If we're all going to be honest, Duke Forever is not a good game. I do believe, though, that the reception surrounding the game has made it look like the worst thing ever, when it clearly isn't. There are plenty of other janky, broken-to-the-core video games out there that are easily worse than Duke Forever, but it's the long legacy of a troubled development cycle, paired with the inevitable disappointment that burned fans enough to give it such low ratings.

I won't be peeling through the entirety of Forever, but for what it's worth, the shooting isn't all too terrible (although the arsenal isn't nearly as great as it was in 3D), some of the levels are pretty fun, and just having Duke back in a more modern game is great. Sadly, these slight positives are met with just as many negatives, with really boring stretches of the game found throughout (the last few levels especially), some casual sexism thrown around like candy during the game that's offensive at best, and horrific at worst, and too many attempts to reinvent the wheel in rather stupid places when other key aspects of the game needed more tuning and overall refinement.

Again, there are worse games out there, but that still doesn't mean Duke Nukem Forever is some sort of hidden gem in the landscape of long-forgotten video games.

I played this for the first time in 2020. Is it a terrible game? No. Is it a remarkably good game? Also no. The graphics are incredibly dated even by 2011 standards. I mean compare it to something like Uncharted and its crazy how bad this game looks in comparison. It looks more like an N64 game than a ps3 one. However i had quite a bit of fun through it's first playthrough on the easiest difficulty. It's ok enough and it gives you enough variation and some interesting things to keep it from getting stale or repetitive. I like the minature and driving sections. Then I played it on the hardest difficulty and it's flaws really shined through on that. It's near impossible to ever be precise and you feel how terribly it plays. Your'e constantly getting stuck on doorways leaving yourself exposed, you die incredibly quickly, its impossible to have good aim. If there was no aim assist you would never hit anything. Hitting square to grab ammo doesn't ever work the first try so again you're leaving yourself exposed more. A couple of boss fights in this game were some of the most frustrating experiences I've ever had gaming and will severely test your patience. You couple this experience with it's highly publicized long dev cycle and it suddenly becomes a painfully obvious bad game. It becomes clear why this game was so heavily criticized upon release. There is absolutely no excuse for this game being so bad when it was in development for so long. I'm glad I bought this used for 2.99 instead of buying it new at $60. That made it not so bad for me.

As a sidenote, one wrinkle they could have added to make this game more interesting is leaning into a parody route. The whole game and character should be lampooning the genre yet Duke Nukem is the epitome of the action man hero guy type. It's so over the top that Duke comes off as embarrassing and you feel bad for the guy for how corny and try hard he is in 2020. I've read that Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard is like this where it is a parody of this type of character and genre yet it still got bad reviews. I'm planning on playing that next and will be curious to see what flaws that game has and what it got right.