We've waited for more than a decade, but was it worth it?
Let me start by clearing something up. This game has not been "in development" for 12 years. The game was announced back in '97, but development was halted, restarted, halted again, restarted again, has been a real saga and will probably go down in the annals of gaming history, if it hasn't already. However, my point still stands. This game has NOT been in development for 12 years.
The predecessor to this game, Duke Nukem 3D, broke a lot of new ground on it's release back in the day. It made great technological strides in an attempt to deliver something completely different to the first person shooters of the day. However, what Duke Nukem 3D also achieved was something quite disconnected from technology, it brought blood, guts and mayhem to our monitors of course, but more than that it brought humour and character to our ears. Dukes' one-line put downs and pain predictions (like "I'm gonna rip your head off and sh*t down your neck") gave gamers something they had never had in an FPS before. A protagonist with a personality! At last, gone were the days of silently slaying hordes of enemies. Duke has a voice! Not only does he have a voice, but he has wit too! This is one of things that elevated Duke above the rest.
These days, of course, this is all part of the standard package. Massive leaps in technology have given games designers and creators the tools to bring fantastic interactive experiences to our monitors. Fleshed out characters, rich, emotionally engaging stories, reams of spoken dialogue, all par for the course.
So in todays market, where our expectations are stratospheric, how does Duke hold up?
From a technological standpoint, not very well. The visuals are decent enough, but they lack polish when compared to the current crop of games, but in fairness, the core game engine is about 6 years old so to expect cutting edge visuals just isn't realistic. Of course, one nice side effect of this is that any modest modern day PC with a half decent graphics card will run the game at full HD res on max detail with no problem at all, so it's not all bad.
In terms of gameplay mechanics we seem to have something of a mish mash. It's part old school and part contemporary. Gone is your superhuman capacity to carry every weapon in the game in your jeans pockets and we are now given a two weapon switch system (ala Gears/Halo etc...). Health packs are no more and we have a COD like rechargeable health system, although Duke doesn't have health, he has "ego". Take damage and you lose ego, lose too much and the screen goes red, keep getting shot and you die, take cover and your ego replenishes, you know the drill. Personally, I quite like the recharging ego mechanic. It prevents you from getting stuck at tricky points in the game when you save the game on low health and there are no health packs around. Sure, it's not like Duke used to be, but then Duke3D was never perfect.
As for the weapon switch system, well to be honest I would have preferred to be able to carry all the available weapons at the same time. Sure, it's not realistic, but neither is the entire premise of the game so there's no real argument there. What the two weapon switch system really does is to make a lot of the weapons in the game completely redundant. Take the rocket launcher for example. It comes with a magazine of 5 rockets and you can't carry any more than that. Once they're gone, they're gone. You can replenish your ammunition at certain points in the game with rainbow six-esque supply crates that dot the levels, but they're far too infrequent to be relied upon. Your only other option is to replenish ammo from fallen enemies, but most of them use shotguns/pistols/rippers, so the only thing your RPG is really good for is boss battles (where there are usually plenty of ammo crates/rpg's lying around) or consuming a weapon slot that could be used for something you can fire more than 5 times. The two slot system basically takes away scope for experimentation with the many weapons on offer. I found myself being reluctant to swap out my ripper or shotgun for something more exotic because I was wondering where the next lot of ammo was going to come from and given the number of enemies in the game, running out of ammo is a realistic possibility. Not a good mechanic for this type of game. Having said that, I did go from start to finish on just the ripper and the shotgun (with the odd RPG for boss fights), so you never really feel outgunned.
The weapons themselves are all nicely done, the shotgun being my particular favourite, but the shrink gun (shrink your enemy to the size of a rat then step on him), freeze ray (freeze them solid then smash them to pieces with a well placed kick), trip mines, pipe bombs, devastator etc... all make a welcome return and are all great fun to use.
In terms of the actual gameplay itself, this is where things start to take a turn for the better, depending on your preferences. Ultimately, it's Duke Nukem. Lots of enemies, huge boss battles, blood, guts, frantic pace and of course Duke's politically incorrect one liners (huzzah!). It's all in there. Objectives are given to you at various points in the game, but there's no waypoint marker, no compass, no commlink hottie to hold your hand. Objectives are highlighted with a golden sheen when you see them, but you'll have to fight your way to them unaided. This could prove frustrating for the current generation of gamers, who are used to games spoon feeding you just what you need to get to the next checkpoint, but if you're a long time gamer over 30 you probably won't even notice the omission.
The boss battles are pure old school. Huge, impressive looking bosses lay down a barrage of avoidable, but incredibly potent, destruction while you dodge and chip away at their health bar. Once their health bar is depleted they collapse to the ground, exhausted. At this point Duke has to run up to them, whereupon you're prompted to press "E" to perform some form of grizzly humiliation/finishing move that comes straight out of Duke3D (think about ripping off heads and sh*tting down necks etc...).
Firefights are mostly exciting and fast paced with projectiles and limbs flying all over the place. At times you are assisted by the EDF (earth defence force). You're not required to manage your teammates, they just get on with it, but they rely on you to take out most of the opposition. Of course, they're bound to, you're Duke Nukem!
Of course, Duke wouldn't be Duke without his number 1 fans. Yes, Dukes' babes return with a vengeance. Pixelized breasts abound in DNF. This may, or may not, be to everybody's taste, but it's like keeping a horse in your garden. Yes, it will carry you to the shops and back, but at the end of the day, it's gonna sh*t on your lawn. Now, you're either the type that will use it on your roses, or pinch your nose and grimace, but the fact is, where there's Duke, there's boobs.
The actual campaign itself is a typically lightweight Duke affair. Aliens come to Earth and start kidnapping our women, up steps Duke to take care of things. There are no subtleties to the plot, no gargantuan twists to make you gasp, just pure running and gunning which is exactly what a Duke Nukem game should be.
I'm not going to tell you whether you will enjoy Duke or not, that depends on your taste in games and humour. All I can tell you is that I loved it. It's Duke Nukem. Sure, it's not got the fidelity of Half Life 2 or the graphical splendour of MW3, but what it does have in spades is an old school charm, a good fast pace and plenty of death and destruction. Still, what else were you expecting? It's Duke Nukem.