Duke Nukem Forever for PlayStation 3 Reviews by Gamers

Duke Nukem was an iconic videogame character once upon a time. He set the stage for every wise-cracking, babe chasing, gun loving hero that followed him over the past fifteen years. And for that long, fans have awaited the Duke's return. After spending some time with this game, i can say they're still waiting. This game is mediocre to average in every sense of the word. Graphics are okay but nothing stellar. The game controls work for the most part, though to pick things up you need to be precise as to where you place the cursor. Enemy AI is generally pretty dumb. The voice acting is nothing special, and the dialogue often sounds like it was written by a 12 year old. There's also during cutscenes where the characters speak, yet their mouth never moves. When the mouth does move, its often badly out of sync. This may have been forgiveable 15 years ago, but not with the current generation of consoles. The story line is the same old, same old (alien bad guys invade, Duke must stop them). This could be forgiven if the game was fun to play. It's really not. In fact, it's so ordinary as to be, dare I say it, boring. This is a game for diehard Duke fans only, and even they should just rent it. There's just too many far better games to spend both your time and money on.

I will split this review into the three gameplay styles of Duke Nukem Forever: Shooting, Driving, and Platforming.

I would be remiss if I did not point out that I have not played any of the proceeding titles in the series; therefore, my expectations were a bit too high. Time to castigate.

The gunplay is, at times, minimumly entertaining. Due to its repetitiveness and, as with most modern FPS games, constant supply of the same five or six enemies, the experience quickly grows dull and monotonous. Weapon variety is a lackluster collection of generic weapons from games of the same genre; along with a ragtag menagerie of the weapons the alien scourge drops once each wave is dispatched.

There are only two main driving sequences in the game. These help the linear progression of the game by getting Duke from point A to point B with multiple unnecessary stops in among to refuel his truck. The petroleum adventures take place in mundane environments that each have the originality of the next milkshake ordered by a Dairy Queen addict who's daily meal can be described wit the words "the usual." With this being said, these areas serve their points in the story with as much grace and control as an oil slick on a melting iceberg. That is all.

The platforming sections do just as platforming sections are supposed to do. Jump here, pull this, open that. However, these moments of lever and button interactions are done fully in first-person. This one elemental change to the platforming formula is not a good addition, or subtraction depending on your point of view (no pun intended.) Jumps are difficult to judge and getting hanged up while looking for the correct path is simpler than preparing instant noodles in a Easy Bake Oven.

My final thoughts:
Is Duke Nukem Forever a good game? Momentarily.
Do I recommend it? No.
Can I sum this up in large words? Certainly. Duke himself is loquacious, the experience is lugubrious, and development, all twelve years, were extemporaneous.