Duke Nukem Forever (2011)

Okay, so this was one of those games where I was both in the mood for a simple FPS & I wanted to see this circus sideshow of a game. Growing up, I never got to play many of the old school FPS games like Duke Nukem or Doom, so I don’t have the nostalgia built in for this franchise others do. I think that fact made me a little more forgiving, a little.

The overall gameplay works. I didn’t have any moments where the game felt broken. It’s also not great though, just serviceable. As most people have stated, this game was following all the triple A FPS trends of the time hard. You could originally only carry two weapons, they patched it to 4 later on. The selection of gun is meh. They are updated versions of the classic guns, but they all felt under-powered. Especially later in the game, it seemed the enemies got spongier. I found the machine gun the most useful for it’s rate of fire, but I felt like I was always reloading it and never had enough ammo. I do know those old FPS games were about frantic shooting. Doom 2016 proved you can replicate that non-stop action, but Duke Forever seemed very slow. I tried to play it as a run and gunner, but that only seemed to get me reliably killed. There’s regen health, but the fighting arenas weren’t laid out with any type of reliable cover you are intended to hide behind. Even after getting some health boosts, Duke can’t take a whole lot of punishment. Some arenas even end up with you being surrounded by enemies on multiple sides. The flying octobrains are one of the worst enemies. After dying a few times, I had to step away from the game, because restarting after what felt like cheap deaths got old. The enemy type has a decent amount of variety for this game, but the bosses are pretty bland.

When you aren’t shooting aliens, there’s little areas where you have to either solve puzzles or just mess with the set dressing. The first few levels have the most interactivity where you wander around Duke’s Vegas penthouse and play pool or lift weights. After that, there’s only a few interactables, mainly in the Strip Club level mid-game. As someone who likes goofy interactables in games, I enjoyed searching around for them. The puzzles are usually physics based affairs, like using barrels to weigh down one side of a teeter totter. Others are platforming puzzles, which are always hit or miss In 1st person games. They work fine enough here. I don’t recall missing many jumps and they are nice breaks between the combat that can get stale. There’s a few driving sections that don’t control great, but some are more manageable than others. Again, all this gameplay is functioning, but extremely bland in that late 2000s FPS way.

This is a short game with not a lot of levels. The first couple levels I felt were the strongest. They have you running around Vegas casinos and burger joints that are bright, colorful, and interesting. The manufactured glitz of Vegas is a perfect backdrop for a character like Duke. The second major location is the alien hive. That location should’ve been cut from the game. This game is a goofy, campy, 90s throwback, and then the alien hive rolls in as a bit of tonally blind, uncomfortable body horror. Like, I get the 90s had their share of weird stuff that nostalgia sometimes glosses over. The original Tomb Raider’s Atlantis was a weird temple built of muscles and sinew, but it was the right type of unsettling without being so tone deaf. Duke’s alien hive sucks out all of the fun that was in the Vegas levels and just makes you want to run through it as quick as possible to not be there anymore. The fun never totally recovers from that level, but it starts trending up in the next section which sees Duke driving through the deserts of Nevada in a monster truck. The truck breaks down outside a ghost town that gives a fun location for an Old West shootout. Then the enjoyment gets dragged back down in the final level set in Hoover Dam. The dam isn’t a weird tonal shift like the alien hive. It’s sin is being a boring, gray concrete, industrial building, again a sign of the time. Fallout New Vegas did Hoover Dam better. Basically after leaving Vegas it’s all downhill.

The story is bare bones, like a lot of old 90s FPS games. Aliens invade, babes are abducted, Duke goes to save them. Sometimes I enjoy a dumb power fantasy that doesn’t ask you to do more than shoot. Doom does it better obviously. It’s held back by the weird tonal shifts and uninspired action.
The biggest issue I have with this game is Duke himself and the world he inhabits. Duke is still a relic of the 90s with his macho man looks, campy one-liners, & “too cool” attitude. Subtly is not a word in his dictionary as he owns a casino with ostentatious statues of himself cast in gold and a line of licensed products. The rest of the world treats him as the greatest thing since sliced bread. Any side characters get no development beyond wanting to bone him or singing his praises. It’s a little too power fantasy. I think this game’s story would be 100% better if they took a “Eat Lead: Return of Matt Hazard” approach. Make it so the world isn’t obsessed with Duke. It’s been 12 years, maybe Duke still hasn’t changed since the 90s with all his one-liners & machismo, but the world has moved on. He’s living like the gaudy hack has-been he is, but the world isn’t interested in him. Duke still gets called out to take on the aliens, but when he starts doing his 90s schtick, the people around him react like real people, not sycophants. There’s plenty of comedy opportunities in that set-up of a has-been trying to prove he’s still relevant. Most of the humor in this game fell flat for me. A few one-liners gave me a chuckle due to their cheesiness, but the overall humor was kinda immature. A character who is set up as Duke’s friend dies at the end of the game and Duke’s only response is “Guess he won’t be in the sequel” because being sarcastic and meta is more important that character development.

All in all, fans of Duke seem to have much more hate towards this game for not living up to expectations. And while it’s a bad game, it’s at least a competent, if painfully generic, shooter. The story is a tonal mess with a tone-deaf protagonist, and the humor leaves much to be desired. This game is worth it for someone who wants to try a “good bad” game, but warnings for the alien hive.

Beat on Hard (come get some) on loan from my cousin. It was fairly challenging and reasonably enjoyable and I made sure to get all the ego boosts, even spending time on things that I inherently dislike (pool and other minigames). Only being able to have 2 weapons sucked, even more so when only explosives work vs bosses. I preferred the rail gun for sniping and ripper for closer ranges but made use of whatever was available. I played around with throwing objects in the first level and found it to be a bit too powerful as a last resort kind of thing, but never bothered to use it later. I appreciated many of the puzzles and set pieces, particularly the sequences when Duke was shrunk, but struggled a bit on the turret sequences; something all too common in shooters played on high difficulties. The biggest challenge I had though was mashing the damn button to finish off the bosses. The final boss was particularly harrowing because I failed that button mashing so many times. I am good at shooting and had no trouble circle strafing around and slaughtering the minions, but soon as that button mash prompt came up... I had to take a break during the fight to rest my hands. I was glad the game was over, but only because I never wanted to do that stupid button mashing again. I did consider playing again on the highest difficulty sometime but not sure if I really want to.

The core gameplay was fun but not really what I want from a shooter. Too much focus on limited weapon inventory, lousy ammo carry capacity, using infinite ammo refill stations, and fighting off waves of enemies after hitting a trigger point. Not like Duke 3D, which was in turn based on Doom. The only other parts which really stood out negatively were the monster truck and strip club levels. While the driving was decent enough I kept wondering why the hell the military airlifted me a monster truck with no weapons or armor, instead of a tank, or at least a humvee with machine gun. It made me think the order of the levels was not right, because it seemed like it would have made more sense to have Duke leave his place in the monster truck to go where the aliens are. And the strip club level really broke the pace of the game. Nothing wrong with a slow cinematic start but everything after that should be straight up balls to the wall action. The strip club felt like it should have been a reward for beating the game and giving Duke a chance to relax after all the hard work. Or some kind of bonus level to play from the title screen. I would definitely want to skip that level if I ever play again. Never tried multiplayer.

Might be fun to play the DLC but I am not going to buy it for a console game I don't own. I heard modders may have done interesting things so might be worth getting the PC version.

6.8/10

Очень плохая игра, о которой тяжело что-то говорить, потому что и так всё ясно.

16 лет в разработке подарили нам уёбищного монстра Франкенштейна. Duke Nukem Forever почти дотягивается до уровня «так плохо, что хорошо», столь редкого для игровой индустрии. Получается у него это потому, что игра пробегается за 6 часов. Только благодаря скоротечности от этого куска кода можно получать хоть какое-то извращенное удовольствие.

Всрато в игре всё. Поначалу игра хвастается фирменной интерактивностью и сортирными шутками: предлагает поссать в писсуар, вступление заканчивается отсосом Дюку от близняшек.

Но через пару часов скриптовые сценки исчезают и игрока оставляют развлекаться с убогим, устаревшим шутером, разбавленным устаревшими шутеечками. Дюк стебется над Halo, замечая, что «силовая броня для слабаков», хотя сам обзавелся авторегеном здоровья и может носить только 2 ствола. Дюк стебется что ему «сейчас пригодился бы ломик», и заставляет решать убогие головоломки с примитивной физикой. Еще игра предлагает покатушки, где по скрипту заканчивается бензин, и валят волны тупых врагов.

Стрелять в игре неинтересно, арсенал весь старый, Дюк хрупкий, а вершина местного геймдизайна — ящик с бесконечными патронами и стационарные турели.

Зато хуёвые шутейки прорываются почти до конца игры. Босс с тремя сиськами, навалять боссу по яйцам, двери в форме анусов, которые Дюк щекочет, чтобы открыть.

Лучшие эпизоды игры — когда Дюка уменьшают и приходится прыгать по кухне или кататься на игрушечной машинке. Но и это не спасает, просто капелька изюма в говняном кексе.

Устаревшая графика, застрявшая между 2005-2007 годами (игра вышла в 2011-м), микроскопические уровни (каждый минут на 10) — всё это меньшие проблемы игры.

В итоге, Дюк получился непонятным ублюдком, единственная ценность которого в том, чтобы показать как делать НЕ надо. Впрочем, играть в это тоже не стоит.

at the end of the day this was a bit more than i had expected. while it reeks of mediocre FPS it comes with barrels of fun, (actually, lets make that TWO barrels baby! shk shk BOOM BOOM!) TBH, I liked it quite much, (what feels more than I should have) due to so many rather fun and clever 'rats' maps and nice meta-like references to 'better' games of yesteryear.

Life is good in Trump Duke Tower

The juvenile and silly humor of Duke is make or break and an acquired taste, similar to Serious sam's tone but more polarizing perhaps due to more to offend. The target demographic of this game is the probably 14ish yo boys. (same one that would get in trouble when caught playing it!)

Dont try this at home kids!

So, when ranking this alongside other middle-ground shit shooters, I thought that the presence of small details was good. I also liked the puzzles. For a middle-ground FPS, there were no real hang ups or 'i'm stuck' sections. In-game discovery isn't terribly involved or forced but there is stuff there to find and its amusing. (Putting a rat in a microwaves in a breakroom for example, or finding stuff to pee on) Some of these bits reminded me of Postal 2. It's clever how the 'atomic health' dynamic had been replaced by the ego meter in this way...

For a mediocre FPS, this one probably has some of the more interesting and varied of stuff to look at and see and do in levels. And it manages to even find it's own voice really. Mediocre but not as generic as I was afraid it would be.

As a shooter though the game isn't so great. It has a lot of the kinds of mechanics that I tire of. checkpoints, Ammo refill stations, recharging health. on rails maps. goofball weapons. etc (also there are also car driving sections, but they are fine and no worse than most that get shoe-horned into FPS games.)

In conclusion this game is less about what most games in the genre go for and more just the concept behind it. The brawn and build of Duke Nukem Forever is put into presentation and style. That makes it feel a bit like a second rate Far Cry Blood Dragon (if you took away the open world and replaced it with a on rails.) Due to its strong points, Duke isn't half bad. The worst of the annoying puzzles, jumps, boss fights etc, often do at least make up for it with a laugh. and a game of foosball.