Duke Nukem: Forever Review (4/10)

Thirteen years is a long time. In that time, the first-person shooter has come quite a way, with names like Halo, Call of Duty and Battlefield beginning to emerge in the early twenty first century and becoming annual blockbusters by the end of its first decade. In that time, Gearbox Studios have been working on a new shooter of their own, one which was announced way back at E3 1998 and which has suffered a wealth of production problems along the twisty road of its development. That game is Duke Nukem: Forever. Sadly, while it has finally made it to shelves, accomplishing a feat many critics thought impossible, that doesn't necessarily mean things have gone according to plan- quite the opposite. Thirteen years ago, the 'return of the King' (as heralded arrogantly by the titular hero) might have been praised as the top of its class, but now video gaming has moved on without the Duke, and what we get is a tedious and repetitive guide telling developers how not to make an FPS. Much of your time in Forever is actually spent doing things other than shooting, for example driving a monster truck or pushing a mine cart to the top of the hill, and these diversions not only serve to distract us from the woefully stupid AI enemies and the iffy battle visuals but also remind us how far FPS games have come since the last Duke game. Make no mistake, they don't remind us this because they show off this progression. There's so little that's changed from Duke Nukem 3D that all these sections do are highlight the aforementioned developments and show why Forever is such a dated title. The plot itself is so forgettable some might call it laughable, yet for all the wrong reasons: when jokes are funny, they're just sick; we move between setpieces for no actual reason other than to stop things becoming even more dull and the majority of the dialogue is repeated over and over throughout the campaign (it cannot have taken long to record the dozen or so lines spewed out by non-playable characters, and Duke's lines don't fare much better). Maybe I'm missing something, and maybe fans of Duke Nukem 3D will still get a lot out of this sequel as from what I've heard it's pretty faithful to what was laid down before it, but I just cannot fathom why Gearbox or 2K Games didn't close production on Duke Nukem: Forever months into its development, let alone why we see it on game shelves a whole thirteen years after its announcement. A sequel is already in the works, I hear- honestly, Duke and co are going to need a miracle if they want to sell games based on their quality rather than their much-hyped production time.