“It’s been twelve fucking years!” as Duke gladly alerts you after you beat the first level of the game. It’s actually 14 years now, and a game that has taken that long to come out is never going to be able to live up to any hype it may have built up. While Duke Nukem Forever is not a great game, it does actually manage to remain enjoyable, and somewhat bring back that old 90s shooter feeling that someone like me has missed in this day and age of military, or more strategic based first person shooters.

I say somewhat because there are two very non 90s first person shooter design choices that you wouldn’t expect to see. The first of these is the concept of only being able to carry two weapons. This is something that started becoming popular after Halo mastered the idea, and while that works brilliant in that game, in a game like Duke, you want to be able to carry all of the crazy arsenals that Duke comes into contact with throughout the game.

“It’s a shame about the limited weapon pickup as Duke Nukem should be about playing around with the sillier things open to you.”

There are plenty of weapon drops from enemies, so half of the time you do get to pick up the weapon you want, but it just seems strange to handicap the player’s fun with weaponry mix ups with a very un-Duke like gameplay concept. I ended up not using fancier guns, such as the shrink gun or the freeze ray, because of the weapon limit. Instead I’d normally opt to having the trusty shotgun, ripper or RPG because they work better in most situations. It’s a shame about the limited weapon pickup as Duke Nukem should be about playing around with the sillier things open to you.

Blasting stuff in Duke Nukem Forever is mindless fun though; it’s straight up macho man shoot or be shot at. The nine hour campaign is full of straightforward shooting, huge boss battles, vehicle riding and turret shooting. Modest puzzles and some platforming are featured too, especially the level where you have been shrunk to mini Duke. You have to jump around a kitchen, dodge past jars of Duke Sauce, run across cooking burgers and bounce off spatulas to get to a switch to turn off the electricity as a poor stranded waitress doesn’t want to be electrocuted. It’s a simple idea, but is entertaining to play.

Not all the levels are on par with each other. There are a couple of monotonous levels, such as exploring the desert in Duke’s monster truck. Every so often it runs out of fuel and you have to explore a section to find a canister of gas to fuel the truck for another journey. It feels like it was put in to extend the game as nothing exciting happens as you drive. That section all looks and feels very bleak.

“I would have probably complained about the lack of new enemies and weapons, but because Duke has been away for so long, it doesn’t matter.”

All the enemies are redesigns from Duke 3D, meaning you’ll be turning Pig Cops, Octobrains and other familiar enemies into bloody pieces using all the same weapons as before. If this was any other game I would have probably complained about the lack of new enemies and weapons, but because Duke has been away for so long, it doesn’t matter. Enemies look vastly different in this game that it never enters your head that they are the same as before.

The second feature that represents modern day gaming is regenerating health. Duke no longer has a health counter; instead Duke’s life is dependent on his Ego Metre. This metre depletes when hit, but regenerates after not taking damage for a period of time. It impacts how you play the game, since once you are low on ego you’ll go to run and hide behind an object to build your ego back up. Whenever has Duke Nukem ran away to hide? It should be about fast reactions and your dodging ability. I am assuming these ideas were implemented by the development team to try modernising it.

Ego can be increased over the course of the game through interaction with objects. Playing games like pinball machines, air hockey, pool, plus doing Duke like things such as using a glory hole, benching some weights, looking at your reflection in the mirror or watching a self-made Duke Nukem porn video all add to permanent ego boosting. One of the things that stood out about Duke Nukem 3D was the interaction you had with objects in the environment. The way the ego is implemented in this game and how it tries to force the player to interact with objects to gain health increase is a neat way to promote all the amusing little things you can interact with throughout the game’s levels.

Duke Nukem as a character is still the action movie hero stereotype; thankfully he hasn’t moved on and still loves women, drinking beer, killing aliens and throwing out amusing one-liners. Jon St. John returns as the voice of Duke (would you really want anyone else?) and is spot on with his delivery of vulgar insults and movie/video game quotes. Duke made me laugh a few times as there are some genuine good gags. If you aren’t into a little immature adultery humour then this might not click with you. Also there are a lot of references in Duke Nukem Forever, some examples are Donkey Kong, Halo, Dead Space, and even Christian Bale’s rant on the set of Terminator Salvation gets a spoof in this.

“When the video game market is full of games where you have classes and pre-equipped weapons, it makes a nice change to play a multiplayer like this.”

Multiplayer is a run back to the days of games like Unreal Tournament, Quake and the like. There’s Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture the Babe and Hail to the King. All of these feature weapon pickups, power ups such as invincibility and double damage. Gameplay wise the multiplayer is very fast paced, it’s good fun and generally a laugh to play. When the video game market is full of games where you have classes and pre-equipped weapons, it makes a nice change to play a multiplayer like this.

But the fun can’t cover the troubled development cycle that Duke Nukem Forever had. It should be noted that I played through the PC version, which is the best version of the game to play as it doesn’t suffer from bad loading times, has solid frame rate and better textures. That said the game is a mix bag with looks. Sometimes it looks decent and other times it’s a bit plain, with models not exactly looking all that good. Also at one point I had to reload a save point because I was on part of a level where enemies were supposed to come attack Duke on drop ships, but never did, so I couldn’t progress.

Duke’s not going to be able to muscle his way through all the big named first-person shooters games on the market, but really this game’s audience is to people who played the original and have fond memories of that, and just want to revisit them without having to play Duke Nukem 3D. As a game, Duke Nukem Forever gets a lot of Duke right, but the crazy development time that became an industry joke, and the increased popularity that followed once it was finally coming overshadows what Duke Nukem Forever ends up being. It’s an old favourite hero coming into new times to give us a taste of what things used to be like, a throwback to the 90s. It’s not a great game, but it is a simpleminded dumb shooter that is enjoyable, was it really going to be anything else?