Pajiba

Don’t jump to conclusions, Steve, he has got those balls of steel after all. This may yet surprise us all.

Plus if Ebert had played Duke Nukem back in the day he wouldn’t have the chip on his shoulder that he does now.

Unfortunately, it looks like the developers were so involved with this project that a myriad of gaming developments totally passed them by. In addition, I'll believe it when I see it.

Any game that's been in development this long just cant be good. Look at Daikatana, for example.

It does look like crap. It's too bad. I finalyl got around to playing "Dead Red Redemption" last night and, so far, it's been more compelling than most westerns. And, as TK mentioned, "Mass Effect 2" was brilliant. Definitely my favorite game of last year.

Unfortunately, this feels a lot like the video game version of "The Chinese Democracy" -- where the wait has elevated the status of the material beyond what it would have been had it come out in a normal timeframe.

And I remember playing Duke Nukem on PC back in my college days. Yes, it was a Doom/Quake ripoff. Yes, it was juvenile. That's what made it fun. It was riffing on the over-the-top action movies of the 80s and 90s (primarily Ahnold's oeuvre). But like the material it was making fun of, Duke Nukem is a dinosaur of an earlier time. It doesn't make sense in our world.

Okay... I don't think you understand this. When you do revisions in writing, you remove small portions of the piece and you rewrite it and the overall piece is improved.

When you revise a game, you pretty much delete the original and rewrite the whole thing. The problem with the Duke Nukem team was that they wanted to be at the top of the industry, so whenever they saw a shinier and newer game, they said, "Oh no! That game looks better than ours. We have to start over again", hence, why they never finished.

This game is only getting released because the original team ran out of money and got fired. 3D Realms got sued by the publisher and eventually gave it over to Gearbox (Half-Life, Portals, Borderlands) to finish.

Vi, just a quick little correction: Gearbox is responsible for two Half Life expansions and Borderlands. Valve made Half Life proper and Portal.

Is it just me or does Duke look like the lovechild of Max Headroom and Bruce Willis?

Holy balls, he totally does. That's just friggin' eerie.

Oh God, now I just pictured that and I think I broke something in my head.

I was far less than fond of Duke Nukem [any version] in the days when it was popular. I won't call it a bad game, nor will I insult it. I will simply say that I preferred to play DOOM and Quake. When my friends switched to Duke I wasn't particularly interested and didn't enjoy the game. Consequently I have had no interest in the release of Forever, other than to get a good laugh out of its annual "Vaporware Award".

That is - until Gearbox cancelled additional DLC for Borderlands and indefinitely postponed its sequel in favor of finishing this project. At least the Forever release is soon enough that it won't be a long wait for Gearbox to return to something more relevant in today's gaming environment.

To those of you excited about the game: Hey, I hope you enjoy it and it doesn't suck.

Don't care at all about it not meeting any ridiculously overblown expectations some people might have.

All it has to do is offer up an entertaining slice of mayhem in the boots of the ol' wrecking machine himself and I'll be happy.

Always had a blast playing Duke, and I've waited far too long for this.

I shall have a blast once more!

Just to clarify slightly. I'm not terribly critical of the visuals, other than it being an easy throw away rip on the game. Lord knows that graphics don't make the game, and I certainly understand that switching graphic engines over and over again meets rewriting much of the game from scratch over and over again. Though I will protest that if there was any actual content to the game (story, dialogue, etc.) that wouldn't need tossed out with the bathwater. And I get that Duke was just juvenile fun in the first place.

But, the makers of the game have repeatedly played the tortured artist card over the last decade. "We'll never ship a game early" "It'll be done when it's done right." When you play that over and over again, when you use insist upon hiding upon the dedication to your art, then by god when what you produce at the end doesn't deserve the label art you better expect to reap the whirlwind.

@ Steven Lloyd Wilson

But none of that is the game's fault, or even Gearbox's!

You can hate on the guys who burned all their credibility by tryin' to justify the ludicrious delays all ya want, but the game can only be as good as it's simple Tit's & Ass + Explosions + One Liners = Awesome formula!

@ Murderbot

Contrary to Ice-T, I believe in hating the playa and the game. That was the precedent set by the Nuremberg Trials.

In this specific case, I will hate the playa, the game, the programmers, the designers, their office space, and the traitorous electrons that powered their computers. Because I am become scathing, hater of worlds.

"Because I am become scathing, hater of worlds."

no, you're just a nerd who doesn't know as much about video games as you would want us to think. if you had actually followed the history of the development of this game, you'd know that it was saved from the trash heap by Gearbox. the game was nearly finished by that point but this was also in 2009, so they've had about a year to make it somewhat presentable.

in any case, whatever bitchiness you're currently directing at duke nukem should instead be directed toward george broussard, the guy who has been fucking this shit up for years. the fact that gearbox picked up his mess and fixed it doesn't really warrant you whining about the game (which should be exactly what anyone could ever expect out of a duke nukem game)

Duke Nukem is a simple concept for a game. You have a badass hero, babes, one-liners, aliens, shrink-rays, pipe bombs, THE BOOT, juvenile humor, and interactivity with the environment. That's what made Duke Nukem 3d the huge hit that it was in the 90s.

Every single one of those elements is in the trailer. Yeah its chauvinistic, a bit ugly, and probably won't win any GotY awards(save that for Uncharted 3 and Mass Effect 3 later this year). It's not something you want to show to your peers and try and justify your hobby as more than big dumb shooter fun. But Duke Nukem has never been that.

DNF won't change your life. It won't make you want to write down in your diary about the compelling narrative and sharp dialog and rich characters. It's a game that lets you shoot a giant alien in the face, rip his eye out, and kick a field goal. And finally, FINALLY, its gonna deliver on that promise.

Hail to the King, baby.

Only partially relevant, but I *love* Chinese Democracy. That is all.

SK...get outta my bubble dude.

The Zero Punctuation review (?) of this game is required viewing for anyone remotely interested in it. I'd post a link, but I'm at work and I don't think I have the capability.

Meh, call me when they bring back Leisure Suit Larry.

I don't give much of a damn about this series, but the entire point of Duke is tasteless humor and over-the-top ridiculous bloodshed. It's like you never played the previous games. I don't get your complaint...the only thing I agree is that the graphics do look a little rough.

Are you serious?? This game looks fucking awesome. It's like I just hit puberty all over again. Here, be a dear and pass me that tissue, won't you?