Duke Nukem Forever

Definitely looks like a game from 2007 and can't match the visuals of modern shooters. Single player is fairly short and multiplayer is mostly a tickbox feature, yet Duke Nukem Forever manages to capture some of the magic of the original and has that spark that seems to be missing from most games these days - it may be rude, shocking and decisively old school, but I had fun!

You surely have made up your mind concerning a purchase of Duke Nukem Forever. So a review might sound obsolete. But it's not. The Duke-Adventure matches the expectations, the negative and positive. It's a great shooter for fans but of course suffers from the bad graphics and some boring levels.

Don't expect a miracle. Duke is still the hero we love, but struggles to keep up with modern times. Crude humor and classic weaponry keep him in the game.

Duke Nukem Forever feels a bit outdated and some of the jokes seem to come from another millennium. Well, that's because they do! But still, Duke Nukem Forever is a fun game, despite the shortcomings.

Duke Nukem Forever delivers some intense FPS action and a solid gameplay, packed with a couple of funny variations. The graphics are a bit dated, especially the backgrounds, and the multiplayer modes are less than average, but the game is overall fun and entertaining.

What awaits you is a Duke that would have rocked the genre nine years ago but for today's standards this is just mediocre.

An extinct approach to first-person shooters, like a game locked into a time capsule that has been relased now (which is almost what happened). There are indeed many better shooters out there, but very few as charming, although the game might dissapoint some who are just looking for a FPS by today's standards.

Bottom line: Duke Nukem Forever was not worth the 15-year wait, nor is it worth paying the full $50. However, I cannot deny that I thought it was both fun and funny, which at the end of the day is what this franchise is all about.

It would be a smashing hit if He came a decade earlier. Now our hero limps a little and thanks to his foul-mouthed nature only he is able to keep our attention. [July 2011]

At best, Duke Nukem Forever is a solid but flawed game, that most people would enjoy only as a new iteration in the 3D Realms veteran series. Despite some old promises, this game has a lot of trouble living up to those high expectations set forth by its saga's past triumphs.

It may go down as one of biggest anticlimaxes in gaming, but don't expect too much of it and you might enjoy it. I for one am going back to play it again, at least on PC. And besides, I'm sure Duke 5 will be the greatest game ever made.

A love letter to PC gaming, scrawled in crayon by an alcoholic bigot. Wait for the bargain bin to say goodbye to Duke. [Aug 2011, p.98]

If there's a game that deserves to be called "old school", this is it. There's hardly a change in gameplay and the graphics are out of date, too. The most remarkable thing about this game is the fact that they actually finished it.

With its incredibly obsolete graphics and technical aspects, combined with inappropriate modern elements, Duke Nukem cannot be called a good game. It is however a fun game, that offers the Nukem-trademark humour together with much variation in surroundings and gameplay.

Duke Nukem Forever is buoyed by the explosive force of its own brand. It has a lot of issues, first of all its old graphic engine. Fans will find an enjoyable experience, but there's much better out there for the same price.

Enough gimmicks to make you want to run through stages as quickly as possible, and a forgettable but fun multiplayer component, Duke Nukem Forever fails to live up to the legacy.

The PC version is definitely preferred over the console versions with better graphics, shorter load times, and a $10 savings off the retail price. Play with a controller and you'll be playing the 360 version that all Xbox owners wish they could be playing.

Awfully outdated, unfinished, bringing nothing new, but still quite amusing. Despite all of its flaws, Duke Nukem Forever is a legend and nostalgia trip for many fans who gladly forget all of its failings.

This game is neither a classic nor a complete failure. What ultimately makes it worth playing is the variety. The different parts don't all work quite as well as they should, but there's always something fresh around the next corner.

Make no mistake, Duke Nukem Forever is not a good game. But although it's easy to point out its many flaws, most people are forgetting its most important feature: Duke's return is quite entertaining, even if it's an outdated game that looks like it's from 2005 and plays like it's 2001.

Duke Nukem Forever would be quite decent if one felt entirely certain it's intended purely as a self-parody. As is, it doesn't do the expectations, the buyer or the Duke justice – oh, had he rather remained a vaporware legend!

If I didn't have to write this review, I wouldn't complete the game. I would chuck it in after 2 hours. Duke might be a legend but believe me – this game is so bland it's a waste of time. Duke Nukem Forever should have stayed where it spent so much time: on the drawing boards. [July 2011, p.54]

It's a muddled, hypocritical exercise in irritation with solid shooting mechanics and decent encounter design. There's some dumb fun to be had in Duke Nukem Forever, but the game tries hard to ensure it's only fleeting.

It's just a mess. It pains me to say it, but it's absolutely true.

Effects lacked much of a punch, and a lot of the creature designs had a really generic, evil look to them. There was no personality here, and I think the direction of a serious aesthetic didn't do it any favors.

It suffers from a number of technical glitches and performance issues, which is just kind of sad given the game is 15 years in the making.

The jokes are pulled from all over the place and most of them fall flat, and no one gameplay mechanic is particularly impressive. It feels like it doesn't quite know what it wants to be, whether it's an old school throwback or a more modern shooter, and in the end it succeeds at being neither.

The game not only doesn't fulfill all the hopes we have put in it (lets' be honest – that was impossible), but even when looking at it without thinking about the legend, it seem extremely mediocre. Ugly graphics, cliché gaming mechanics and a general lack of attention to details resemble a typical budget production.

Quotation forthcoming.

If you're going to 'go modern', do it. If you're going to 'go retro', do it. Just don't go half-and-half and end up failing to appease fans of both approaches. While DNF is kind-of fun, is playable and can be enjoyed all the way until the end, it's far away from what it should have been.

At the very beginning of the game the United States President tells Duke Nukem he is a relic from the past. As sad as it seems, perhaps he was right.

All attempts to turn Duke Nukem Forever into a fancy scripted shooter look pathetic not only when compared to the Call of Duty series, but even to much cheaper games.

But it is a game, and as a game Duke Nukem Forever doesn't succeed at being a good modern shooter, a good retro shooter, or even a worthwhile successor. The shooting is bland, the level design is uninspired, the jokes and ideas are old and tired, and the synthesis between old-school PC shooter and modern console shooter has resulted in a hideous chimera that rarely works as either. It's not utterly without merit, but it rarely manages to raise itself above mediocrity and often falls well below. Unless you're desperate to once more kill the aliens and save the babes with Duke, there's little here for you.

There are other shooters that offer more, but I do know one thing: Gearbox, now free of the DNF burden, will now be free to create a new Duke, a better one we hope.

It's good to see that Duke Nukem Forever finally made it past the development finish line, but the race to get there clearly took its toll on Duke. He started limping toward the end goal around 2007, and he's looking and feeling pretty rough.

You won't find any lasting qualities in Duke Nukem Forever and it doesn't have anything to compete against numerous modern games that have so much more to offer.

If you're not willing to play a sloppy, cobbled together first-person shooter just because it has some kind of weird historical meaning, though, just forget this ever happened and move on. It's great, in some ways, that Duke Nukem Forever was released at all. But don't be confused into thinking that it's a great game.

I've heard rumors that 2K only allowed Duke Nukem Forever to be resurrected in an attempt to recoup a fraction of the money they spent on the game through 3D Realms, but I don't think it was a good idea to bother. I've also heard that Gearbox knew that they couldn't possibly deliver an actual good game in a reasonable amount of time, so they worked on it for about a year and just tossed out what they had so that they could make their own real sequel from the ground up. If that's true, then I can see a glimmer of good coming out of all of this, but Duke needs to be redesigned and reworked with very little of the old games behind.

Duke Nukem Forever is a disappointment to say the least. 14 years of development seem like a waste of time when you see what has become of the most famous FPS franchise. Sad.

As a bizarre curio of video game history, Duke Nukem Forever's appeal cannot be denied, and there is some entertainment derived from overlooking the end product of one of history's most troubled productions. The main thing we can learn looking backwards, however, is that no game should be like this going forward.

While much of Duke Nukem Forever is embarrassingly bad--the kind of game you point and laugh at--its biggest problem is that it's so tedious.

If not a bit ironic, Duke ends the game with a line about how 'crappy' the ending was. Well Duke, that just about summed up the entire game. There are no redeeming qualities about this game, the shooting, weapons, enemies, gameplay, platforming and driving all combine to be one extremely unrewarding experience. If it were not for the fact this game has had so much hype and been in development for nearly fifteen years, this game would not be receiving any attention, because it does not deserve any.

Dated in almost every way.

Not only fails to live up to the legacy of Duke Nukem, it even fails to be a decent shooter. Don't ruin your precious memories. [Aug 2011, p.60]

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.

Petty, nasty and anachronistic. Duke is only relevant as a warning from the past. Avoid these mistakes, developers. [Aug 2011, p.76]