With stellar graphics, smooth game-play, great dialogue, and challenging puzzles this game is spectacular. The game I'm talking about of course is not Duke Nukem Forever, but the game we hoped it would have been. Unfortunately it has none of these things. Duke Nukem Forever was a game that was announced in 1997 and feels like a game from that era. The game-play and movement is clunky and slow and Duke seems to get hung up on every pebble he walks over. It also abandoned all the exploration aspects of Duke Nukem 3D and is very linear. After a while you don't quite remember what your eventual goal is (Rescue earth's women? Something about the Hoover Dam?) and it feels like you move forward, kill aliens, move forward, kill aliens, until you reach the next level. The game also make a few jabs at modern games with the most obvious one being the jab at Halo , where Duke is offered Master Chief's armor and responds by saying how only a wuss would wear it. The issue with that is Halo came up with most of Duke Nukem's game-play mechanics such as: regenerating health and holding only two weapons. The weapons of Duke Nukem Forever are one of the...less bleak aspects of the game. I enjoyed the over the top weapon's such as the Devastator, but didn't enjoy the clunky aiming system. Where the game really dates itself is the graphics. For a game that was released in 2011, it would have a hard time competing with any game's graphics that had been released since 2003. While not every game can look like Crysis , it is nice when a game tries to differentiate the look of the scenery and enemies so I know what I'm supposed to be shooting. The game also has some sort of childish, immature addiction to boobs because they are thrown in everywhere. And while Duke does have some funny dialogue, most of what he spits out is uninspiring and forgettable. But I could almost forgive every one of those things I talked about if the friggin' loading times weren't so long! My tip if you're playing Duke Nukem Forever is don't die because you'll have to wait anywhere between 40 to 60 seconds. So my second tip is to have a book ready because you're going to have to keep yourself occupied every time a level loads or you die. What I don't understand is when you die in your monster truck you instantly re-spawn with no wait times what so ever. Why couldn't they add that to the rest of the game?! So if you're even considering playing this game I would only recommend it if you can get it cheap and are trying to find spare time to read a good book.
Score:
Graphics: 4/10
Gameplay: 4.5/10
Story: 3.5/10
Innovation: 3/10
Buying Appeal/Replay Value: 5/10
OVERALL: 4/10
www.dukenukemforever.com/
(Don't know why you would want to visit the site but just in case you do)
