Duke Nukem Forever (PC): A Fair and Balanced Review

PC considerations

There are a few differences in with the PC version of the game that must be noted. One of the obvious features is that users can vary the resolution, graphics, and sound to suit their hardware. If your system isn’t as beefy, you can turn off graphics features, or simply reduce the resolution.

When we turned on monitor Vsync, we noticed some weird graphical stuttering. Our test system is no slouch (Intel i7-950, nVidia Geforce 480, 12GB DDR3 RAM, 2x SSDs in RAID 0), and can easily run more demanding games without any problems.

The game also supports Logitech’s LCD readout on their popular gaming keyboards like the G510. The readout shows which level you’re on, the difficulty, and a few other tidbits. A neat “Duke Nukem” logo appears on the readout between level loads, which by the way only take about 5 seconds as compared to the 30 or more seconds that Xbox 360 gamers experience.

Graphics

The level design feels a little forced, and just doesn’t feel as organic or natural as it could. Although the levels aren’t huge, it can be easy to get lost in corridors. There are times where you feel stuck, but it only takes a minute to figure out if you’ve encountered a puzzle, or just need to retrace your steps.

Although the game uses the Unreal engine, the graphics look a bit overdone and dated, and has the remarkable feel of Doom 3. While Doom 3 was a graphical milestone at the time, it just has a dated look when compared to games of today. The game engine makes a lot of use of reflections, but they look rather pixelated.

The animation isn’t up to the quality level that today’s games deliver, either. The lip-syncing isn’t very good, and the character animations look scripted rather than the natural motion-captured movements that many games today employ. Characters will suddenly go from a leisurely slow-walk to full-blown run-for-your-life-with-arms-flailing-about mode and appear to follow an invisible rail, which is another behavior that reminds me of Postal 2.

The graphics are pretty good, but has the same appearance of games from when the Xbox 360 was first launched.

The soundtrack is pretty good considering, but probably won’t be stuck in your head like the opening Duke 3d theme song.

On and on…

The gameplay can tend to go on and on at times. There are a few quick diversions, but there are times when you just want to get whatever you’re doing to be over with.

The Boss Battles are very straightforward, and unnecessarily tedious. During a gun battle with a mother ship, you just blast away. Since it was taking so long, I looked to see if there was some clever mechanism I was overlooking. I checked for a weak spot or for something to be revealed during a timed sequence, but the Boss fight was actually that straightforward and simple… you keep shooting away until its health meter falls. The only thing that had to be managed was the gun’s heat.

Multiplayer

There are a few modes to the multiplayer area of Duke Nukem Forever. These modes consist of deathmatch, team deathmatch, king of the hill, and capture the flag. All of these modes only support up to 8 players, which again might have been groundbreaking in 1995 but does not impress anyone today.

Good old-fashioned deathmatch is great, and the levels are ok, but nothing worth writing home about. You basically run around to find the cool weapons in out-of-the-way places, and use them on your foes.

One cool thing about the multiplayer part of the game is Duke’s Digs, which is a store where you can buy furnishings and other stuff for your virtual apartment. The more you play, the more stuff you can accumulate.