With a lot of expectation, is this game as bad as people say? Not as much as it's being painted as.
It was remade from scratch many times because of the engine or graphics being outdated, they wanted it to be perfect, or at least as groundbreaking as the original Duke Nukem 3D was at its time. Due to this fact, many of the original ideas planned for the game didn't make it to the final product as can be seen in its many trailers.
But then, when all hope was lost (with 3D Realms closing) Gearbox appeared and saved the day buying the Duke Nukem license. And then the game was released. Was it groundbreaking? No. Was it awesome? I wish... Was it bad? No, and that's what it's important.
If you don't know the history of its development, the final product (at least the bulk of it, not counting the makeup and multiplayer Gearbox added later) was finished by 2009, and due to budget and legal problems, the game felt a little old even for that time. So probably most of its ideas were nice and new for 2005 maybe, its not bad! But not as impactating as they wish they were (if they decided to change it, it probably would have never been released).
Plot wise, it isn't something jaw dropping, it is something you would expect from a Duke Nukem game: Duke is loved and desired by the women, men admire him, and kids want to be like him, it's all going well until an alien mothership comes to Earth. The problem is, they're not being hostile... yet. As the story unfolds (doesn't take too long actually) everybody finds out that the aliens plan on abducting the women, and kill everyone else, ESPECIALLY Duke Nukem, so it's up to the King to go rescue the babes and save the world once again.
Graphically, it isn't outstanding by any means, but Gearbox did a really good job poilishing it, the blur and depth of filed effects are really well implemented. You can notice a few low res texture here and there (most noticeable on the console versions) but it shines at times like in the Cycloid Emperor fight at the start of the game or in the Mothership battle a bit alter on. What really is kinda of ugly, it's the animations, the characters move unnaturally and don't have many facial expressions, reminded of Quake 4 NPCs. On the other hand, the enemies are very detailed and in general really well done.
In the Sound department, it lacks a more compelling soundtrack, but the voice acting is really well done, Jon St. John returns as Duke doing a really great job. The other NPCs sound a little ridiculous sometimes, but that's intended. The one-liners return and (fortunately for me and unfortunately for others) the old ones come back too. There aren't many good ones within the introduced in this game, but some really have the spirit of the franchise.
Gameplay was one of the most controversial things about this game, I thought it was too linear run and gun with regenerative health (ego) as most FPS games are nowadays, and that's what disappointed me. Don't get me wrong, it's fun to play, but I expected it to be more open ended like Duke 3D. I was hoping for something that would really differ (in a good way) from all the games we have today. There are puzzles here and there and I enjoyed them, to reduce the pace a little to not get too repetitive. The other games references were funny and not offensive like most people think they were, Duke Nukem 3D featured a "dead space marine.." (Duke's voice) and played just like it, guys at Id found it hilarious and not offensive, it's more of a homage than an offense. The guns for the most part don't feel very powerful (with the exception of the shotgun), and the classic funny ones can't be used as they were in Duke 3D because of the 2 weapon limit (4 as an option with a later released patch), the Shrink Ray is overpowered, since it's almost One Shot One Kill, but the Freeze-Ray is underpowered because it takes a lot of time to actually freeze the enemy and puts you in harm's way since it only works in close range.
The loading times aren't as huge on the PC as they are on the console versions, but it is still a little big when you are dying constantly in a specific part of the game. You can't save whenever you want, instead the game uses checkpoints, which actually makes the game more challenging (too much at times but oh well).
Multiplayer is old school. Features deathmatch, team deathmatch, CTF (CT Babe in this case), and King of The Hill. All old school fast paced, not many people play it, but its fun for a while. Weird that when any player dies, they blow up instead of having ragdolls, probably because the guys at Gearbox didn't have time to implement it.
As a game released these days, I'll give it a 6, which is fair, it shares a lot of similarities to other popular FPS games these days (including the complaints). But knowing that it was supposed to be released a long time ago (talking of the actual build, not the old ones), when the ideas were actually "new" for the time, I would give it a 7.8. I think that after all that the developers been through, they deserve a little understanding.