Let’s not sugar coat this, Duke Nukem Forever is 12 years too late. What started off as a very promising sequel to an amazingly addictive game turned into a legend. Delay after delay and endless engine changes caused every gamer in the world to lose interest, only to be given a slight glimmer of hope every now and again. Whether this was just an excellent marketing ploy or real tragedy, it does not matter, but the game was then seemingly cancelled.

Then a chain of events was set in place that lead to Gearbox picking up the licence and stitching together the work of development houses 3D Realms, Triptych and Piranha Games, while partnering with 2K Games to publish the now released Duke Nukem Forever. It seemed there was some hope, a light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe the cancellation was just a marketing ploy and the game would be pretty good after all! There is one glaring problem though, and it’s something Gearbox has admitted to, this is not really a Gearbox game, it is the vision and dream of 3D Realms. This is the game’s biggest downfall of the game as it lacks any of Gearbox’s magic touch.

The aliens are back from Duke Nukem 3D, and they are stealing all of Duke’s babes. Duke is not happy and goes out to save them. This is where the story kind of drifts off into a blur of vulgar action. You will find yourself running from one point to the next, not actually knowing what you need to do or why you have to do it. But then Duke was never big on story anyway.

The entire game acts as an advert for a Duke game, rather than the actual game. Duke is obviously famous after the previous game, and women are clamoring for his attention, statues have been erected in his honour, and he is the star of talk shows and movies. Everywhere you go you run into Duke - this causes the game to feel like marketing material, and not a proper game. It actually feels more like a museum exhibition, except this is not a fun museum to visit.

In its most basic form Duke Nukem Forever is a shooter - straight run-and-gun. If something moves, you should probably shoot it and if it’s not shooting at you, then it’s probably some below-the-belt joke, insult or inside joke.

With Duke’s face plastered all over the place it is pretty clear that Duke has developed a big ego. So big in fact that he literally hides behind it. Rather than have a health bar Duke has an ego bar. Perform random interactions with the environment and he will gain some ego: look at yourself in the mirror, gain some ego; pump some weights, gain some ego; slap a pair of aliens in a spaceship, gain some ego. When his ego levels are low from being shot, he simply needs to take cover for a few seconds and his ego returns. It’s almost as if Duke needs some time for a quick pep talk to get enough confidence to go back out there and kick alien butt.

Duke can only carry two weapons at a time and a few grenades. Now this is not the Duke I remember, I remember Duke carrying nearly a dozen weapons and loads of different grenades, pipe bombs, trip wires and who knows what else? Duke must be getting old and weak because he cannot carry the same weight that he used to.

What he has lost in strength he is trying to make up for in rude and vulgar behavior. Yes, Duke has always been a beefcake with big muscles, a table top haircut and a big fat cigar in his mouth. Yes, he is the epitome of a male chauvinist. Yes, he used to frequent shady bars and strip clubs. But I do not recall Duke digging through toilets for poop and slinging it at people. I don’t recall him making rude gestures at every turn. I don’t recall him ever actually being exposed to nudity. I also don’t recall him swearing like a sailor.

How I can hear about women loving this game is beyond me. What are supposed to be humorous references to women makes me cringe. The lame attempts at humour simply come across at ignorant. Rather than us laughing at the jokes, we laugh at the pathetic attempt at saying something funny. And it’s a very uncomfortable laugh.

The multiplayer “Capture the Babe” is actually not that bad and makes the rest of the game look tame since I can understand the tongue in cheek nature of it. But somewhere along the line Duke has turned into a monster.

Maybe I was a bit naïve when I played the original game and only recall the clean PG rated moments. Maybe you will call me a prude now, but this is beyond what a fun game should contain. Duke can save the babes of the world without them having to be strippers. He can show his disgust at the aliens without slapping their mammories. Yet the developers chose to add any and every insulting item they can think of to the game. Where clever posters are plastered on the walls of other games, here it is simply rude and gross, and because of these (and other) inclusions, I found Duke Nukem to be incredibly distasteful and insensitive to the point of preventing me from enjoying the action.

Duke does have a few things that brought a smile to my face for a few short moments. Some levels see Duke shrunk down to a pint size version of himself. You can then drive a remote control car around, hitting aliens in the shins and causing them to hop around on one leg. In fact most driving sequences were fun, if a bit uninspired. Some of the weapons also reminded me of the golden days of action shooters. The shrink ray that allows you to squash your tiny enemies and the devastator, a secret love child of a machine gun and a rocket launcher, are but a few examples.

The interaction in the levels is also a page out of the old Duke’s book. Every tap can run water, every light switch works and you can even play a game of pool on a pool table or spin the wheel at a slots machine. Yet not a single one of these interactive items contribute anything to the game at all. It is eye candy simply for the sake of having eye candy. Shooting hoops gets you an achievement but gets you nowhere in the game itself.

All the time spent making the world so interactive could have been better used to make Duke a better game. However, having taken 15 odd years to get the game to this state I am not surprised they decided to release it now. Had they waited any longer the game would have looked and felt even older.

And it does feel and look old. The Unreal engine is capable of so much more, but in Duke Nukem textures are at times low quality and badly filtered, while models appear unrefined. Duke Nukem Forever is a game that arrived around 12 years late to the market. It looks old, it plays old, it is old. But not in the cool, old school type of way. Nor in the “old but comfortable pair of shoes” kind of way. No, this is more of an “old flea infested, weird, where did that stain come from, ripped mattress in an old road side motel” kind of old.

Fifteen years after development on Duke Nukem Forever began, there are smarter, prettier, funnier games out there. Thank goodness the Thor game released this year too or Duke would have won another award that he did not want: “Worst Game of 2011.”

The good: Glimpses of the classic Duke; interactivity in the levels.
The bad: Interactivity is unused and shallow; rude, crude and ugly; simply not fun at all.
The ugly: The worst shooter I have played this year

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