Review - Duke Nukem Forever

Before I really get into the review, let me say that I am new to the Duke Nukem series. The early day FPS games like DOOM and such never had an appeal to me as a kid. Maybe it was the choppy looking 3D graphics; particularly the ugly, blocky textures and the enemies not blending in well with the background because they're still sprites instead of 3D models. Whatever the case, I never played any of the games before, so that makes me a new Duke player.

On top of that, there are already plenty of reviews out there since the game's incredibly delayed launch. I wasn't too interested then, and I definitely wasn't expecting much when I saw and bought this game for $5 from Steam. A lot of it was curiosity that got me to pick it up, as well as the huge, -75% off discount too. Having played through the campaign, how did I feel about the game?*

Conveniently enough, just as I write this review, Steam just put this game up for another -75% off discount again. See if you like what you'll read here and decide for yourself if this game is worth $5... provided it runs on your PC, of course.

* This review is based on my experience with the PC version of this game.
So right off the bat, the first thing you get is the very patriotic logo, and hear Duke's voice commenting on his return. The one thing that I found great about this title is the amount of "flavor" the game has that is all about Duke. Duke Nukem is the epitome of awesome. All the ladies have the hots for him, and all the men want to be him. World Hero, celebrity, and the badass with balls of steel. The game's portrayal of Duke is everything there is to be living a dream. You hear his voice throughout most of the game, and it's definitely something to enjoy for the humorous things he has to say. Even aside from what he says, he does a lot of things that you usually don't find in a video game.
For instance, when you actually start playing the game, you begin the game with a simple command. Piss. You start the game by taking a leak in the urinal. After your bathroom break, you're free to check out the world, and there's some decent amount of interactivity you can have with the world. You can turn on the faucet, use the blow dryer on the wall, drink from the water fountain, and even draw on the white board. Some of the things you interact with will even increase your Ego, or your health permanently, like by admiring yourself in a mirror, or punching a punching bag. Winning at mini-games like pinball (getting a high score), or sink all 9 balls on a billiard table without sinking the cue ball, gives you some big Ego boosts.

Passing Gas co. One of many humorous product naming.

Aside from that, it plays very similarly to other FPS adventure games. Personally, I saw a fairly big resemblance to the Half Life 2 series with this game. Like how it's a FPS adventure game, there are action parts, puzzle parts, and driving parts, the enemy is an army of alien species, etc. But as for the differences, there are a few major ones in the gameplay mechanic. Those include regenerating health by not taking damage for a while, 2 or 4 weapon slot inventory, and outside of gameplay mechanics, a protagonist who has a lot of witty things to say, as opposed to the stereotypical silent protagonist, or the flavor, if you will.

More into detail, action parts are okay. Not too hard, but not necessarily a cake walk all the time either. The checkpoints between each part make it not so bad if you happen to fail, although you do have to wait for the game to reload the level again when that happens. Max ammunition count can be low for some weapons, but the game provides enough weapons/ammo, even for a 2 weapon inventory slot setting. Hoarding ammo and/or other items isn't necessarily all that important as the game is fairly lenient with supplies throughout the game. Some enemies can be tough to combat, like the rampaging pigcops that will lunge at you and deal massive damage, or the octabrains with their telekinesis and another projectile attack with splash damage as well. Choose your weapons wisely for each occasion, since those octabrain enemies will use its telekinesis to launch any explosive weapons like rockets and pipe bombs back at you. But all in all, the action parts are fairly straightforward. Just kill everything that comes at you.

The puzzle parts are usually some simple roadblock that you need to do to move on. Whether it be the stereotypical seesaw puzzle where you put all the weights on one end of a toppling platform to get to a higher ground on the other side, or simply doing some platforming to get to a button to open up the next path. This part is not the most fun part, usually, but then again, it rarely is in any FPS games, as far as I know. They're all just tasks you need to do in the end; some with more bang than others.

I managed to park my car on one wheel somehow.

The driving parts of the game gets mentioned a lot in reviews about how boring and unfinished it is. For the most part, it is. About the only challenging thing about the driving part is to jump over chasms and other gaps by using your car's turbo. Running over enemies will easily kill them, so action isn't much of an importance, and you'll be seeing lots of roads and jumps through these parts. Probably the area that may be lacking in level design the most, in that there are little discoveries to be had in them, considering how big of an area you're traversing on the wheels, with the exception being the Lady Killer level where you drive through in a RC when Duke gets shrunk to miniature size, but also return on foot once you manage to grow back to his normal size. I do feel that this part felt very close to the driving parts in Half Life 2 though, so... if you didn't mind it in HL2, it probably won't be too much of an issue playing these parts in Duke Nukem Forever.

As far as graphics go, it's nothing too special. Some areas are definitely nicely detailed, like Duke's home, while others will feel bland.. although bland is the only image you're supposed to get when driving through a desert, I suppose. Textures aren't too bad, but not great looking, especially compared to other recent games' graphics. 3D animations can be sloppy, like Duke himself when you can look at your own reflection, or when pigcops lunge at you to attack. Their model maintains the same position until they land their attack after their lunge. Just some nitpicky small details I've noticed. Not something I'd mark points off for, but things that some people may make a big deal over.

Sound-wise, background music exists in appropriate places, I believe. Nothing stood out to me as odd in particular, which is a good thing. There might be more ambiance noise here and there than music though, but that's only the background. Voice acting I feel is where the game really put their effort in, and I think the voice actors deserve their credit in this game. Without the voice acting, this game would lose its shine and be just another mediocre game. Kudos to Jon St. John for adding the big pack of flavor to the voice acting.

Now when it comes to Multiplayer, it can be a hit or miss. By playing multiplayer, you can level up to unlock essentially "trophies" in Duke's mansion via My Digs option. You also unlock costumes for Duke to customize him with on multiplayer. These things are good, but the gameplay is hard to say that it is balanced. Certain weapons are a lot more useful in multiplayer; particularly explosives. They can easily OHKO other players, and as useful the shotgun was in single player campaign, I feel becomes the worst weapon in multiplayer. Everyone still has regenerating health, so you need to be able to consistently deal damage until you take them down. Accuracy will become a crucial point, especially against human players as opposed to single-minded AI enemies. Being able to deal lots of damage at once is another important factor. But with explosives, the splash damage from the explosion is usually still enough to OHKO players, and when someone gets a Devastator and a Jet Pack, hovering around and annihilating everyone, you can't help but feel that explosives are overpowered and thus, unbalanced. I've only played until I hit level 8 so far, and I'm not sure if I entirely enjoy multiplayer yet. Being able to respawn almost instantly is nice though. Not sure if that's the case in other modes however, which I have still yet to experience. I may blog about it some other time.

Oh, and finally, the rating. Definitely an M rated game. Lots of violence, gore, excessive swearing, flicking off, alcohol and substance abuse, and especially boobies. LOTS and lots of boobies. Not to mention how awesome Duke is portrayed in the game, it easily makes him an ideal role model easily to the eyes of anyone easily influenced by things that are cool.

In the end, this game was an enjoyable experience. Sure, it's not the best game out there, or even come close to being the best. In fact, average coated in flavor best describes the game for me. Is that a bad thing? Far from it. By average, I feel that the game is on par to being acceptable, especially if it's as cheap as $19.99. Of course, if you can get it for $5.00 like me, all the better.