Duke Nukem Forever: The Demo (Review)

... what? Did you think I'd be gone forever? That's right, I'm back with another written review! When has it been? January when I wrote Kickassia and Splatterhouse? Earlier than that? Jesus. Well fret not any longer, because I come with really awesome news! The demo for Duke Nukem Forever has officially been released, and while many people are going to pass it by simply because Duke Nukem has become one of the biggest jokes in the gaming industry, the demo makes it appear as if the long-anticipated game isn't going to suck! But how can this be, say the average reader? It has been in development for 14 years, it has to suck in the end becase the bitterness in our shrivelled, blackened hearts demands that it has to! Well, truth be told, I am not one of those fans who have been waiting all of this time for Duke's latest venture, but I can comfortably say that I have been waiting for Duke Nukem Forever for a while, so when this demo came out today, I was thrilled! After playing it, I have reason to believe that the full game will be absolutely epic!

(And yes, I know everybody and their mother have been tackling the Duke Nukem Forever demo, but I'm not going to present a poor recording and talk over it, this is a legit review!... well, as legit as writing on a website can be, anyway.)

But before we begin, how would you get your hands on the demo for Duke Nukem Forever? Well, all you have to do is either purchase the Borderlands Game of the Year Edition, or preorder Duke Nukem Forever at your local Gamestop or other retail locations! How did I get a hold on the demo? I'm a lazy asshole and mooched off of my girlfriend, who willingly gave me the access code to become part of the Duke Nukem First Access Club! In addition to getting the demo, you also get a bunch of other freebies and benefits, such as a chance to win some cool stuff, concept art, MP3s, and desktops!


but that's enough whoring myself out.

With those who are unfamiliar with the character and concept of Duke Nukem and his video games, they are basically every teenager's wet-dream: excessive and ridiculous violence, titties everywhere, and lots of insane guns to choose from. The very basic appeal of the Duke Nukem franchise contains these elements, but what also makes the Dukeman's adventures stand out to gamers, especially those who have been waiting a very long time for this installment in his misadventures, is the humor. The Duke Nukem brand of humor involves something extremely close to Conker's Bad Fur Day, aka potty humor and making fun of the latest movies, games, and newsworthy events at the time, but with a massively amped up dose of testosterone thrown in. For example, I read in a magazine article that while they were in development, Duke Nukem Forever once had Duke's own strip club be called "The Slick Willy," in reference to our past president Bill Clinton (and if you don't know why he's called that, go read a damn book, I'm not your history teacher!). Duke Nukem Forever is basically the latest in a long line of psychotic fun shooters, and it is a great example of what extreme escapism can be in video games. Thus, this is the appeal Duke Nukem Forever has for me: it helps me escape my pathetic, sad life by providing some hilarious humor and some ridiculously awesome gameplay!



Gameplay

In Duke Nukem Forever, there are several elements that makes the gameplay different from other first person shooters I have played over the years. Some of these elements may be relatively unimportant, but they are still cool to bring up because they work in making the game somewhat unique! Before we get to the smaller tidbits though, you probably want to know if Duke Nukem Forever is worth playing!

In the demo, Duke Nukem Forever presents three elements of gameplay to us: first, they show us the interactivity of Duke's world, and all of the different things you can play with. This is in the introductory scene of the game where Duke is pissing into a urinal. From there, the player can muck around and do different things like draw on a whiteboard, sip from a water fountain, and take a turd out of the toilet and throw it at different things. I know I said I would discuss the less important elements of the Duke Nukem Forever Demo gameplay later, but this is the first thing that the player is introduced to in the demo so I felt it necessary to talk about the game's interactivity first and foremost. Really, I find this important because it injects some immersion into the gameplay, and it makes you feel not that you're playing as a flying camera with a gun, but AS Duke Nukem. A game is more realistic, and hopefully fun, if it feels like you're apart of the environment and you can interact with different items as well as additional characters.



The second, more important, element introduced in the Duke Nukem Forever demo is the motherfuckin' gunplay! This is the heart of the Duke Nukem franchise, and it has been an active part of the Dukester's repetoire since his very first game! In Duke Nukem Forever, not only are firefights fun, but they also come with a variety of things that make it a hell of a blast! Particularly guns. Holy shit are there a lot of guns. While you are introduced to the very powerful Devastator, which basically means you fire two rockets into whatever unfortunate son of a bitch is in your way, the second part of the demo introduces you to a much larger arsenal to devastate your enemies with: the boomstick is very self explanatory (but DAMN is it satisfying to use), the Railgun is a sniper rifle that will cause enemy bodyparts and heads to explode, the Shrink Ray can make even the most terrifying aliens non-threatening before you smash them into the dust with your size-13 boot, and Duke's Mighty Foot, where you literally kick some alien ass (Sorry Bulletstorm, Duke Nukem 3D did it first). That is obviously not the full list of weapons introduced in the demo since I don't want to spoil everything for you, and there are other deadly gadgets just waiting for a dude with an itchy trigger finger to take them for a spin.



However, there is a complaint going around the internet about the demo in which gamers are disappointed, or feel betrayed, with Gearbox's choice to go with Duke only being able to hold two weapons at once instead of being able to take his entire arsenal with him ala Duke Nukem 3D (or other psychotic shooters from back in the day, like Doom). Now, this won't be so much a critical point in this review as an interesting discussion point for me, as I know that the whole 'realism' in shooters was started by Halo. While it is annoying to some that Duke has to carry two guns instead of the entire arsenal, people have to keep in mind that there are different strokes for different folks: some like their FPS games 'realistic' in that sense, and some like them without the realism that they feel holds a great shooter back. This isn't going to be reflected in the final score for this review because honestly, this complaint comes off more as a player's preference than a programmer's fuck-up, and overall people really shouldn't look down at a game because it has either the realistic element of only being able to hold two weapons at once, or the crazy, oldschool element of being able to hold the entire arsenal or moving at the speed of a jet.



The third gameplay mechanic that Duke Nukem Forever's demo introduced us to is that of driving. The driving section itself has pros and cons, as the driving controls are slightly sensitive when you first jump behind the wheel of Duke's monster truck. Thankfully, what Gearbox did was give us the option of pressing the B button, which helps to control the vehicle by lessening the steering's sensibility so you won't have as hard a time with the controls. I guess they did this so people can have control when they want it, but adrenaline-pumping action when they don't! I can't say too much about the driving features just yet because it didn't take up too much time in the demo.



Presentation/Graphics

I'm grouping presentation and graphics into one section because the demo was short and sweet, so I may not have a lot to say if I split them into their own independent sections. With that said, I have some very positive things to say about the overall presentation of Duke Nukem Forever because it retained its sense of humor from the early games, so it stays true to the previous entries in the franchise. Gearbox and 2K put a lot of love and care into this game, from what I can see from the demo so far, and it is in the hilarious elements presented to the player in this demo that immediately let them know that Gearbox president Randy Pitchford wasn't just blowing smoke when he said that fans of the franchise put some much-needed tender loving care into this troubled game. Some of the hilarious elements of Duke Nukem Forever that we can catch a glimpse of in the demo include:

a) Duke's health gauge is very appropriately called his "Ego"

b) There is a power up that is literally a can of beer. Once you take a chug, the screen tells you that Beer makes you tougher.

c) There are some oh-so helpful 'tips' you usually get bombarded with on the loading screen: "When enemies fire at you, try not to get hit by bullets." "Run away from explosions, especially your own." "To not die, try to get hurt less."

This is a very funny game, although a lot of it is toilet or sexual humor (in classic Duke Nukem style), so if you're looking for sophisticated, witty, philosophical humor, why the hell are you playing Duke Nukem Forever and not justifying a pretentiously artsy existence by wanking over equally pretentious, artsty movies or games, you horrible person? Anyway, just from playing the demo, one can definitely see that the game designers at Gearbox definitely stuck to the original vision of 3DRealms by staying true to Duke's less-than-humble roots.



As for the graphics, they are absolutely beautiful to look at! This is a beautiful game, and Gearbox really pushed the limits on what the graphical engine for Duke Nukem Forever can do! From the very get-go, the environments and characters are all very detailed and wonderfully rendered, such as the terrifyingly huge first boss, the different effects in the game are breathtaking to look at, such as rain hitting your face as you stare down some butt-ugly alien invaders, and the rendering and textures are very detailed, the environments looking incredibly realistic! One minor hiccup that I frankly don't give a rat's ass about is that sometimes, the textures aren't rendered on the mountains in the second half of the demo, but this only happens for a brief second before they render themselves to look like the rest of the environment. This is something that will most likely be tidied up before Duke Nukem Forever is set to launch in two weeks!



Sound
Just like when I reviewed Splatterhouse earlier this year, one of the defining features of Duke Nukem Forever is its killer soundtrack, the famous Grabbag Theme launching us right into the chaos as we are accompanied by some pretty badass metal when we shoot the shit out of alien invaders! Obviously there wasn't enough demo to determine if the soundtrack was solid all the way through Duke Nukem Forever, but in the demo, it was pretty rad! As for the voice acting, Duke Nukem, in traditional style, comes with his own quips and famous one-liners that he says occassionally in battle. There was a large variety of them, and they did not get tiring! Again, the demo was too short for me to determine if this will be consistent in the full game, but my judgment for the demo is that the voice acting was really good, especially considering that they got voice actor Jon St. John to reprise his role from Duke Nukem 3D, his most memorable video game voice acting role! That's what I call commitment, Gearbox!


The man himself, Jon St. John!

Verdict:

Presentation: 9
Gearbox stays very true to the Duke Nukem franchise, and Duke Nukem Forever proves this by retaining the Dukester's trademark humor and tone.

Graphics: 9
The graphics are very beautiful, and aside from some very minor rendering glitches, Duke Nukem Forever's graphics are pretty damn impressive!

Sound: 9
With the demo, I can't make a solid verdict on the soundtrack and voice acting of Jon St. John as Duke Nukem, but from what we have, they both prove to kick ass!

Gameplay: 10
Extremely solid! Although the driving sections may feel a little slippery, gunplay is very fun, and you have a very diverse array of weaponry in which to slay your opponents with! The game is also very immersive!

Overall: 9.5
Overall, the demo for Duke Nukem Forever blew my expectations out of the water, so I am definitely buying the full title when it comes out in two weeks!

"You have to remember that almost everything in a Duke Nukem game is interactive and there has said to be around 300 easter eggs or something ridiculous like that. But of course IGN will play this game on the easiest difficulty, run through the game never stopping to take everything in, then slap a 6.0 on it because you can't 'Aim down the sights'." I'm calling this will happen, too. Thankfully, we at CCS don't rush through the games and actually spend the time necessary to see if a game is worth playing!

I'd say it's safe to tell you to go ahead and get this review set up in the editor. I may need to reread it for grammar and spelling or whatever, but the flow is good and your points are brought across pretty well.

A general comment is that I would probably use larger images (900px wide-ish) without the IGN watermarks if you can. Big images are easily found in Google Images.

Also, there's a lot of youtube vids. I can see using one or two, but any more would be too much I think. The majority of your review honestly doesn't need most of them because you already make a convincing case why people need to play Duke Nukem Forever, and adding a lot of youtube videos is almost like saying "watch the videos because they say it better than I do."

Gunna add a little bit about the option of carrying only two weapons, because seeing all of the people on BT complain about it is annoying the hell out of me. Isn't that what other popular FPS games do, like CoD or the Halo series? Why aren't people bashing down their doors about that?

@KennyFarino
As far detached from the Video Game Industry as I am, I can sort of understand their discontent. See, most people are expecting Duke Nukem Forever to return the era of fun shooters (e.g. the original Doom games, Painkillers, Serious Sam) - games in which you could carry a shitload of guns, move faster than an F1 race car and etc. and etc. So -- once again, only my guess -- I reckon some people just perceive such an option as a, I dunno, betrayal or even selling-out of sorts...

I'm not saying you're wrong or anything, just keep in mind that the others also have at least some logic behind their complaints when you write the addendum

A very good point made! (i wasn't clear-headed when I made that observation, I'm still on vicodin from surgery ). The people complaining rarely made the justification, so I didn't see your logic behind it. All I saw was "whine whine whine."

Also, something I found out was that this is in fact an old demo from Pax about 6-9 months ago, which means that the Gearbox crew had all of that time to tighten up the game - any of the complaints that people have about the game may be gone!

I'm afraid that I have to side with the BT community in regards to the two gun limitations that seems to be prevalent in newer shooter games. One of the very last shooters that I enjoyed was Doom 3 and had there been a meager 2 weapon maximum it would have severely hindered the game as well as thrill of collecting diverse weaponry to use as you please. It's a shame that a famous shooter game that pushed the boundaries of 'extreme' is now conforming to such needless limitations.

While informative, I noticed that there is little mention of what compels you this 20 year old franchise. What was it that made you anticipate this game enough to preorder if you are potentially too young to have played the previous games? Why should other relatively young gamers consider reinvesting in a series that so few have been exposed to? Perhaps what I am trying to understand is if this is a review to explain as to why one should consider purchasing the full game, then where is the call to action? Who should play Duke Nukem and why?


Perhaps you shouldn't 'date' this review being that 'today' is now 'yesterday'.

Thanks for catchin' me on all of that, Dave! I'll have it fixed in a jiffy, and you'll see why I'd want to buy it in the review itself!

Thanks for catchin' me on all of that, Dave! I'll have it fixed in a jiffy, and you'll see why I'd want to buy it in the review itself!