Feature :: Me Vs. Duke Nukem: Forever
“…But after twelve fucking years, it should be”
My original intention was to write a review of Duke Nukem Forever. Going in I expected to be writing some not so nice things about his latest outing, but I was certainly going to give it a fair shake first. The reason I haven’t written a review is quite simple, I didn’t finish it. I didn’t finish it because that game is broken to the point that it made my head hurt.
The opening level was just as I remembered: Vulgar and unfunny, with all the classic Duke Nukem tropes. After tossing around a turd for a while and drawing dicks on the whiteboard, I got on with the mission. After killing my large, cyclops, alien foe and kicking his eye for a long range field goal, I found that Duke had just been playing his own game and, at the same time, getting head from two teenage girls (complete with school uniforms) named the Holsom twins. The game’s humor was already grating on me. Even the self referential stuff wasn’t enough to save it. With a groan, I continued on and actually got quite far. Eventually the ten-year-old textures, bad mechanics and tasteless humor got to me. I was done.
Now anyone that knows me, reads my stuff or listens to the podcasts I do, knows that I can be pretty tasteless when it comes to humor – I did say I drew a dick on that whiteboard at the opening of the game – so that stuff really shouldn’t bother me. The problem Duke suffers with is that everyone in the game thinks he’s awesome. If Duke’s cheesy, vulgar one liners got shot down by everyone it’d be a lot easier to take. The funniest moment in that game is Duke’s reaction to you picking up the turd from the toilet in the first level. “What am I doing?” he asks, as you run around the level, tormenting clueless AI with your little brown friend. This is a problem that a lot of people ran up against, and was quite easily solvable. Instead of making Duke Nukem the most awesome guy in the world, turn him into a hack that no one cares about. Not only would it make the character more interesting, but it’d be more than accurate.
One thing that really couldn’t be helped (not unless you scrapped the game and started over again) is the technical things that make Duke Nukem Forever so awful. It’s clear from playing through three-quarters of this game that some of it was made six months ago, and some of the stuff had been there for years, maybe even decades. I don’t know what 2K or Gearbox were expecting when they agreed to release this relic, but they can’t have been thinking positively. Sure, the nostalgia factor is through the roof – I certainly wanted to see what this Frankenstein’s monster of a game was like – but if they expected a high selling, critically acclaimed, masterpiece, they were clearly deluded. The straw that broke them camel’s back for me was an underwater level. It’s common knowledge that underwater levels are the worst part of any videogame, right alongside escort missions and bad voice acting. So having a stretch of sequences with under water ‘puzzle solving’, in a game that controls like shit, was not a smart option. In all honesty, I really think Duke Nukem: Forever should’ve been left on the scrapheap.
Curiosity was what brought Duke back from the dead. After all this time, people wanted to see what had become of this game. Even after everything I’ve said, from a business and consumer standpoint, releasing this game was certainly a good idea. It gave curious consumers, like myself, a chance to check out a game that ‘s been in development longer than a generation of videogame enthusiasts have been a live. From a business standpoint, 2K could use that curiosity to try and get back some of that lost cash. They just went about it in the wrong way. Pitching this as a full priced game wasn’t a good idea. A lot more people would’ve tried this out had it been released at a ‘budget’ price point. Even more, in my opinion, would’ve jumped at a chance to download it at the standard PSN/XBLA price point.
Duke Nukem: Forever had nothing going for it, but nostalgia and the morbid curiosity of gamers. It should have been chucked on the scrapheap a long time ago. If you’re one of those people that really wants to play this game, go ahead, but just know that this isn’t something you’ll want to play for long.
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