Duke Nukem Forever - Another Person's Point of View

"Come get some! Hail to the King, baby!" Any 90's gamer will know exactly whose lines these are; the red-vest-wearing, cigar-smoking, babe-loving ass-kicker Duke Nukem. And any Duke fan will know just how long it took the latest entry into the series, Duke Nukem Forever, to come out; to put it simply, it took forever. But it's fair to say that the game didn't exactly live up to the hype according to most reviews. Or did it?

Comparing it to modern games, Duke Nukem Forever doesn't exactly look great; edges are jagged, character models look bad and the environments look mediocre. Many reviews have slated this, saying that this is one of the reasons why the game isn't good; to be honest, I couldn't care less. Sure, I enjoy a game a little bit more if it's nice to look at, but as long as the games fun then it doesn't bother me.

Reviewers have also said that the gameplay isn't up there with shooters like Call of Duty or Crysis 2 but the game took 13 years to come out so how could it possibly be able to compete with them? A lot has happened to gaming in that time; we've moved to a next generation, whole new genres have been made and shooters have grown up a great deal.

What Duke Nukem Forever is, is nothing but a love letter to fans. They waited years for this and even if the game was good or not, you've got to have a smile on your face because the thing actually came out.  And contrary to almost all reviews the game is, at least in my opinion, unbelievably awesome.

As more of an Xbox 360 player, I've never really had much of a reason to take notice to the world of Duke Nukem. But when Forever hit the next generation consoles, I couldn't help but pay attention to what was going on as many of my fellow GameGrin writers refused to shut up about the game. And when the reviews started pouring in, I judged from the scores that maybe Duke Nukem Forever wasn't worth my time.

But then, just out of interest, I started to watch some gameplay footage and actually listened to what my friends were saying, who all made the game sound incredibly good. But it wasn't until I played the demo that I had an epiphany; the game was hilarious and I mean laugh-out-loud hilarious. This wasn't on the same comedy wavelength as Portal 2, no, this was Portal's grown-up, dirty-minded, gore-filled older brother. And it was awesome.

After seeing Duke Nukem at a bargain price in my local Game store, I took the chance; surely the game wasn't as bad as the reviews were saying. Well, it certainly didn't look that bad in the footage I had seen and the demo was good. I fired up the game and just sat and played and played and played for a few hours before I made my final verdict; the game was awesome and was actually a lot of fun.

I do agree with a lot of the reviews (the graphics aren't great, the shooting isn't exactly brilliant and the game has no coherent plot) but I managed to look past those negatives and see Duke Nukem Forever for what it's meant to be; a lot of fun. In my opinion, a game doesn't need good graphics and a brilliant story to be considered great to me; it just needs to be fun. And that's exactly what this game is.

How can shrinking an alien down to the size of a ruler before stomping on his head not be considered slightly amusing? And how can kicking the eye of a huge robot Cyclops over a rugby goal not be laugh-out-load hilarious? And don't even get me started about how much I laughed when I saw Duke relieve himself in the eye of a huge monster!

So, in my opinion, I think you should just play the game  and make your own opinion. Buy the game, rent the game, borrow the game, steal the game, I don't care! Just make sure you somehow manage to experience Duke Nukem Forever! Trust me, it's awesome! Honest!