Full Disclosure: I have never played a Duke Nukem game before playing Duke Nukem Forever. Also, after sales and credits I spent $12 on a new retail copy of this game, which I promptly sold upon completion for $39.

Duke Nukem Forever will probably not end up being this year’s worst reviewed game, score-wise. But it will be remembered as the game that brought the most hate-filled reviews from the most gaming outlets. Even if they don’t come out and say it, most of the reviews seem to come from a “How dare you!” mindset. While not said within the reviews themselves, the gist of the opinions seem to be “You made me wait 12-14 years and this is what you give me? This was the best you could do?! HOW DARE YOU! F-! Zero out of 10! Go to hell, Duke Nukem!”

Me? Having never played Duke Nukem and therefore never spending one single moment wishing for this game to be completed, I just can’t understand that way of thinking. To me it was just a new game that I could get for a crazy good price, and it sounded like a fun way to spend a weekend.

PROS:
* The game’s over the top sense of humor was fine with me, and even generated a couple of laugh out loud moments. It’s not You Don’t Know Jack funny or anything, but I was entertained.
* A lot of people don’t care about such things, but I had fun interacting with all the various things in the environment, seeing what kind of reactions Duke would give as a result. Well, everything except the pinball and air hockey minigames.
* There’s a decent amount of variety to the game play. Shooting, driving, puzzle solving, etc. A lot of people would have preferred a little more shooting and a lot less everything else, and I can see that point as well.
* It’s fun. I had fun playing it. Never did I feel frustrated to the point of shutting it off or did I feel the game was broken. I know others have run into bugs, but I never saw any.

CONS:
* Load times. Even with the game installed to the Xbox 360′s hard drive it can take 45-55 seconds for each level to load up. This is also the case after every time you die. Take two steps in a boss battle and die? That’ll be one minute before you can start playing again. While this did give me plenty of time to see what achievements I still needed to get or to check my Twitter timeline, ultimately it became somewhat of a drag, and it really kills your momentum.
* While I didn’t spend $60 on my copy of the game, charging $60 for it is insane. It should have been a $40 game, $50 tops. Charging the same price as current-gen AAA titles like Mass Effect and Call of Duty just doesn’t make sense. Acknowledging the game’s way last-gen origins and offering a deal for fans would have created a bit of goodwill. Then the reviews could have said “Man this game fucking sucks… but at least it’s not full retail.”
* The ending is weak. Ridiculously weak. The game itself even points out how weak it is.

In the end, I’d give Duke Nukem Forever a C+. It did not murder my children or steal my car, so I cannot level the amount of vitriol towards it usually reserved for serial killers or Lebron James.

I would have gone a little higher, perhaps a B-, but there are so many jumping puzzles in the game and I HATE JUMPING PUZZLES with furious anger. Had there been a little less of those and a little more shooting aliens in the face I could have bumped that up a notch.

If you don’t play every single game that comes out and just want to have a bit of fun, I recommend playing through Duke Nukem Forever. Despite what you may read elsewhere, there ARE worse games. Much worse.