After all that time in “gestation”, gamers have been eager to see the final result . . . and it’s an underwhelming experience:
In a game bursting with 1980s macho-movie quotes and in-jokes, one line resonates far beyond Duke Nukem Forever’s puerile script. Besieged by an alien invasion, the President of the United States ignores calls to beg the eponymous meathead to save the planet, lamenting, “Duke, you’re a relic from a different era.”
It’s not just The Duke himself who’s from a different era. His repertoire of foul-mouthed quips might be ripped from the VHS reels of Commando, Total Recall and Aliens, among many others, but it’s the painfully dated gameplay that ultimately proves some relics are best left buried.
Everywhere you look, DNF is a testament to its infamously protracted and traumatic development. Long loading times, low-res textures and polygon counts, poor facial animations and lip-syncing, screen tearing, juddering frame rates, basic lighting and reflections, pop-up, jaggies and disappearing assets — you name it, DNF suffers from it. Every gaming advancement of the past thirteen years is undone; every conceivable design flaw evident.
Rather than play the actual game, you might enjoy Yahtzee Croshaw’s “review” of the game from May, 2009:
Verdict
Duke Nukem Forever is the sum of all its flaws – a truly terrible game with almost no redeeming features. It’s as if Gearbox simply swept the scraps off 3D Realms’ development floor and glued them together into this mess. Graphics, gameplay, narrative, innovation, there’s simply nothing to recommend this mangled wreck. Put simply, as The Duke might say, “This game is one ugly motherfucker!”
