Welcome Back Duke?

What I am is What I am...

The Duke of old had a very firm connection to the cultural view of his time, so that the things he said and the one-liners he spouted not only were familiar but they were funny coming from him. There was a measure of honesty in the game play mechanics that focused strongly upon shooting, and it was in almost every respect a situation in which what you saw was what you got. It is on all of those points that the new game fails -- and fails miserably -- with such a wide disconnect that unless you are a senior gamer with, say, 20 years or more of gaming experience, none of what he says will make much sense to you.

But once we move beyond that failing, and once we actually begin to embrace the imperfect game play, it starts to smooth out and become a bit more predictable and less imperfect. Based upon most of the comments that appear in the reviews that slay the game, it is pretty obvious that the disconnect between the old Duke and this new one was simply too broad for the reviewers to bridge that gap and try to accept the game on its own merits. Harsh words? Maybe.

Duke Nukem Forever is not a game that is going to please everyone -- it is in fact one of those games that you will either love or hate with no middle ground. But when you approach it with a willingness to accept it for what it is, you will find that it is a much more enjoyable game play experience.

Fans may not have been expecting so much platforming -- and clearly that was a failed attempt by the developer to make Duke relevant to modern gaming -- but the shooting sequences in between the platforming and the monster truck driving are pure Duke Nukem! They deliver exactly the sort of Duke-centric fun on an visceral level that requires only the reptile brain to be engaged.

If the entire game had been coded on that frequency it is highly doubtful that the reviewers would have been so harsh, but how is it that they largely failed to see past the annoying bits to the good buried within?

It is clear after playing the game that the developers were trying to be cute -- too cute as it turns out -- by filling the long and slow sections between the good stuff with rips on iconic shooters that came after (in many cases long after) the original Duke Nukem series -- the cheap shot that they took at the Halo games was a very obvious burn. Pay attention to what you are being made to do and you will clearly see mechanics and elements from many of the games that owe Duke Nukem for establishing that genre way back when. If they had been just a little more clever and a little more creative with that thread in the game, it just might have been one of the golden aspects of it.

In the End

Love it, hate it, tolerate it; in the end after all of the vitriol has cooled what we are left with is the simple and basic opportunity to once again play as The Duke. If that is enough -- and if you are willing to view the awkward and sometimes buggy bits that separate the fun shooting bits as the price you must pay in the game to be The Duke -- then the only conclusion that we can draw is that it is not a bad game after all.

What is more important however is this: Duke Nukem Forever will likely not be the final chapter in his story -- and if that is the case, the next game in the series will look very good compared to this one.