shield being made up of his Ego is a prime example of it - without his Ego, Duke is weak and easy to destroy. Duke Nukem Forever takes place in a universe where Duke has his own fast food chain, casino, arena and is the object of admiration by every single person on Earth (spoiler - barring one person, who turns out to be evil.)

Perhaps Duke Nukem is a statement on the mindset of hardcore gamers. The way some people practically live inside their games and the outside world doesn’t exist. Like those gamers, Duke lives in a world of make-believe, where he gets everything he wants and is loved and adored by all. When - to take an example from the game - he walks into a room filled with topless women screaming and crying after being raped and impregnated by aliens, he has no problem making jokes at them, or slapping some breast shaped objects on the wall and giggling to himself, because he is not connected to the reality of the situation.

His Ego is his shield because until you take it down, he believes himself invincible. When others begin to best him in combat however, he loses his confidence, undermining his performance. Continue to best him and you will destroy him - but give him time to readjust his self-perception and he will be just as invincible as before. Just like a stereotypical die hard gamer, he knows he’s the best, he knows his cocky comments are funny and he knows everyone either likes him or is mad because he beat them.

It has to be that, or some other profound statement. If it isn’t, then it’s a bland and ugly FPS about a bigoted narcissistic sociopath whose delusions of grandeur are actually reality. No one could be so desperately misguided and pathetic that they would make such a game. Right?