let it be noted that this game contains, in my experience, the worst scene/level ever put in a major video game title. yes, it's the one where the Twins die in the most disgusting and objectifying way while Duke makes fun of them in one of the most out of character quips they could possibly come up for him. this section and the ways it reverberates into the rest of the game did affect my view of it, but i ended up finding a lot to appreciate in other areas, which i'll talk about now.

Duke Nukem Forever is obsessed with itself. everything about it is self referential, from the weapons to the enemies to the story to even the worldbuilding. you're in Vegas, but you don't go to the Bellagio - you go to the fucking Duke Dome. Duke Burger. Duke Strip Club. everything in this world is built around the legacy the character himself built in Duke Nukem 3D specially. this does get boring when you're retreading some concepts that were done in a novel way in 3D that here just fall a little flat, like the boring water level in the Hoover Dam near the end. but, despite that, i think this is DK Forever's greatest strength.

this is a game of its time by necessity. such a long period of dev hell certainly impacted the very 7th gen shooter direction this game has. it makes fun of a bunch of other shooters like Halo and Half Life while directly taking inspiration from them. Duke has a 2 weapon limit, health regen and wonky vehicles, so he's like Master Chief. Duke has to deal with many physics puzzles, clever turnarounds in arenas, and also wonky vehicles, so he's like Gordon Freeman. thinking about it like this, i think these jabs at other series feel mostly harmless and fun instead of bitter and uncomfortable. it knows it just wants to poke at another games like they did in the Duke3D era. it's cool.

going back to the self referential nature of the game - it's what makes it fun! it's obsessed with minigames, weird interactions and just delivering the over the top experience of being Duke Nukem, king asshole american bro. you do what Duke's interested in, like playing air hockey, smoking random cigars and sticking his dick in a gloryhole. it's suprisingly way more crass than Duke3D.. it also likes to put you around NPCs to react to your actions sometimes, which gives you some variety. generally speaking, the shooting is boring and unremarkably ok while what you do around it and contextually is what makes it worth it.

the highlights for me were the sections where you're shrunk and have to navigate through real world small objects that are cleverly recontextualized. mayo jars are now destructible cover, spatulas can be used to bounce around, and you gotta watch out for turned on stoves and rat traps. all the while a woman fantasizes about eating tiny Duke alive. so cute! there are so many cool sections and setpieces like this, and they like to turn the absurdity up enough for it to be funny depending on your tolerance to immaturity. riding around in a Duke monster truck in a nod to HL2's Highway 17 is just super fun imo.

the parts that lose me are the insanely boring sections you gotta push through to see the playful ones. DK Forever has this stop and start pace that throws you around different setpiece ideas while deep down it wants to just be a fun gimmicky shooter. it just can't commit to this idea, probably because of dev hell related reasons, or a failure to fully adapt to the 7th gen and only going halfway. still, despite everything, it can offer some interesting ideas - i just think it's tainted and becomes disgustingly rotten when its misogyny, bizarro comedy eroguro and dehumanization of women come to the forefront of its first half.

why is this a corridor shooter again? Mullet Madjack is a Post Void-like roguelite with less visual noise, less consequences for dying, less style, less playstyle variance, and an artstyle that can only be described as bimbopilled EvaLain Pinterest core. every level feels the same because the only things it cares to add to its preset randomized rooms are a couple extra enemy types and samey environmental hazards (+ the most boring wallrun i've yet seen in a shooter). they're only a bit slower every time. like, every one of them is a straight up corridor. most of the time it doesn't even matter if you get hit because you'll get your seconds of life back in one or two headshots by going straight.

the saddest thing about it in my view is that it takes Post Void's off-the-wall uncompromising fast pace and tries to spin it in a "tiktok is rotting your brain" moral lesson while it absolutely revels in the most pastiche fake 80s machismo and dopamine-fueled game feel. it's such a surface level critique that it doesn't even bother exploring it past "wow, doesn't this feel hollow?". come on guys, Hotline Miami did this a little better in 2012.

i don't feel good hating on this game btw i just had some thoughts *-*

absolutely massive and really badly thought out. dozens of plotlines clash together throughout this huge RPG-like campaign that spans 3 full cities and many countryside locations. at first, you get the iconic set of 29 super focused missions in Los Santos and only then the world opens up to you. grind a little. drive a lot. do some missions, grind a lot... the halfway section in San Fierro establishes that GTA San Andreas doesn't want to be just an expansion - it needs to go completely overboard.

many missions are long and difficult, and there are 100 of them. they kinda suck even more than the ones in GTA III, but that's part of the charm imo. driving feels super good, and just about everything else feels weird or outright awful - but that's how the GTAs of this era get you. it's super hard to completely master them.

CJ is probably the most insane protagonist these guys ever made. he is a mixture of a genuinely caring person and a complete double crossing psycho. when he stabs someone in the back - and he does it often - it feels disgusting. somehow, it kind of fits with the pack of insane motherfuckers you gotta deal with, like that pimp, Salvatore or Toreno... but other times it feels extra cruel.

Claude, in contrast, is just a killer. but CJ constantly jumps from kind hearted guy to cold murderer, sometimes in the span of minutes. he's still super fun to watch though, an unpredictable and charismatic guy that gets to make genuine friends like Woozie and Cesar throughout the game.

all of this, for me, represents the huge complexity that Rockstar can achieve with their juvenile parody humor and gigantic scope. GTA San Andreas is impossible to replicate. so many places and unique interactions with a super thin layer of polish, but a great eye for style and chaos. the 30-minute long last mission really encapsulates this. it's a full dungeon with multiple floors, gimmicks and an attempt to tie the many loose ends in the story together. a marriage of ideas that can only coalesce and make sense if you spend time in the world of San Andreas. the finale comes as an attempt from Rockstar to forcefully stop themselves; somehow the only way they can end a game this massive.