Duke Who?
Alright so I decided to play the finally released Duke Nukem Forever. If you don't know about Duke Nukem Forever go over to Wikipedia and read about the crazy development cycle and history of the game. Basically Duke Nukem 3D was a huge hit and people wanted a squeal, and they got it...some 15 years later.
Now I'm a fan of the modern FPS games. I've played some of the older ones as far back as Doom 1 and 2, but I've never played a Duke Nukem game before. Since the development of the game was so long, I went into the game assuming that the style would represent more of a modern FPS than the older ones, and I was right. After reading about how many times the game changed hands I realized that at some point they probably just started from scratch, and took ideas for the game and put them into a new game, scrapping what they had done before. So this game was more like a Halo, than Doom 1, not that that is a bad thing.
So what was the game play like? It was pretty good, I mean there are better games but it had a good amount of variety between gun fights, huge boss battles, driving, puzzles, shrinking puzzles, turrets, partially destructible environments, decent weapon variety, and interactive environments. But the majority of the game is running and gunning; not too much of a surprise it is a FPS.
Guns
So there isn't hundreds of gun types but there are the standards. A pistol, an assault riffle equivalent, machine gun, sniper, rocket launcher, turrets, and shotgun. In addition to this there are things like the Devistator, Enforcer, Shrink gun, and Freeze gun. This in addition to a few grenade types adds enough variety to keep it fun. The problem I had was that you only have two guns (like modern FPS Halo style) meaning if I have a rocket launcher and a shotgun, I can't get any long range enemies without draining rockets. Or if I have a sniper riffle and rocket launcher, I can't do much close quarters combat. The ability to carry three guns would have been much better.
Health
So the health system is similar to modern FPS games with a shield that recharges over time. At first this was a pain because I would always be hiding then run out and shoot then hide. But I found that if you stun an enemy (where they are close to dying) you can perform an execution on them and it will increase your shield (ego) instantly. This kept the fighting going because I didn't need to hide and wait. Later in the game with flying enemies this trick becomes harder to do and its back to hiding but, oh well.
Another neat thing they did with health was allow you to increase it by interacting with objects. I haven't really mentioned this yet but Duke is kind of a bad ass, and a womanizer. So doing things like look up porn on a computer in the game will increase your health a little bit. Pumping iron, playing basket ball, looking at a porno magazine, killing a huge boss, all of these are fun little ways to increase your health.
There isn't any item to heal your self with but there is drugs and beer. Drink beer and you become tougher (take less damage) but your vision becomes impaired. Take steroids and your punches are more powerful. I can't really say I think it was a good idea to promote drinking and drugs in a video game but I think the game mechanic works because of the character that Duke is.
Attitude
Duke Nukem is like Arnold Schwarzenegger in any action movie, but with the added womanizer behavior as mentioned earlier. He is an ass a times, and he is conceded, but he is fun to play as. What is even more fun about playing the jerk is the fact that the whole world loves you for it. The expression "women want to be with you, men want to be you", fits perfectly here. In this universe Duke is #1. He always saves the day, he always gets the girl (or two), and that's probably why he acts so pompous.
The game has come under heavy fire for how women are treated in this game. This game does have a capture the babe multiplayer mode, and women are generally seen as defenseless sex objects. But I think that a game that has been in development for this long, and with this much anticipation, the developers had to push the limits of Duke's character and make the game as over the top (in violence and comedy) as possible. To that I think they did a decent job. I did find my self laughing at some of the jokes, which are mostly pop culture references but still funny.
Done...now what?
I'm a sucker for bonus content after beating a game. Like the behind the scenes, making of a videos, and luckily Duke Nukem Forever has some of that. The game includes all of the trailers for Duke Nukem Forever that have been released in the 15 years that it was being worked on. It also comes with a neat time line view that tells a brief description of what happened and when. As for other things like replay value, you won't find much. There are a few achievements I missed out on, and some ego boosts I missed, but not much else. There is also a multiplayer mode but it feels like that was an after thought just tacked on for good measure.
When being shot try to avoid bullets
If you play the game on one of the tougher difficulty settings one thing you will get annoyed with is the loading screens. Don't get me wrong, I like that they put up text of random jokes, or hints while you're waiting, but the loading screen is at least 30 seconds on the Xbox 360, and you see it every time you die. Sometimes I would play 20 seconds and die, then wait 30 seconds at the loading screen just to die again because of where the checkpoint was. I haven't played it on the PC but I heard it is a similar times for loading.
Worth it?
So over all I think it is a decent game for an adult male who likes blowing crap up. But would I pay the $60? Which was the price when it was released? Nope. Would I pay $40? Maybe but still not likely. For $30 I would say pick it up, and with all the bad reviews Duke has been getting it won't be long until you see this game in the bargain bin at Wal-Mart.
Alright so I decided to play the finally released Duke Nukem Forever. If you don't know about Duke Nukem Forever go over to Wikipedia and read about the crazy development cycle and history of the game. Basically Duke Nukem 3D was a huge hit and people wanted a squeal, and they got it...some 15 years later.
Now I'm a fan of the modern FPS games. I've played some of the older ones as far back as Doom 1 and 2, but I've never played a Duke Nukem game before. Since the development of the game was so long, I went into the game assuming that the style would represent more of a modern FPS than the older ones, and I was right. After reading about how many times the game changed hands I realized that at some point they probably just started from scratch, and took ideas for the game and put them into a new game, scrapping what they had done before. So this game was more like a Halo, than Doom 1, not that that is a bad thing.
So what was the game play like? It was pretty good, I mean there are better games but it had a good amount of variety between gun fights, huge boss battles, driving, puzzles, shrinking puzzles, turrets, partially destructible environments, decent weapon variety, and interactive environments. But the majority of the game is running and gunning; not too much of a surprise it is a FPS.
Guns
So there isn't hundreds of gun types but there are the standards. A pistol, an assault riffle equivalent, machine gun, sniper, rocket launcher, turrets, and shotgun. In addition to this there are things like the Devistator, Enforcer, Shrink gun, and Freeze gun. This in addition to a few grenade types adds enough variety to keep it fun. The problem I had was that you only have two guns (like modern FPS Halo style) meaning if I have a rocket launcher and a shotgun, I can't get any long range enemies without draining rockets. Or if I have a sniper riffle and rocket launcher, I can't do much close quarters combat. The ability to carry three guns would have been much better.
Health
So the health system is similar to modern FPS games with a shield that recharges over time. At first this was a pain because I would always be hiding then run out and shoot then hide. But I found that if you stun an enemy (where they are close to dying) you can perform an execution on them and it will increase your shield (ego) instantly. This kept the fighting going because I didn't need to hide and wait. Later in the game with flying enemies this trick becomes harder to do and its back to hiding but, oh well.
Another neat thing they did with health was allow you to increase it by interacting with objects. I haven't really mentioned this yet but Duke is kind of a bad ass, and a womanizer. So doing things like look up porn on a computer in the game will increase your health a little bit. Pumping iron, playing basket ball, looking at a porno magazine, killing a huge boss, all of these are fun little ways to increase your health.
There isn't any item to heal your self with but there is drugs and beer. Drink beer and you become tougher (take less damage) but your vision becomes impaired. Take steroids and your punches are more powerful. I can't really say I think it was a good idea to promote drinking and drugs in a video game but I think the game mechanic works because of the character that Duke is.
Attitude
The game has come under heavy fire for how women are treated in this game. This game does have a capture the babe multiplayer mode, and women are generally seen as defenseless sex objects. But I think that a game that has been in development for this long, and with this much anticipation, the developers had to push the limits of Duke's character and make the game as over the top (in violence and comedy) as possible. To that I think they did a decent job. I did find my self laughing at some of the jokes, which are mostly pop culture references but still funny.
Done...now what?
I'm a sucker for bonus content after beating a game. Like the behind the scenes, making of a videos, and luckily Duke Nukem Forever has some of that. The game includes all of the trailers for Duke Nukem Forever that have been released in the 15 years that it was being worked on. It also comes with a neat time line view that tells a brief description of what happened and when. As for other things like replay value, you won't find much. There are a few achievements I missed out on, and some ego boosts I missed, but not much else. There is also a multiplayer mode but it feels like that was an after thought just tacked on for good measure.
When being shot try to avoid bullets
Worth it?
So over all I think it is a decent game for an adult male who likes blowing crap up. But would I pay the $60? Which was the price when it was released? Nope. Would I pay $40? Maybe but still not likely. For $30 I would say pick it up, and with all the bad reviews Duke has been getting it won't be long until you see this game in the bargain bin at Wal-Mart.