HAIL TO THE KING, BABY!!!! It is I, the great Ouroburos, coming to you with another spankin' VG Review! Tonight, we have Duke Nukem Forever for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Microsoft Windows (or, uh... PC). I know what we're aaaaaalll thinking here when I said I was gonna review DNF, since this game really didn't get much good reception, and it was notorious for staying in development hell for 15 years... FUCK YOU, GAME DEVELOPERS!! But now I'll share you something for trivia: I rarely knew anything about Duke Nukem as a kid, because there was sooooo much controversy and background surrounding the main character and his own games, and I wanted to never know them... Ouch! But when I researched on sources such as Wikipedia and all that shit, my mind was.... raped, full of amazing ideals. Okay, so Duke Nukem Forever was released June 10, 2011 in Europe and Australia, and later June 14 over to the US, as another First-person shooter... {sighs} La-di fuckin' da! When it comes to first-person shooters, I always hated them due to a lack of originality and not much to work with... In fact, the only games I can think of staying on track with is Goldeneye 007 for the Nintendo 64 and Star Wars Battlefront 2 (was that even an FPS to begin with?!) for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox. This very same problem is what I have with sports/racing games, even if it's the Mario Kart or Twisted Metal series... And I love those just the same! Why did our world have to become so retarded and unforgiving!?!? But I'm getting off track here and not really reviewing DNF, aren't I? Well, let's actually begin here...
The plot of DNF takes place twelve--- FUCKING!--- years after the events of its predecessor, Duke Nukem 3D, which caused a lot of controversy in the past, but fans label it as "the best entry of the franchise, yet". I honestly think the storyline here is just absolute mindrape! Duke becomes a worldwide icon, arrives on a talk show broadcast for an interview, the interview is cancelled because of the alien invasion, the aliens have impregnated the women folk with alien spawn to the point of Duke's girlfriends dying after giving "birth" to the alien babies, and to conclude it all off, Duke Nukem runs to be the 69th President of the United States... You have to be kidding me!! But then this can all be defended by the humor and nostalgic value DNF has to offer...
Like in Duke Nukem 3D and other previous titles, Jon St. John reprises his role as the main hero for DNF, and once again does an extremely great job! The one-liners are just spot-on, and if you guys don't agree, then okay, that's your damn opinion... I really shouldn't even care! This installment in the series did a great job at improving the humor, and fans and critics aren't even taking the character's role as a joke... They're blind retards who would play a game of Call of Duty: Black Ops over Donkey Kong Country! Forget this even happened to begin with, since the creators made Duke as a rip-off action hero who steals famous (or, infamous) one-liners, takes the most bizarre risks, and acts all macho... The developers were smart, here, at least in my opinion...
The few things that irks me in Duke Nukem Forever are nothing truly special, but it could've been improved considering the time it took to make: the clunky controls are not refined, DNF is overly dated, the level designs were never all that inspiring to begin with, and furthermore, the loading times are outright retarded... And there's a small trivial fact you might need to hear: loading times in video games aren't so essential, considering they normally take about a portion of only about thirty seconds to finish... But when it comes to games like Sonic 06 and this, what were the people smoking???
Besides all of this, the last thing I will note is the comparisons between the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC ports of DNF... Despite it being thrown together as a "shitty, closed-in FPS", there have been some differences between versions, with the Microsoft Windows being arguably the strongest... If you wanna call it that, anyway. The console ports of PS3 and Xbox 360 will rather make you hurl of how worse it is when it comes to conclusion... 'Nuff said.
But overall, is Duke Nukem Forever truly a bad game? While it isn't what you'd expect, I can't say it's really terrible, being that I've never played this game before. Nostalgia and humor values save this long-awaited entry, but the level designs, development time, and overall shooting mechanics kinda blow it down a few notches... This also had a few delays, which pissed fans off, I believe! But I'll stop it short and sweet here and give Duke Nukem Forever a decent score of 5.5 out of 10. As I quote: "IT'S TIME TO KICK ASS AND CHEW BUBBLEGUM... AND I'M ALL OUT OF GUM!"
Final Verdict[]
Pros[]
- Amazing and unique humor for such an outdated title!
- Jon St. John as always... Need I say more?
- For fans, the nostalgic value can catch you on surpirse!
- The storyline, while bizarre and disturbing, is still a bit of an eyecatcher for me...
Cons[]
- DNF is like every other generic first-person shooter in the world... {sighs}
- The overall level design is pretty boring to look at!
- Load times are atrocious, but if you look at the PC port, it's almost as if they're all short and sweet... WTF???
- The development time could've been worth it if Duke Nukem Forever didn't turn out to be... {shivers} Like it already is, now.