Balls of Fail

Oh noes, he lives!

The joke is over – 15 years in the making, Duke Nukem Forever has been released. I held little hope that the game would be any good after being in development hell for so long, but I bought the Balls of Steel Edition regardless – figuring that the collectibles would be a nice throwback to my childhood as well as simply being one of the better Collector's Editions I've seen for a game of late. (As an aside, what's with “Collector's Editions” that simply provide an extra weapon and a tin box? There's nothing to collect there!)

It is a functional game, with a beginning and an end. It didn't bug out on me, apart from one time the subtitles and all other on-screen text refused to show me the center of each letter, rendering it quite difficult to read. Annoying, but not game breaking – and all it took was a reload to fix (happily provided by a pipebomb to my face).

I Liked:

• One liners

Occasionally, when Duke does something interesting (like exploding a pigcop, or interacting with the environment) he will make a one liner. This attempts to bring some character into the game – and to a degree it succeeds. It works some of the time – for example, earlyish in the game there is a sequence where you are offered power armour by a soldier. The power armour is an exact replica of Master Chief's armour (of Halo fame). Duke responds with “Armour is for pussies”, which I found mildly amusing. The problem I find with these is that they are not frequent enough, they get old very quickly (particularly when the same five kill phrases are repeated ad nauseam). A little more variety in these would be great.

• Interaction with some world elements

There are some elements in the world you can interact with. I found this to be nice. For example, you can draw on the whiteboards which have battle plans (probably a bad idea since most people who buy this will just draw genitalia), you can eat the donuts, you can play the pinball machine, etc. This was kind of cool, particularly since you get rewarded for “performing Duke-like actions”, because apparently using the toilet is something that Duke Nukem would do, and others wouldn't (great logic there, 3D Realms). The problem here is that not enough of the world is interactable, so it becomes fairly obvious when an object you can interact with is placed. Compare this with HalfLife 2 – where almost anything is interactable due to the use of a proper physics engine. While not everything is interactable, it feels like the objects in DNF that you can do things with were placed there purely to give you something to do.

I hated:

• It's Halo All Over Again

While it makes fun of Master Chief's need to wear ridiculously heavy armour, the game actually takes a lot from Halo. Even though its on the Unreal Engine, it felt like I was playing the original Halo game again. Only being allowed to hold 2 weapons at a time is a limitation that should not apply to Duke Nukem – particularly since the game just prior allowed him to hold everything all at once. Not to mention the regenerative health/armour (creatively renamed Ego), the jump animation (or lack thereof), and the need to constantly flip your monster truck back over because it handles like shit (and the ability to simply flip the truck effortlessly). Which leads me to...

• The Goddamn Monster Truck Level

This level was terribly designed. It seemed like it was trying to do what HalfLife 2 did with the driving section. However, they couldn't think of anything interesting to do to make Duke stop, to break up the tedium of driving (and the truck doesn't have a gun). Their final solution? To make the vehicle constantly run out of fuel, so you're forced to get out of the car, walk down a hallway or two of death, get a fuel canister, then return to refuel and continue driving. Seriously. Why are they suddenly trying to make Duke realistic? THIS IS NOT RIGHT.

• As Linear as a Line

Normally, I don't have a problem with linear games. They give you a clear goal, occasionally hold some secrets, though also give you the illusion of freedom by scripting interesting events, or placing you in a city where things block your path but you can see beyond. Duke does this to a degree, though it also falls into the JRPG trapping of placing treasure at the end of very short alternate dead end paths. To compare apples to oranges, Final Fantasy 13 is one of the most linear games I've ever played (until you reach the late game, where you are suddenly given a lot of exploration space). Duke Nukem Forever is, to me, more linear than that. Think about that for a few minutes.

• Duke is Suddenly a Wuss

There is a cutscene where the President speaks to Duke through his BatCave like communications center. The President flat-out tells Duke to stay out of it, and that the aliens are there peacefully. This is after power has been shut down to multiple buildings – seemingly by the aliens. Duke remains silent.

There is a cutscene where the President screams at Duke for a few minutes over all the destruction caused during the alien invasion (the President blames Duke for it all). Duke remains silent. This isn't Duke Nukem!

Seeing a trend here? Duke does not speak when he should, and never says anything relevant to the plot – he speaks entirely in quips and one-liners. If your character is going to talk, they should not suddenly get silent when the plot is being moved forward.

• The Guns Feel Weak

The only gun which feels like it could kill anything is the shotgun. The railgun is also quite good, but the other guns feel like they're toys. I can't quite pick why, perhaps their firing sound isn't loud enough, perhaps there's not enough kickback (if any), but it feels like it's impossible to kill anything. Even the explosive weapons feel unsatisfying. The freeze ray is the most pathetically weak weapon I have seen – even though it was ridiculously cool back in Duke3D.

The crux of the problem with this game is outdated design wrapped in current tech, it seems. The game feels like its taken the worst of current games, wrapped it up with Duke's universe, and then been thrown against the wall a few times for good measure. While not completely a mess – I enjoyed the game for the first hour or two – it felt like a chore to finish – and that's exactly the opposite of what a game should be!

To sum it up – if you remove all references to Duke Nukem as a character or a universe from DNF, you get Halo 1. And this is a terrible thing.

I don't blame Gearbox – they just finished what 3D Realms started. The lack of fun in the new Duke Nukem rests entirely on 3D Realms' shoulders. There is hope left for a new Duke game to not suck – if Gearbox can do it right.