It’s been an extremely long and rocky road for Duke Nukem Forever but it is finally here. There has been a lot of excitement over it’s release, with people just craving to know what exactly has been produced after such a lengthy and troubled development. Unfortunately, Duke Nukem Forever is far from being a quality title, but it is in equal measure, far from being overly terrible. It is as much as anyone could expect from a project that took over 12 years to complete and went from engine to engine in order to keep current with industry standards. It is also very clear that the game Gearbox received when they bought the rights to the Duke Nukem franchise last year, was not fully finished and it remains that way upon release.
This is most obvious in its graphics,which by comparison with even early PS3 releases look downright awful. Scenes are littered with blurry, unfinished textures and at most times a noticeable harshness in the lighting effects. The result is a game devoid of any atmosphere at all, with uninteresting levels that meander on and on with nothing particularly interesting to look at. NPC models animate poorly with virtually no kind of lip sync, and movement and gestures akin to characters from GTA: San Andreas on PS2. Enemies animate quite a bit better but their transition from one animation to another can be stilted at times. The frame rate takes a massive dive during most sections of the game whenever there are multiple explosions or other particle effects happening close to the player, and load times are clearly not optimised ,with loads of 20-30 seconds and upwards being typical.
