My personal review on Duke Nukem Forever. Hey, Steam told me to update it so here we go

🔵 Pros

+ Duke Nukem
+ Return of Duke's iconic arsenal and his voice actor
+ Pacing and story telling is identical to the Half-Life series
+ Variety
+ Women

🔴 Cons

- Outdated graphics
- 70% (or less) of the actual DNF 2009 we could've gotten before 3DR's financial crisis

When you search "developmental hell" on Google, the first thing you'll see is Duke Nukem (no joke you should try it lol). A sequel to the cult classic Duke Nukem 3D, Duke Nukem Forever, was in development hell for 14 years: from 1997 to its release date in 2011. The main reason for this development hell was the owners of Duke Nukem Forever felt that the game on their hands was not good enough, so they kept adding, changing and delaying the game to the point that they ran out of money which ultimately led to their bankrupcy. In 2009, the rights to the Duke Nukem franchise were sold to Gearbox Software, who eventually completed the game and released it in 2011.


🎮 Gameplay

Duke Nukem is a first person shooter that borrows a lot of the pacing and story telling of Half-life and gunplay of modern shooters. The game alternates between in "survive the ambush", puzzles/platforming, driving, and boss fights much like Half-life. The two weapon limit, regenerating health and sprinting is borrowed from modern shooters. Later, Gearbox decided to enable the four weapon limit but I found that the original two weapon system worked better; it had me running out of ammo and struggling to find another weapon on the floor, which brings some excitement. Most bosses have to be taken down by explosives and turrets, yet you can take out a regular sized enemy when you're a little Duke with a normal weapon. No mighty boot, but you can smack your enemies with your gun with the melee key.

🤝 Multiplayer and Community

My Community guide for Duke Nukem Forever Multiplayer

The game still has people playing regularly to this day. Steam charts report ~30 people that still play. However, community is so sensitive to "good players" that they just accuse everyone of being hackers. This game does have a pretty cruel history on hackers. Hacks like the ripper hacks and speed hack were dominating the multiplayer in the past and with no real support there's nothing people can do expect live with the agony. Now to this day, the hackers seemed to have died out. Literally in the case of Grumpy, the most notorious hacker in the game died of cancer a few years back. You might see people play with the tag "GBF" beside their names, which stands for Grumpy's Best Friend to pay respect to him. Now the community still has some smack talk but not as toxic as what it once was because the 'real' hackers had left the scene

A level system is in the game, where you gain experience from killing opponents, complete challenges to unlock different clothing for your Duke and items your Digs. Customize Duke to your unique choosing and have him wear a Jester's hat with 3D glasses and a nice skull shirt. Leveling also unlock babes in your dig which you could talk to, and have an amusing conversation. Challenges are fastest ways to level up, stuff like "Kill X amounts of players with Y gun" or " Run X miles."

📖 Story

Aside from having his long-awaited sequel turning out like this, the events of this game would've been Duke's darkest hour had DNF been any other game. The aliens came back hungry for revenge, destroyed everything the protagonist built for the past 12 years in a matter of hours (Lady Killer, Duke Dome, Duke Burger), killed everyone he cared about (the Holsom twins, at least), being unable to save almost everyone he encounters ("Not even I can save you now" in The Hive, among many others) even though they all depended on him to protect them and believed he could do anything, getting knocked out all the damn time, and the President blaming him for the alien attack so logically speaking, the people who lost their family members to Pregnators/Pigcops would be angry at him for letting all this happen.

But since this is Duke Nukem, everyone is happy that he kicked the aliens' asses again and cheered for Duke(inator) to be President. I know he's a badass and all and these things don't bother him, but his adventures turned from happy-family-friendly to bloody-ultra-violent real fast between DN2 and DN3D. Now I wonder if he steals one-liners and has women between his arms and legs every night is because he wants to hide his pain (of that, as well as not getting any good games since Manhattan Project).

💰 Content & Pricing

Priced at $20 as base tag, and takes around 8-9 hours to finish the first playthrough. A completionist will take around 20 hours to complete. The game includes two dlcs $10 each. One is a set of 4 new multiplayer maps, paradying other game maps; namely Call of Duty, Doom, Team Fortress and Sandbox. The other one is a 3 hour singeplayer campaign featuring a more mature character of Duke Nukem and couple new weapons. It also comes with 4 new multiplayer maps and game modes. On sale, the main game plus dlcs can go as low as $7. What a bargain!

My personal review on Duke Nukem Forever. Hey, Steam told me to update it so here we go 🔵 Pros + Duke Nukem + Return of Duke's iconic arsenal and his voice actor + Pacing and story telling is identical to the Half-Life series + Variety + Women 🔴 Cons - Outdated graphics - 70% (or less) of the actual DNF 2009 we could've gotten before 3DR's financial crisis When you search "developmental hell" on Google, the first thing you'll see is Duke Nukem (no joke you should try it lol). A sequel to the cult classic Duke Nukem 3D, Duke Nukem Forever, was in development hell for 14 years: from 1997 to its release date in 2011. The main reason for this development hell was the owners of Duke Nukem Forever felt that the game on their hands was not good enough, so they kept adding, changing and delaying the game to the point that they ran out of money which ultimately led to their bankrupcy. In 2009, the rights to the Duke Nukem franchise were sold to Gearbox Software, who eventually completed the game and released it in 2011. 🎮 Gameplay Duke Nukem is a first person shooter that borrows a lot of the pacing and story telling of Half-life and gunplay of modern shooters. The game alternates between in "survive the ambush", puzzles/platforming, driving, and boss fights much like Half-life. The two weapon limit, regenerating health and sprinting is borrowed from modern shooters. Later, Gearbox decided to enable the four weapon limit but I found that the original two weapon system worked better; it had me running out of ammo and struggling to find another weapon on the floor, which brings some excitement. Most bosses have to be taken down by explosives and turrets, yet you can take out a regular sized enemy when you're a little Duke with a normal weapon. No mighty boot, but you can smack your enemies with your gun with the melee key. 🤝 Multiplayer and Community My Community [url=https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=849743624] guide [/url] for Duke Nukem Forever Multiplayer The game still has people playing regularly to this day. Steam charts report ~30 people that still play. However, community is so sensitive to "good players" that they just accuse everyone of being hackers. This game does have a pretty cruel history on hackers. Hacks like the ripper hacks and speed hack were dominating the multiplayer in the past and with no real support there's nothing people can do expect live with the agony. Now to this day, the hackers seemed to have died out. Literally in the case of Grumpy, the most notorious hacker in the game died of cancer a few years back. You might see people play with the tag "GBF" beside their names, which stands for Grumpy's Best Friend to pay respect to him. Now the community still has some smack talk but not as toxic as what it once was because the 'real' hackers had left the scene A level system is in the game, where you gain experience from killing opponents, complete challenges to unlock different clothing for your Duke and items your Digs. Customize Duke to your unique choosing and have him wear a Jester's hat with 3D glasses and a nice skull shirt. Leveling also unlock babes in your dig which you could talk to, and have an amusing conversation. Challenges are fastest ways to level up, stuff like "Kill X amounts of players with Y gun" or " Run X miles." 📖 Story Aside from having his long-awaited sequel turning out like this, the events of this game would've been Duke's darkest hour had DNF been any other game. The aliens came back hungry for revenge, destroyed everything the protagonist built for the past 12 years in a matter of hours (Lady Killer, Duke Dome, Duke Burger), killed everyone he cared about (the Holsom twins, at least), being unable to save almost everyone he encounters ("Not even I can save you now" in The Hive, among many others) even though they all depended on him to protect them and believed he could do anything, getting knocked out all the damn time, and the President blaming him for the alien attack so logically speaking, the people who lost their family members to Pregnators/Pigcops would be angry at him for letting all this happen. But since this is Duke Nukem, everyone is happy that he kicked the aliens' asses again and cheered for Duke(inator) to be President. I know he's a badass and all and these things don't bother him, but his adventures turned from happy-family-friendly to bloody-ultra-violent real fast between DN2 and DN3D. Now I wonder if he steals one-liners and has women between his arms and legs every night is because he wants to hide his pain (of that, as well as not getting any good games since Manhattan Project). 💰 Content & Pricing Priced at $20 as base tag, and takes around 8-9 hours to finish the first playthrough. A completionist will take around 20 hours to complete. The game includes two dlcs $10 each. One is a set of 4 new multiplayer maps, paradying other game maps; namely Call of Duty, Doom, Team Fortress and Sandbox. The other one is a 3 hour singeplayer campaign featuring a more mature character of Duke Nukem and couple new weapons. It also comes with 4 new multiplayer maps and game modes. On sale, the main game plus dlcs can go as low as $7. What a bargain!