Duke Nukem Forever review
I was probably in the minority, although not the only one, who thought that actually releasing DNF after such a long development cycle was a bad idea. The game can’t be awesome (as it should be), I thought to myself, after all those engine changes and postponements, no matter what kind of brilliant ideas Gearbox wanted to bring into the mix (and they brought very few, it seems).
And then it finally came out. The gaming community held its breath. Duke is here. It took FOREVER, but he’s here. However, the first battalion of reviews wasn’t really positive and I wasn’t surprised. But since I never trust reviews, I had also hoped. Not sure for what exactly, but hope was there, teasing me to give Duke a try.
I have just played through the game and… well, the game sucked. Let’s be honest, the game itself is NOT THAT BAD. But that’s all. Almost every aspect of the game can be described with NOT THAT BAD.
Level Design
Levels are NOT THAT BAD. The developers avoided the whole FPS “generic factory and/or warehouse” look so levels do shine from time to time. The dam level (SPOILER: there is a dam level) actually looks pretty inspired and the mission built around it is pretty exciting. But for the most part, levels are just there for you to run through them, in one linear way, with little or no available sidetracks for you to explore. Textures sometimes look a bit low-res, but I’m not really big on graphics so I didn’t care. As long as I can differentiate the enemies from the background, I’m fine. But I can’t ignore the linear fashion in which the levels are designed. I know they went for the old-school design, but they did it wrong. Duke 3D had much better levels.
Sound and Music
Sounds and music are NOT THAT BAD. Both heavily aim for the nostalgia factor, so there are a lot of references to the good old Duke 3D. The Duke theme can be heard in elevators, Duke’s casino and many more places. In the end the theme gets overused to the point where you think that’s all this game has going on - nostalgia. And you’re right.
Characters
One of the bigger selling points of Duke 3D was the main character - Arnold macho type with a healthy, even somewhat sexist, sense of humor. I can still hear quotes and jokes from the first game and laugh. They were good. They were fresh and inspired. The new Duke, however… well, he sounds like an idiot. The only good things he says are actually ripped off from Duke 3D, the rest is just sad. I don’t find quotes like “More equipment means more ass kicking” very funny or adrenaline-rushy. They sound like poor filler material. The game is much more sexist than the first one, but not funnier. It’s counterproductive. Fails to deliver. I guess it could be worse, but I cannot say that it’s NOT THAT BAD, since it is. The game occasionally gives the impression that it’s painfully aware of where it belongs (there is one instance in the game where the president calls Duke “a relic from the past”, which is exactly what this game is). That also reminded me of one more thing why I thought Duke sounds like an idiot - there is a lot more talking in this game, characters actually communicate and talk among themselves or to you. Duke fails to say anything meaningful, he ends up sounding like a random punchline delivery service, if there is such a thing. In the first game, all the talking he did was mostly to himself, so it worked and it wasn’t so obvious he’s an empty minded squid.
The enemies are also pretty unimaginative and clearly just shadows of the ones in the first game. Perhaps you’ll remember how obvious it was that the pig aliens were actually dressed as cops? Not in this game, it’s not. The graphics are blurry as shit (a lot of post processing effects going on, probably to hide the shitty overall quality) and you can’t see shit. A lot of shit in one sentence, I know.
Gameplay and interactivity
If the character was one huge selling point of the original, interactivity was the other. At that time, there were some much better looking games on the horizon (Quake 1, for example, with the full 3d engine), but Duke 3D gave us interactivity. Almost everything in the game was destructable or interactive. You could interact with pinball machines, pool tables, chicks, sing… the list is pretty impressive. It was one of the first games to bring such a strong immersion with the game world. Duke Nukem Forever, on the other hand, brings NOTHING NEW, but rather a bucketful of old. I can see why a game from 1996. narrowed interactivity down to “walk to an object, press “use”, something funny happens”, but we’re in 2011. now and Duke still operates that way. It’s not impressive anymore. I don’t want to see scripted events, I want to interact. Red Faction allows us to destroy the entire level, Crysis gives us a realistic, almost sandboxy levels, Half Life/Portal gave us interesting puzzles, a strong story and great characters. Duke gives us a chance to occasionally play a poorly executed game of pinball, pick up a rat and squish it (sooo not funny), pick up shit from the toilet (oh yes, literal toilet humor) and listen to his sexist drivel or childish insults aimed at other games. IT’S THAT BAD.
Even though they were going for the old school FPS feel, you can only carry two weapons at a time. I know, right? The weapons list isn’t really that big anyway, and it offers almost nothing new compared to the original. Shrink ray is here, freeze ray is here. The mighty foot, unfortunately, is not. It’s been replaced by fists. The foot does appear, but as a scripted event when you look down at a shrunk enemy. You can carry pipe bombs and a couple of mines, some boosts (beer and steroids) and that’s pretty much it. The health bar was replaced with an ego bar, which is clever, you might think. When you get shot, your ego goes down. But why would Duke’s ego drop when he’s been underwater for too long? Makes no fucking sense.
Oh yes, and there’s driving in the game, but it’s annoying for the most part. There are games where you think “FUCK YEAH, DRIVING”. This is not one of those.
So, the final rating is… 4 out of 10. I would have probably rated it much better if this wasn’t a Duke game. But at the same time, I would have probably rated it much worse if this wasn’t a Duke game, since nostalgia factor is the best thing about it.
