Duke Nukem Forever

At the time this game came out it was judged by the contemporary standard of gaming.

Now that we have seen where games have gone, this is nothing but a breath of fresh air and nostalgia for times long gone.

HAIL TO THE KING!!!!

FIRST OFF: Yes, get the game, but NO don't play it how it is. As it comes, the game is not good and definitely was a disappointment. What you will want to do is go to NexusMods and get a mod called Duke Nukem Forever Enhanced. This makes it play like it should have.
Pros:
Duke one liners and gorey nonsense. The level design is actually clever at times, especially at Duke Burger. The levels when you are shrunk are actually quite fun. Also, the holoduke is useful now. I swear that thing never helped me in the original game. The story is simple but effective for this goofy game. The voice acting isn't bad.
There is a surprising amount of environmental story telling and physics based puzzles. Technically there is no traditional save system which is a con but the pro part of it, there is an quicksave feature (not sure if part of base game or was added with the mod) so you can still save scum to your heart's content.
Cons:
The sound effects are bad which is a huge buzzkill since that is arguably the most important part to me aside from the gameplay itself. The weapons and explosions sound weak for the most part. The game is rather short and the ending felt anti-climactic. Duke even makes a joke about it as it happens...
Character movement isn't great. The base game is too slow and the mod I mentioned above improves that greatly but it still feels clunky, especially when jumping. So the numerous platforming segments are rather annoying.
If you install the mod I mentioned above, the game will technically run outside of Steam meaning you won't get Steam to clock time. If the game has achievements then they won't work but I don't know if it does and I don't care because I don't achievement hunt. There is a way to force Steam to get it to still clock time but I didn't bother.
Overall - The game is like Half Life 2 and Postal 2 had a baby and that mutant baby grew into this. You get a Half Life 2 style action adventure but with the ridiculous absurdity that you would expect from Postal 2.
Hail to the King, baby!

I don't understand the hate that this game got when it was first released.
I played and finished it for the first time in 2024 and it was actually pretty decent! Graphics are decent for the time, gameplay is not too bad. (its actually a bit similar to Half Life 2 in a sense)
It's a bit silly and over the top at times but it's just an entertaining game. Very refreshing if you're sick of the politically correct world that we live in now.

Yeah, this game is no where near as good as Duke Nukem 3D, but I don't think it's as bad as everyone says it is. Outside of the dated graphics and humor, the game is alright. There's still a lot of environmental interactivity, you can increase your health in various ways, and many Duke 3D enemies and weapons return. The shooting is actually kinda fun, I liked weapons like the shotgun and the shrinker, many Duke 3D enemies like the Assault Troopers, Octabrains and Pigcops return with many of them being not changed that much, and I think most of them are satisfying to kill. The game often has puzzles and driving sections that serve as distractions from the combat and I didn't care much for them. Boss fights suck since the bosses can easily kill you and there's no checkpoints between boss phases. So you fought the final boss and you die in the last phase? Too bad, you are sent to the beginning of the fight.
Duke Nukem Forever is not really a bad game imo, just alright. The combat is actually fun and the minigames are fun especially if you play them to get health boosts. But then the bad boss fights, the sections that distract you from the combat and other things bog the experience down.
7/10

Maybe my misogynistic male mind can't comprehend what's so bad or problematic about Duke Nukem Forever. I just found it funny. Nobody seems to be happy with this game, neither the boomers who wanted a shooter nor the essayists for whom Duke isn't queer-coded enough. Seeing Duke discussed as a serious character is an undelivered joke in itself. Mate, he's named Duke Nukem.
This game, being a repository of dead memes, probably came out a decade too soon (yes, even after all that time). In 2011 the way Duke responded to the Holsom twins' fate made him a psychopath; today it would make him a sigma male. The satirical elements are ready to catch on now in a way that even the people who wrote them didn't intend.
There are major flaws. My main complaints are that the gunplay is de-emphasized in favour of platforming and puzzles I don't gib a hecc about, and that the game is slightly too long for my zoomer attention span. The textures are very muddy and focusing makes everything super blurry (my headcanon is that Duke is developing myopia, as this romanticizes him greatly - fighting to save the world despite his failing vision). On the plus side, the game is crammed full of detail and variety.
I thought this game was a bit of all right. It has the three basic virtues of heavy metal, hot chicks and manly fighting. I don't see where the obsessive hate for it comes from, but then again I was born after Duke 3D and got on with my life, instead of apparently spending every day waiting at 3D Realms' door like the dads for whom this game was the ultimate betrayal.
Don't cry because it's joever, Dukesisters, smile because it was barack.

It's better to have shit in your hand than a crane in the sky.
A childhood game, bought out of respect

I hate to say it but we really, really do need a modern remake of duke nukem forever, all the ingredients of what people want in an absurd hypermasculine protagnost are all there!