Somewhere between a national emergency and a global disaster.
The engine is an antique. Textures tear at the edges of the screen. Pixelation is prominent throughout, even at the start menu where there's very little to animate. Character models are stiff. Enemies movements have almost no weight and are hard to track. Pigcops will often charge straight for you, which should make a shotgun kill reasonably simple. However, their hulking size somehow manages to disappear below your reticle at point blank range, leading to frustrating deaths early on.
Level design in "DNF" is the definition of simplicity. Fight your way through this hallway, get trapped in a room. Kill all the enemies that spawn, then move on to the next hallway. Rinse and repeat. To be fair, it's not always a hallway. Sometimes the game takes you outside into confined streets and blocked off parking lots. Regardless of the twists the devs throw in to change things up, the game can't shake it's formulaic feel. It's a formula that's tedious from the start. Thankfully, the devs mercifully dropped the necessity for color key cards.
I have to ask, what the hell were the devs doing in the decade leading up to the project takeover? It's not all bad (going all out with the games weapons is fun) but it seems more like Duke Nukem 3D.5 than a brand new game in the series. The few moments when the game is actually enjoyable do little to prove it's worth. There is some fun to be had here, but definitely not for the price the publisher is asking for it. I feel like I paid $60 for a ten year old game that was a half step above mediocre back in the day. You might want to wait to rent this game. Or, just wait a bit longer for the price to come down before picking it up.