Today’s raging case of gaming diarrhea is in the form of Duke Nukem Forever, a game that was famous for getting delayed, but then it was famous for being a giant disappointment after it was finally released in 2011. What was all the fuss?

So back in the late 90’s, Duke Forever was announced 3D Realms. Fast forward a few years to 2001 and they used that famous dismissive status update of – “it’ll be done when it’s done.” That’s actually what I always told my bosses when I needed them to get off my back because I was too busy fighting off the previous night’s hangover, courtesy of Everclear.

I’m not going to go into a long history here – it’s not that kind of review – but basically after a bunch of development changes and other problems, the game’s development was finished by Borderlands developer Gearbox, Triptych Studios, and Piranha Games. Gearbox is also famous for developing another well known piece of garbage that I plan on playing and reviewing very soon, so make sure you subscribe to get notified of that. I think what’s particularly galling about this is that Gearbox Founder Randy Pitchford was quoted saying that “I’ve played the final game and it is an incredible experience; a once-in-a-lifetime opus of interactive entertainment that reminds me once again why Duke Nukem is our King.” I get wanting to promote your product, but it’s nowhere near as good as this glowing endorsement.

Let’s get the good out of the way before I get onto the bad, because there’s a lot of bad. On a technical level I didn’t actually encounter any bugs on my playthrough, which was impressive. After playing through games like Ninja Gaiden Z and even the very recent Dungeons and Dragons: Dark Alliance, I was expecting a mess here and I didn’t get it. I’ll get into what the action was like shortly, but I want to point out that the last boss fight was easily the best part of the game. It’s mostly just running and gunning, and you’ll fight a giant alien in a large arena, but it’s the only time in the game where you’re just concentrating on shooting enemies and not stopping in any one place for long. It’s the closest this game comes to classic shooters.

It also doesn’t hold back on the non-PC humor, which I respect. Especially in the dark ages of the 2020 decade. There’s plenty of dirty jokes and adult visuals in this, and there’s a lot of site gags to look out for, like the donut boxes being from a company called “Debbie Does Donuts”, things like that. This is a game that was not afraid of crass humor. Looking back it came out in much happier times, long before the vilest of cancers known as “woke” and identity politics infected and destroyed every franchise and industry us normal people ever enjoyed. And while the jokes didn’t land as often as I was hoping, the game carries with it a proudly juvenile personality that I liked. A juvenile personality that would get it cancelled very quickly, if it were even able to get made these days.

Lastly if you go into the settings menu, there’s an actual timeline of the game’s development, which I thought was great. It gives a pretty detailed outline of when the game was concieved right after Duke 3D was released, all the way up to its launch in 2011, and all the craziness in between. Legal disuputes, all the times they changed engines, it’s all here. And honestly it’s more interesting than most of what you’ll actually be playing.

Unfortunately the rest of it is just not fun at best, and pretty terrible at worst. I’ve played a chunk of this in big-head mode after beating it because I thought that would make this a little funner to watch and honestly the footage I have, no matter how action packed, is just not very interesting, but it turns out that you can’t tell the enemies have larger heads, and the NPCs just look creepy.

You don’t actually get to do any real combat for the first couple levels and instead have to escape the building you’re in.

The game takes place in Las Vegas and Duke has clearly capitalized on his popularity since Duke 3D. He has a football stadium named after him, he’s got a giant high rise he lives in, women throwing themselves at him like he’s Rodney Dangerfield. There is a hog, and he’s living high on it. Even with all that in mind the writers didn’t seem to know how to write Duke into a modern story, what little there is. Like the president calls him a relic from a different era, which almost feels like a shot at fans as much as it is Duke. So it begs the question: Was the game written tongue-in-cheek? Is he a walking joke? Is he a proud hero from a past era of gaming? And that question’s never answered. Duke himself doesn’t really talk to anybody throughout the game and outside of spouting one-liners or repeating his old catchphrases, if you can even call them his, he basically just stands there while people tell him what to do. I would’ve liked a little extra personality where he’d say something back sometimes. I mean I don’t want a total rewrite of his character because if we’ve learned anything in the past 5 years is that the idiots who failed upward into writing gigs these days don’t know anything about source material or canon and would’ve just ruined him like they have everything else. *show footage of Luke in Last Jedi*

The game starts with a tutorial that shows you how to do everything, and ends with an epic boss battle on a football field. After it’s done it turns out that was on TV, and Duke is, uh…”relaxing” with his skanks. Aliens then invade again and Duke is on his way to another blood-soaked and explosion-littered adventure to save the world.

The game’s graphics are not great, even by 2011 standards. The NPCs have that semi-realistic look but their lifeless eyes follow you everywhere you go, like one of those paintings in Scooby Doo cartoons. Also the characters who actually talk and interact with you, don’t really track where you are so you could walk behind them and they’d just still face forward and act like you’re still face to face. Looking back I think Half Life 2 looked better than this, and that was released 7 years earlier. Like in Duke 3D, explosions can sometimes blow up chunks of wall but since this is one of those shooters where everything is scripted, it all feels artificial. The aliens mostly just look like updated versions from Duke 3D, and the enemy variety is really bad. You’ll fight the lizard looking enemies, a few different varities of pigs, and the aliens that look like a big brain with tentacles, and there’s not much more than that.

I think what I hated the most about this game was the pacing. You don’t actually get to do any real combat for the first couple levels and instead have to escape the building you’re in. In the process you get shrunk by some device, and you have to ride a toy car around to escape enemies. Nobody plays a shooter for this. And the rest of the game is like this, too. Most levels cycle some small sections where you’ll shoot enemies, and then the rest of it is platforming, many times from being shrunken down. Also anybody who’s played a shooter where you’re trying to jump pits in 1st person view knows how miserable it is.

Later on Duke has to drive his pickup truck around. The driving itself is actually not that bad and running over enemies is satisfying enough, but again, the pacing ruins it. See, Duke’s truck will run out of gas in some spots. Like you’re driving, then suddenly it just stops and the screen says “out of gas” on it. Then you have to get out of the truck, and explore nearby for gas and presumably things you need to kill to get the gas. Why are the aliens out there in the middle of nowhere? Why are they all near gas canisters? So after you get the gas and go back to the truck, you’ll do the same thing all over againg 2 or 3 times. All this stop and go crap actually made me feel like I was stuck in traffic, and after awhile you just get mad because your progress is constantly impeded by these stupid scripted events that are clearly just filler to pad the game’s length out. In the last major section of the game, you’ll spend a lot of it underwater, and the swimming in it is juuuuuust crummy enough to get you killed, and Duke can apparently only hold his breath for like 10 seconds so get used to drowning. *show Not Penny’s Boat pic*

The worst offender of this is where you fall unconscious and have this dream that you’re in a strip club that Duke owns. There’s no fighting in it, and it’s just a fetch quest to get some items for one of the strippers, and it’s an excuse for the developers to cram in their dirty jokes where nobody wanted them. Oddly enough nobody actually strips in it and you get “rewarded”, and I use that term loosely, with a lapdance. This whole level adds absolutely nothing to the entire game.

The weapon variety isn’t so bad in this, but they don’t let you have much actual fun with them, because you can only hold 2 weapons at a time, and none of them have much for ammunition. It would be fun to blow things up with the rocket launcher, if it had more than 5 rounds. It would be fun to shoot enemies with the Ripper, if it had more than 200 rounds that you didn’t chew through in a matter of seconds. The shrink gun is a nice idea, but it only comes with a few rounds and once you hit an enemy with it, you have to actually look *at* the enemy and walk over them to stomp on them, which by the way is a lot harder than it sounds. Some weapons also work better with certain enemies. Like the octobrain aliens that use telekinesis to throw rockets back at you. So what if you pick a couple weapons that aren’t great choices? Well, then you’re not totally screwed, but the fight will be a lot harder and you’ll probably die a few times. Thankfully there’s a lot checkpoints.

I know I shouldn’t do this because they’re a console generation apart, but had this game been designed like DOOM 2016 or the non-platforming parts of DOOM Eternal, it would’ve been a lot of fun to just blast everything and focus on the action, and not screw around with platforming or weapons with almost no ammo. And as a side note I think holding only 2 guns at a time is unacceptable. If this is being treated like an older style shooter, then let me carry 5 or 7 guns at once like I could back then. Also – ALSO – and this was important to me because I’m old and don’t like change: The Ripper’s firing noise doesn’t sound anything like the original from Duke 3D. It went from having that cool, almost dart or silencer-like sounding rapid pulse to it to having just a normal gun noise.

So my verdict – I think altogether Duke Nukem Forever shouldn’t have been made. At least not like this. It was an internet joke for so long it should’ve stayed that way and lived in a dark cave somewhere with Half Life 3, Star Wars 1313 and Silent Hills. It would’ve been more fun discussing what could’ve been instead of what it should’ve been. The poor, muddy graphics, awful pacing, lack of actual shooting sequences, and the crummy enemy variety just took what could’ve been a whole lot of Monstervision quality dumb, gory fun and instead gave us all a game that at times to me, screams “let’s just finish this so we can release it and move on.” Duke is a fun, macho, gun-totaing, cigar smoking, nudie-magazine-day reading, alien shooting hero, and he deserved a lot better.