“I’m here to chew bubblegum and kick ass, and I’m all out of ass.”
Duke Nukem Forever was the unfortunate victim of lofty and perhaps erroneous expectations. Tagged as an unforgivable travesty upon release and never rehabilitated, it undoubtedly fails the impossible task of carrying the legacy of Duke Nukem 3D into the 21st century. But that’s only if one includes that pioneering game’s perch near the top of the first-person shooter pantheon in their conception of that legacy. If you’re just looking for the iconic pottymouthed hero, he returns here in full form, playfully self-aware, with a shameless embrace of ‘80s action movie cheese, updated pop culture references, and a slew of scatological one-liners.
The fact is, by the time Gearbox got around to purchasing the intellectual property after a decade in cryosleep at 3D Realms, the things that made games like Duke Nukem 3D, Wolfenstein 3D, and Doom immensely popular were no longer in vogue. A delirious slurry of bullets, blood, beer, buttocks, and bulbous silicone was never going to land well in a market of gritty, uber-serious military shooters (not to mention a trigger-warning culture where many of Duke’s jokes would not only be considered tasteless but actually criminal). But it’s exactly that laid back, tongue-in-cheek, no-limits approach that sets Duke Nukem Forever apart from its contemporaries.
Strap on the dildos, laddies, it’s time to tear up some alien ass.
It does half-heartedly and arbitrarily adopt trends that popped up throughout its protracted development, by turns lightly mocking or earnestly adopting new school mechanics that don’t necessarily mesh with its old school feel, but it distinguishes itself from the mundane rank and file with cheeky, endearing touches that pompous shooters wouldn’t dare touch—pumping iron to increase your ego/health bar, playing pinball and air hockey and whack-a-mole, driving a remote control car, deploying a snarky hologram of yourself, popping steroids, smoking cigars, chugging beer, punching giant aliens in the crotch. To quote an especially expletive-laden and entertaining review from The Rageaholic, “in the black hole of creativity that is the FPS genre, that makes this game the equivalent of fucking Shakespeare.”
Though not as mechanically refined as other shooters of its time, Duke Nukem Forever achieves its aim of providing the player with solid low-brow entertainment—a ceaseless barrage of raunchy humor and shotgun fodder and bountiful minigames adorned with gratuitous nudity and fecal matter. For sluggards like me, time has smoothed over its gameplay hiccups, and its irreverent storytelling tone sticks in the teeth in a way that your bog-standard military shooter’s solemn tone does not. It may not be the second coming of the first-person shooter, but it’s got personality to spare and is a slightly stale treat for fans of the older game, especially now that it can be had for an Abe Lincoln plus shipping and handling. Setting aside the dubious merit of such things, try to name another game where you can put a rat in a microwave and paint the walls with human excrement and shrink down to the size of an action figure, using mayo jars as cover and burger buns as trampolines.