Duke Nukem will bring his signature brand of babe-lovin', cigar-smoking, beer-chugging and ass-kicking action as he once again saves the Earth and our babes from hordes of invading aliens...next year.
It's been a while since this game came out. Based off what I remember from it, we're left at a bit of an impasse when it comes to Duke Nukem: we've wanted it for so long, and now we were finally presented with it, ten years later and perhaps ten years more mature than when we first tackled this 90s gaming icon. What we get left with is an odd mixture of style: it's still DN3D in some way, as the enemies are actually difficult to beat and we get tons of fan service drawn from the earlier games, but the modern market has crept its way in, with the many times maligned two-gun system and regenerating hea-er, I mean...EGO, alongside linear map design. So these two styles mash together and try to be both different and the same at the same time, which makes the game feel rather weird, since it really never is just one and never is it both. Weapons for me felt a little bit constrained versus the other Duke games; nothing is quite as outrageous or powerful as the guns once were. It's quite a detriment. The story isn't anything to write home about, which results in the ultimate defeat of the Emperor a second time for all the people who remember DN way back when, but it conveys what it needs to and propels the action forward, making it a nice background piece, since that's obviously what it's striving for with set pieces like destroying the Hoover Dam and being shrunk down to the size of a figurine, then being forced to jump over grilling hamburgers at a fast food restaurant. And Duke is still Duke, so no matter what the school marms on the internet have to say about it, he'll slap a boob and get a lap dance because that's what he is and does, no two ways about it.
Overall, was it anything to write home about? No. Was it as terrible as the big name reviewers said it was? Hell no; they just want more Call of Duty and Battlefield multiplayer half the time, so who cares about them anymore? Is this a good middle ground title? Maybe, maybe not. It's all in the taste of the player.