PAX 2010 Hands On - Duke Nukem Forever

by: Sean - posted: 9/9/2010 6:50:00 PM

Duke Nukem Forever, fo' reals.

Let's get this out of the way right now: Duke Nukem Forever is real, and it's coming out next year.

Now that we've gotten all our "OMGOMGOMG!" out of our systems, how did it play? I'm going to give it an "ok." It wasn't mind blowing, the graphics were definitely passable, and there's a lot of potential, but ultimately, it played like a fairly standard first person shooter with a definitely unique tone and style, but I was by no means blown away.

The first area of the demo involved fighting a giant cycloid in the middle of a football stadium; all i did was a nice, spiralled circle strafe, and the enemy never touched me. Later on I encountered some pig soldiers in the desert, and they presented more of a challenge, but didn't do anything more than I would expect from a standard FPS enemy; maybe I just sniped them too fast for them to take cover, but they didn't seem to do much more than run right towards me.

So, my fifteen minutes of Duke Nukem: it's visually adequate, the combat is FPS standard, and the trademark Duke-Nukem-ness is intact. I think your level of excitement for this game hinges on how much you enjoyed the original; I was fine with the original, but I'm not going to go gaga just over the fact that it exists, and frankly now that Gearbox is in charge, my expectations are a whole lot higher.

See if Duke Nukem Forever meets your expectations early in 2011.