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Publisher: 2K Games
Developer: Gearbox Software
Genre: FPS
ESRB rating: Mature
Release date: Available now
It was 4:30 pm on Saturday, June 11, 2011, when I could finally stop saying, “I’ll believe it when I see it.” Duke Nukem Forever was vaporware no more. The longest development cycle in videogame history was finally at an end. An actual copy of the game was in my hands. My expectations were high, but they were also tempered with the knowledge that a game with a history such as this would never live up to them. All that was left was to play it and find out for myself if it was worth the decade-and-a-half wait.
Blonde-haired, cigar-smoking, musclebound Duke Nukem has been in retirement for many years since defeating alien invaders in 1996. Women love him. Men want to be him. He lives in a massive suite in a Las Vegas casino-hotel named after him. All of this inflates his already enormous ego (which is why it’s appropriate that Duke’s health bar in the upper left of the screen measures his ego instead of his health). Now ETs known as the Cycloids have laid siege to Earth. The President is attempting to negotiate a peaceful solution with the Cycloid Emperor, and has ordered Duke not to get involved. But Duke doesn’t know the meaning of the word “negotiate” (probably can’t spell it, either), so he works his way through the battered City of Sin to put an end to the Cycloid scourge.
 Old-school gamers will feel right at home with DNF. All you do is move from Point A to Point B, eliminating everything non-human in your way. You can carry up to two weapons at a time. These include the standard handgun and shotgun, plus more creative choices such as a shrink ray that reduces enemies to a more manageable size, and a freeze ray that encases them in ice. Your maximum ego (health) can be increased by interacting with various items you find in the world (mirrors, magazines, etc.), and you get brief buffs of your melee prowess and toughness by taking steroids or drinking beer. You learn the basic movement and weapon controls in a fight with a boss alien, which ends with a quick-time event; all of the game’s boss battles end in a similar fashion. But DNF isn’t all bloody mayhem. You also solve puzzles, drive a radio-controlled car and a monster truck, and do some light platforming. And in typical Duke fashion, you make a brief appearance at a local gentlemen’s club, which seems to be the only business that’s still open, despite the surrounding carnage.
DNF is retro gaming with a modern look. It’s a throwback to the days when games were tough by default; difficulty (and the resulting level of controller-chucking frustration) is high, even when playing at normal. Ammo can sometimes be hard to find, and the two-weapon limit makes you think carefully about which ones you want to take with you at any given time. The graphics are nothing special by today’s standards; they’re 1990s visuals with a fresh coat of digital paint. And progression through the stages is solidly linear, with the possible exception of a level that has you exploring a dark underground cave system, where it’s easy to get turned around, forcing you to retrace your steps to get back on the right track. But the highlights of the game are the variety in the level design (there’s a nice mix of combat, puzzle solving and other activities to keep things interesting) and the adult-oriented, gleefully silly script, which features little jabs at movies and other games, as well as the voice talents of Jon St. John, the original voice of Duke Nukem. It also earns its Mature rating in the first few seconds, in which you can choose to have Duke relieve himself in a stadium locker room urinal. Check out the ESRB icon for this game—they ran out of room for rating descriptors. Definitely not appropriate for children, impressionable or otherwise.
 You’d think that Gearbox and the three other developers involved with DNF (original company 3D Realms, Triptych Games and Piranha Games) would’ve had enough time to iron out its problems, but sadly, there are a number of big ones. The game suffers from occasional frame rate stutters when moving from one environment to another. Each weapon has a differently shaped target reticule, but all of them are practically invisible since they blend in with the backgrounds, making combat a literal hit-or-miss affair. The controller is sluggish when it comes to aiming, which makes the reticule problem all the more acute. I would’ve expected that a legendary badass such as Duke Nukem would be able to absorb more punishment than he does; enemies one-shot-killed me on numerous occasions during my journey through the single-player campaign, and cover can be scarce in certain sections. The story is more of an afterthought than a significant part of the game; the script only really exists to give Duke something rude or sexist to say. But my biggest gripe by far with DNF is the abominably long load times. You have to wait 30 seconds for the game to reload every time you die, and you die quite a bit unless you have ungodly reflexes and an excellent touch with the analog sticks. I estimate this problem added at least a half hour to my playing time, which is totally unacceptable for a modern game, even one with the retro sensibilities that DNF has.
You might notice that I don’t list Duke Nukem Forever‘s brazen lack of morals or political correctness as a fault. This is because I wasn’t offended by any of it. If you know anything at all about Duke’s previous adventures, you have to expect a certain amount of objectionable material; it’s par for Duke’s course. Besides, there’s more than enough wrong with this game to push all of that to the back burner. I liked the variety in the mission designs, and Duke’s one-liners never cease to raise a chuckle or two with me, but the graphics glitches and criminally long load times ruin what is at times an entertaining shooter. But I suggest that you play it despite its flaws, if only for the chance to be part of gaming history—you can look other gamers in the eye and truthfully say that you played Duke Nukem Forever. After 15 years, that has to be worth something, right?
Our Score: 
Our Recommendation: 
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Duke Forever Was always ,untill the day the assets went to gearbox, designed as a PC game . Unfortunately the end of its development wound up as a multiport and I am sure it was to get more money off the namesake. Things like Regen health, 2 weapons stink of GOW, and I cant help but think if they had more time Gearbox would have turned it into Duke nukem of war .
What Im hoping for now is some tools , and community support. At the end of the day its still good to see this thing FINALLY ship.
Yeah, I’d definitely love for a mod that restores the full weapon load-out instead of this two-weapon crap, which is alright for consoles with limited buttons.
I should be getting it for PC sometime later this month.
After reading this review I would rank this game as a definite SKIP IT.
I think the Ars Technica review is thus far the most brutally honest review of this horrible execution. Titled “Duke Nukem Forever: barely playable, not funny, rampantly offensive” it can be read at http://bit.ly/kcugsd
@Angel – I read the Ars review the other day and completely agree. This was before the “fall” and may have been one of those reviews that prompted those taunting tweets but it was completely on point.
In particular, having played the exclsuive demo provided to people who grabbed the Borderlands Game of the Year edition, Ars hit on the same concerns I had playing that demo. The humor was scaatalogical and juvenile but worse than that – just blatantly crass and cruel. Infantile. The sort of base humor that is pitched at a demographic who should never, ever play the game – i.e. boys aged 10 – 12.
Beyond that – it’s just poor, shoddy, archaic game design. As if the mere presence of Duke were enough. And at $60 – forget the aliens stealing our chicks – what about Duke pillaging my wallet?
I’m reminded of a line from the mid-90′s Bond reboot, Goldeneye. M says to James – “You’re a sexist, mysogynistic dinosaur.” That pretty much sums up Duke. Although, some would argue he’s also a royal d-bag as well.
While I’m not usually a fan of the pile-on mob mentality, I think this game is simply asking for it.
Come get some.
Lol Though i am dissapointed for this reason and that , after playing a bit I have to say if you were a fan of the first game then its worth a run through for the chuckles , Odd that a lot of people are so hatefull of it yet claiming to be fans of the 12 year old duke 3d.. What where you expecting ? Duke nukem the long journey ?
The bottom line – we’re all 12 years older while Duke seems 12 years younger. He Benjamin Buttoned himself.
And I fully expect Duke to wait 12 more years before making that Benjamin Button reference. He likes to let the movie references get real old and stale before bustin’ them out.
After finishing the game on the Xbox, I’ve been playing it on the PC, and as I suspected, the PC offers a much less frustrating experience. The graphics are sharper because I can play at 1920 X 1200 with all of the settings maxed. As with most shooters, the mouse and keyboard provides more precision than the Xbox controller does. The targeting reticule is much easier to see. And most significantly, load times have been practically eliminated, averaging less than 10 seconds as apposed to 30 on the Xbox.
Only one catch with the PC — you have to have a Steam account to play. But most PC gamers have Steam accounts these days, and if they don’t, they should.
I’ll say this. Level design is several notches down from the previous game. That one had multiple buildings you could enter and a single level would contain different kinds of environments. This one in most part moves you from one thinly-disguised corridor to another.
Vapus, I suspect the venom comes from two aspects.
1.) The long delay in getting this game out means that, if you took so friggin’ long, it better be damn good. Otherwise, why did you bother? I think that the consensus seems to be “Because the brand is strong.” Except, it isn’t. Well, it is — strong enough to get people in the front door — but not strong enough to survive this game, I think. Not without perhaps another long rest to let people forget their disappointment (or at least have it fade to where they’d give a new game a chance). I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m about up to here with the “We’ll win with marketing” approach to entertainment media where “the brand” matters more than the actual product itself. I am no longer willing to put up with someone simply slapping a once well-regarded brand on a box and expected that I will be dumb enough to shell out my cash for crappy product.
2.) There seem to be a few tricky balancing acts that this game is undertaking and failing to pull off. The first is finding the balance to where your game is “offensive-but-funny” as opposed to just offensive. That’s not an easy task, but the makers of this game signed up for it, so they’d better be up to the job. The other balancing act seems to be between old-school and modern design choices. Why Duke can’t lug around 15 weapons at once is beyond me. It may not be the modern thing to do, but you’d think it’d be the “Duke” thing to do. On the modern end of things, why he has to go through what sound like irritating jumping puzzles is also beyond me. It may be the old-school way to do it, but given that technology allows us to avoid such irritations, you’d think they’d at least offer some “Duke-esque” option to sidestep the entire thing. Actually, come to think of it, DN3D had levels where you’d simply blow up a building to progress. Back then it was just a section of the map sliding down while the screen shakes, but you’d figure with modern technology, they could find a suitably entertaining and hilarious way for Duke to avoid this or that irritating bit of level navigation. Especially when he says something like “I hate stupid jumping puzzles.” Great. So why are we now being forced to do that instead of Duke, like, knocking over a telephone pole to get past the whole thing.
HI there! Michael i would ask you if possible make a pc review of Duke NUKEM and have it in the site’s cover page.I too played the game on pc and many of the problems that everybody has on consoles and are the reason for duke nukem’s extremely low scores are vanished.I could play on 1920×1200 with full antialiasing at 100+ fps….,no load times and perfect control with the mouse and keyboard.I agree the game has a lot of problems and often it looks and feels very dated…(i mean ok you can drive a monster truck but it all feels and is very linear-It would have been 100 times better if levels were more open and you could optionally use vechicles but it all is part that the game’s designing and initial programming is so old..
In any case it was a fun game i really enjoyed way more than many blant me too shooters i played the last few years…It deserved a decent score for being fun and different from everything else at least a 80% .
I know everyone here thinks I’m a graphics [loose woman] and I do indeed have a lot of appreciation for visual beauty, but I’d like to point out that neither high resolutions, nor frame rates, nor anti-aliasing and other graphical bells and whistles were ever able to save a bad game.
Damn right. Pretty pictures don’t make up for bad game design as a whole.
Ah well. I’m waiting for this one to hit the slop bin before I shell out any cash for it. Probably pick it up used for $10 or so. The good news is that the original is — last I checked — available on XBLA, and is actually still fun to play now and then as a budget title and throwback. It’d be interesting to do a side-by-side comparison. Although I think DNF would suffer in that regard…
Nicolas:
We were originally going to review DNF on the PC, but an Xbox copy became available sooner, so we went with that, and we don’t usually review games on more than one platform, since in most cases there’s very little difference in content between the versions. I’m still about halfway through the PC version, and the only real difference is in presentation. But it’s clear that the PC is clearly the superior platform for Duke, as it is for most shooters.
Alas , poor Duke,, When he was about to enter oblivion as nothing more than a Design Document { at least i think so } and a bunch of beta assets Redone i can only imagine how many times, 2K Drags him in for no mo moneyput in to development and a very quick multiport and assembly of the aformentioned assets push out the door . which is what i feel has happened with this game .
I also wish you would’ve waited to review the PC version. I own a PS3 and an iMac and I installed Windows 7 on my Mac w/ BootCamp just for this game. I’m surprised pro reviewers (especially on sites that started as PC gaming sites) didn’t have enough sense to track down the PC version of the game and review that. Even if just for the fact that playing a shooter with a controller is not ideal. Anyway, I’ve played it almost twice through and I’m level 22 or so on Steam. The multiplayer is very fun. I’ve had a lot of fun with the game. I suggest everybody play the PC version and make up their own minds.
i like it its really fun and funny
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