Editors Note: This is a guest review by one of our faithful community members – FlyinHotdogVndr. What to submit a guest review of your own? Email us at webcomments @ FeedYourConsole.com with the subject “review: [Game Name]”
Duke Nukem 3D changed my life. Now, I either have to be an outright liar, a victim of some kind of nostalgic psychosis or one of the bigger (not to mention older) gaming geeks you’ve ever met.
I first played Duke Nukem as a shareware side scroller. When Duke was reborn as a first person shooter, it wasn’t a hard sell to get me playing it.
So, aside from the addiction putting an end to my desire to see daylight, how did it change my life? Well, it led to me working with TEN (Total Entertainment Network) which was the first Windows online gaming network. Officially the first network was Kahli, but it was matching software running in DOS.
Duke was the flagship game for TEN and they had exclusive rights to run it on their network. It helped them build a huge community and break new ground. TEN would eventually fail because people weren’t ready or willing to pay for gaming at the time, but that’s a whole different story.
Duke Nukem 3D was the last of the “lockstep” games. Before the UDP protocol essentially revolutionized online gaming, players were at the mercy of the weakest connection when playing a game such as Duke. You’d be in the middle of this amazing firefight and then suddenly, everyone would just freeze up, waiting for someone with a bad connection to catch up. Quake and UDP changed all that forever.
It’s taken 15 years for someone to finally release another instalment of this legendary franchise and I have to tell you that it’s more of a letdown than Starship Troopers 2 (OK, maybe that’s harsh). From the cheesy, seemingly slapped together intro to the over the top sexism masquerading as machismo, this game so desperately tries to leverage all that nostalgia that it pulls a muscle and falls down flat.
“Duke Nukem Forever” is an apt title because this game will spend forever in the dollar bin at Wal-Mart. I wanted to love this game desperately, but everything from the clunky multiplayer mechanics to the “tacked on” cut scenes and a story line with all the flow of a glacier, just shot a chicken through my heart.
Duke Nukem rightfully occupies a special place in gaming history, but “Duke Nukem Forever” sadly appears to be the result of someone burying Duke in the pet cemetery – not pretty.
Pros: A nostalgic break worth renting if the boys are coming over for beers.
Cons: Poor overall gaming experience with a “slapped together” feeling which can’t hold your attention for more than a couple of hours.
Feed Your Console gives Duke Nukem Forever a 3 out of 10.
Catch the official Trailer:
Recent Comments