14 DAY TRIAL // 
After almost 15 years of extremely troubled development, Duke Nukem Forever has been finally delivered to fans that have all but forgotten about this classic series that last appeared in the late 1990s.
After spending a huge amount of time in development at 3D Realms, eventually causing the studio to go bankrupt, the game has been completed by Gearbox Software, together with other studios like Triptych or Piranha, and 2K Games, the publisher of the title.
Is Duke Nukem, the self professed King of gaming, back for good or was it better for him to remain the dark shadows of the industry, as perpetual vaporware, always in development but never ready? Let's find out.
Story While it's hard to review a game like Duke Nukem Forever, the story is pretty simple to explain. After the events from the last game, where Duke Nukem once again saved the world from a bunch of evil aliens, the creatures are back, looking for payback and, of course, for Duke.
Seeing as how the King is a bit too busy with basking in his own glory to notice them, they decide to go for his most prized possessions, hot girls, thus prompting Duke to go on an epic journey, from his palace in Las Vegas through the desert and to the Hoover Dam, where he needs to take down the alien emperor.
In between these locations, the developers tried to add in a few classic Duke jokes, but, even if they're pretty much on par with some of the things we saw in Duke Nukem 3D, for example, in this day and age, many feel a bit tacky.
You have lots of innuendos as well as some in-your-face scenes, which can cause some laughter but also some awkward feelings, knowing you're controlling such a relic of the past.
In terms of narrative, and even with the gameplay that I'll elaborate below, Duke Nukem Forever is like picking up a forgotten game from the 1990s. The story is cheesy, serves just to move the action forward to the next firefight, with forgettable characters which would probably end up drowning in their own saliva without the help of Duke.
What's even worse, there's a brief sequence in a strip club, which serves no purpose other than objectifying women for the sake of objectification, from a story standpoint, and is just a boring old fetch quest, in terms of gameplay.
I wasn't expecting much from Duke, but the game doesn't even try to have a semblance of character development, even if there are some scenes that could have shown us a different character, especially during the battles inside the alien locations.
Gameplay In terms of gameplay, Duke Nukem Forever is quite unique, one could say, as it offers, through its levels, a glimpse into how the developers tried to implement new mechanics that were featured by the games that appeared since 1997, when work on Duke Nukem Forever began.
The title starts with a pretty campy introduction, as Duke himself makes fun of a video game that took 12 years to get together. After that, he's pictured as living the King lifestyle, with two twin girls dressed in school uniforms catering to his every desire, in his own private penthouse suite, and generally being God's gift to humanity after saving it in the first games.
After this introduction, the game pretty much goes through different stages, each trying to add brand new things while forgetting about previous mechanics. We see physics puzzles just like in Half Life 2, bosses with elaborate tricks that need to be performed in order to take them down, on-rails segments where you need to slaughter everything that moves and vehicle sections where you need to run over basically everything that moves.
Looking from afar, Duke Nukem Forever's gameplay isn't all that bad, representing an almost back to basics approach to first-person shooters that has been missing for quite some time. Sadly, instead of just giving players a wide array of weapons that can be carried all at once and having them eliminate dozens of enemies, the title imposes a two-weapon limit and adds a whole lot of scripted moments that can even glitch out.
What's worse, the game doesn't give you any sort of hint or direction about what you need to do, so expect to get stuck on multiple occasions, because you couldn't figure out that you needed to take a different route, find all the barrels and trigger a physics puzzle, or realize that a scaffolding platform can be pushed around the environment.
There are quite a few weapons in the game, ranging from the good old shotgun to shrinking or freezing rays, but those are gimmicky to say the least, so you'll be going back to classics like the machine gun or the rocket launcher.
Things change when Duke is shrunk, as he needs to complete first-person platforming portions that can feel pretty nice, at times, but usually end up frustrating the player, even if the path laid out is pretty obvious.
Vehicle portions are relatively entertaining, but Duke's monster truck doesn't handle all that well, so you might end up flipping it over on multiple occasions. Helicopter scenes try their best to emulate Call of Duty games, for example, but they aren't anything to write home about.
While it can get pretty frustrating at times, Duke Nukem Forever's gameplay isn't all that bad, but there are moments when you feel like quitting altogether.
Multiplayer Seeing as how the story and the gameplay of Duke Nukem Forever aren't even remotely close to perfect, it's a bit peculiar that the new development teams decided to hammer on a multiplayer mode.
To make matters worse, things aren't exactly peachy here, as Duke Nukem Forever has just a few modes, including the tried and true Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch, as well as two variations on the King of the Hill and Capture the Flag, called Hail to the King and Capture the Babe.
Basically, you need to run around various maps, ranging from locations that are in the single-player campaign to recreations of classic Duke Nukem maps, including Hollywood, and pick up weapons from different spawn points, which have infinite ammo.
We tested the multiplayer out on the PlayStation 3, and things were relatively decent, but the 8-player limit definitely hampers the action. You have quite a few weapons at your disposal, although you need to get acquainted with their spawn locations and plot a course there by surviving with just your default pistol.
Just like the single-player gameplay, the multiplayer is decent, but nothing to write home about, so Call of Duty or Halo don't have to worry about Duke Nukem Forever.
Visuals and Sound If there's one point where the game shows off its long development time, it's the graphics, as Duke Nukem went through several rendering engines before settling with the old Unreal Engine 2.5, albeit a heavily modified one.
Textures are choppy, load times are quite long and, while the environment does let you interact with quite a few things, the game still looks bland, especially towards the end when you're flooded with gray and brown colors, proving you don't need the more recent Unreal Engine 3 to reach such a color spectrum.
In terms of sound, John St. John reprises his role of Duke Nukem Forever and tries to carry on the same attitude that made his first appearances so memorable. The rest of the cast is forgettable, while the sound design is pretty decent. The music played during the loading should've been more varied, though, as you spend quite some time listening to the same guitar riffs over and over again.
Conclusion While it's easy to highlight the many faults of Duke Nukem Forever, as well as the few areas where the game does seem decent, the game is definitely an interesting experiment.
Here is a game that should have appeared back in the 1990s or early 2000s, a relic of the industry, which, if it had appeared at that time, it would've definitely impressed a lot of people. After 14 years, however, Duke Nukem Forever can't live up to the huge expectations we all have, and, perhaps it should've remained unfinished, in order to not tarnish the reputation of the famous character.
Hopefully, Gearbox and 2K will bring forth a proper Duke Nukem game in the future, but, until then, Duke Nukem Forever is, sadly, all that remains.
