Well 12 years later and it feels like that latest Guns and Roses Album: Too late, wrong era, and not even that good.
It made fun of the uber tough-guy hero with his tongue in cheek humor lambasting everything from Terminator to Doom. It had cops that looked like pigs (L.A.R.D. still makes me snicker) tasseled strippers dancing and flashing you their goods in a way that made a younger me laugh. It wasn't a groundbreaking game but it's humor kept it going. Slightly challenging and non-linear. Bigger levels and gigantic environments...always with that laugh using the ultra-machismo factor/pop culture tough guy approach.
Then it stopped. We got a few games that were quasi-duke games but no real Duke games...Duke Nukem Forever was the butt of jokes. "It's never coming...it's never coming." The ultimate in vaporware. Then a strange light of hope appeared but it's actually Metallica's "Freight train comin' your way"
It's kind of like Guns and Roses "Chinese Democracy" album...about 15 years after most folks gave a dang and even then not very good.
Oh it has some good parts that made the laugh anew...being offered green power armor Duke states "Green Power Armore is for 'wussies'! (Halo reference). When pushing some pipes together using valves Duke states "I hate Valve puzzles." Damn that made me LOL...
Sadly these laughs and easter eggs are few and far between. If they had been more and on a steady basis I would be more impressed as Duke lambasting popular culture (and real world figures) became more of a laugh game than a real game...
But it's a real game...and far more linear than the origial without the original's big sprawling levels. Sure it tries to give the impression that you are in a huge world but the walls and places you can go are limited. Side routes are short and usually end in some silly pap.
It has some cute side games and puzzles but how many times can you play the same pinball or slots before you get bored. Duke spouts tough-guy-isms and punches off heads with his bare fists. His weapons are toned down (Freeze ray takes so much time that its pointless.)
Then there's the "ego bar" that takes the place of health and of course (as per all shooters) it has to regenerate. You may like the "hide behind a wall and all your health comes back." I DO NOT.
If it wanted to be "old school" it forgot what made it "old school" fun.
Then there's the sex(ism)...LOOK ,YOU THINK THIS IS "DELETEWORTHY" REALIZE I'M DESCRIBING THINGS AS AN ADULT IN LEAST VULGAR TERMS.
Of course some folks will like the immature appoach to sex in this...it's always been juvenile in that "tough guy goin' to the crazy horse saloon" way...but it just feels so...forced. Other folks who find that any reference to sex (a natural biological function whether your religion likes it or not) as vulgar...that's not me. Maybe it's just me being an older guy with a daughter...but it surpasses that "tough guy way" and goes straight to the reptile brain and I do not like that.
Compared to the The Witcher 2, which has full frontal nudity and did not make me feel like it was childish or demeaning to either gender or anyone's personal sexuality...I thought TW2 seemed "adult" in the non-pornographic sense. Being an adult myself I thought it added to things and the characters themselves. Duke Nukem now just seems like a pig...and not even in a piggish but brainy, cheeky yet suave "Barney Stinson" from "How I Met your Mother" way...the chauvanism is more like some mulleted pervert who at fifty years of age still drives around in a camaro and looks for highschool girls. It kind of makes me cringe.
It's not even "Family Guy's" Quagmire...so over the top rediculous that it has to be immature funny. It comes across as just immature without the funny.
Look...it's good for a laugh but I just cannot reccomend it. It kind of makes me sad. Like meeting someone from your high school and realizing that they haven't changed...and by haven't changed I mean "grown up". You might drink a beer with them and have a short laugh...but the overall experience makes you very sad.
Very sad.