From everything that I've read, the press and most people are pretty excited about DNF, but they are also apprehensive. You say the trailer is "abysmal", but when I looks at the comments on youtube, I see nothing but excitement and praise. While it is likely that the game will not live up to expectations, you can't just use these random statistics to declare that the game will be bad. Duke Nukem Forever may still play like a 90's shooter, but many 90's shooters, like Duke Nukem 3D or marathon, are still really fun. This simply means that DNF will stand out from the shooters being released today, which all try to ape on COD's style.

Also, you deride "panderous" games like Gears of War and Call of Duty, but these are both critically acclaimed and high selling series that are not only targeted at adults but are also played mostly by people over the age of 18.

I respect your opinion and decision to not purchase the game, but I find that your argument lacks validity. you just sound bitter in the last few paragraphs.

I can't say as though I was ever excited by Duke Nukem Forever, but it is sort of a curiosity to me now. I'm interested to hear about it, and if it's good then I might pick it up down the road, more as a part of gaming history than because I want to play it.

I think there's a typo in the second-to-last paragraph. The phrase "We many not like it" should be "We may not like it," right?

Synopsis of this article: I have yet to play this game in any capacity, yet I feel like I need to tell everyone how much it Is going to suck. I found some info on wikipedia and decided to list it with bullet points to show that I am super serial. I am angry at the length of time it has taken for a sequel of a game to come out, even if I was able to live my life as normal for those 14 years. I figured this would scroll down too quickly on a you tube video, do I decided to post it on Bit Mob to see how many other people are unnecessarily upset. ...now I could be far off on your real intentions but, to me, that's what it read like. I look forward to your review of the game itself, or even just a demo. Could be fun in a Yahtzee "I'm angry rawr!" Kind of way.

I have high hopes because, for the guys at Gearbox, this is a labor of love.Their fearless leader, Randy Pitchford, worked at 3D Realms and was a level designer on Duke Nukem 3D. I know it's been a crazy 14 years, but if anyone can revive the Duke, it is one of his originators.

Personally, I spent many hours with Duke Nukem 3D and I loved it. Of course there's skepticism surrounding it--what game could go through 14 years of development hell and not arouse the cynicism of the professional gaming corps? And FPSes have undergone quite an evolution since then, but to be honest I find many of them devoid of much humor. That's one of the reasons I loved the original, irreverent Duke--and that's probably why I'll drop the dough to buy the new one. It isn't that strange that those of us who enjoyed Duke before might be more willing to wait and see, rather than assume that Duke Nukem Forever will suck.

As I said, I don't remember Duke 3D too well...but I do have a pretty firm impression of my initial response to it, which is this:

I propose that Duke Nukem 3D was never really that great to begin with. I've always had the sense that it's sort of like the Mortal Kombat of FPSes. Sure, it broke new ground in terms of what kind of content a game could approach, but as I recall, its controls were a bit fussy, and it had really wonky difficult.  It seemed to be the least polished game among other equally popular peers in its genre (like MK).

Also, I've always found its overall style to be really gauche and tacky (also a lot like MK). Even the name has always felt kind of dumb to me. It sounds like a video-game title the writers on a family sitcom (maybe Boy Meets World?) would have come up with if the story for that week's episode was that one of the characters was "spending to much time playing the hot, new video game."

I'm sure for some people that's part of the charm, but during that time period, you would have been much more likely to catch me playing Doom 2, which somehow felt more like a cohesive product. (To be fair, in terms of control, Duke tried to a lot more -- most notably with vertical aiming and vertical movement. Also, Doom 2 was a sequel to another game, which means it was inherently more polished.)

To boil it down to an analogy, Street Figther 2 is to Mortal Kombat as Doom is to Duke Nukem. I think that, at the time, hardcore enthusiats knew deep down that SF2 and Doom were the better games, but they also played MK and DN3D because, hey, there weren't as many choices back then.

To sum it all up, Duke Nukem has always been on the B-list in my book. In the pantheon of shooters, I personally think Duke is much closer to stuff like Shadow Warrior, Turok, and Daikatana than it is to Doom, Half-Life, Half-Lfe 2, Call of Duty, Call of Duty 4, etc.

While I completely agree with the SF2 > MK sentiment, It's all opinion. There are people that will disagree. For me personally, SF2 > MK... but I played a whole hell of a lot more MK. It could have been more friends that owned MK on their Genesis that SF2 around me, but either way that was the case.

An example in movie form: Dark Knight > Iron Man. Dark Knight is the better movie as far as directing and quality... but damn, I'd throw in Iron Man in the player at least x2 more for watchability. It was more fun.

SF2 had more polish and was incredibly fun to play, but Mortal Kombat just had that certain appeal that kept me playing. Replace SF2 with Doom 2 and Mortal Kombat with Duke Nukem and that's how my PC gaming days went back then too.

Well! This is quite the firestorm.

Premature as it may be, what I absorb from what's out there is all I got!

It looks amazingly uninspired to me. That's my opinion. Call me pretentious if you must, but from even the media that has come out since me writing this, it looks like a gigantic helping of unfunniness; an exorbitantly high-budgeted parody movie, a la "Epic Movie".

What would you say if I were to poop on the new transformers movie based on the trailer? Prejudgment is THE POINT of them releasing media early for preview coverage. How is that invalid?

If it turns out to be amazingly innovative, then good for it. Then it would turn out that the demo footage, the promotions, the teasing, the spectacular story-arc of this game, were all a brilliant ploy that I took the wrong way.

Then I will be wrong. But for now, this is how I feel today. This moment in this game's existence deserves analysis...and right now it looks like an antiquated game.

I don't think that's what prejudgement is. Or, at least, this not the right context for prejudgement. Then again, I always thought the point of them releasing media early is to build hype, not for the product to be judged on the media.

Also, what collective "meh"? Everything I've seen has been largely positive. In fact, this is the first piece I've seen with any reservation on the game. This is a sincere question, I really haven't seen anything majorly negative.

I read a Wired article about how Duke Nukem Forever's decade-long wait was a result of a creative team who would not release the game until it surpassed every other title in existence. Only in video games can such a movie-worthy story be tied to a game that was basically a dumb action flick. 

That's an intersting goal for those guys...waiting until their game surpassed every other title in existence (what Chris said above). If that's true, I don't think I need to explain how absolutely stupid that is. It'll never work unless somehow, you can freeze all other development work and stop new games from coming out. They'd just keep tweaking indefinitely, and I guess that's exactly what happened. Ridiculous.

I'm going to contest your characterization of Duke Nukem 3D, James -- I think your memory is a bit cloudy. At the time, Duke Nukem 3D was a big step forward for first-person shooters. Remember that this was a time before Quake and Half-Life would redefine the genre.

The controls were fine: They were identical to Doom and fully customizable. I also don't recall the game being particularly difficult at all (and it was definitely easier than Doom). You were given a large variety of new weapons unseen thus far: shrink rays, laser trip mines, freeze guns, multi-rocket launchers, and pipe bombs. You also had an array of gadgets like nightvision, the "HoloDuke," steriods, a carryable health kit, and a jetpack. I can't think of any other first-person shooter with that level of variety in early 1996.

3D Realms added underwater combat, and level designs were nonlinear with multiple avenues of attack. You had several big boss fights. The environment was highly interative with destructive terrain (you could blow out holes in walls, for example) and with most objects being destructable, too.

Not to mention that Duke Nukem 3D was more easily moddable and the level editor much more intuitive than Doom at the time. Making your own maps and sharing with friends was a big part of the game. Everyone I know installed custom multiplayer taunts from movies like Aliens, Pulp Fiction, The Terminator, and Predator. And multiplayer was a blast with the diverse weaponry available. (Duke Nukem 3D also pioneered the first online tournaments for cash prizes).

The crass humor and blatantly sexist protrayal of gender is nothing to be proud of, that I agree. Mechanically, though, Duke Nukem 3D was unmatched until Quake released later that year.

Dan, that's basically what the article was about. If the head designer played a game that had a snow level in it, he'd want a snow level. When a new engine came out, he wanted that. The article itself is here and a great read:

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/fail_duke_nukem/

Chris, that's a fascinating Wired article.

Duke Nuken is so 14 years ago...

Seriously though, everything I have seen up to this point on Duke Nukem seems...Well lets say it looks dated. I understand why it does, and I applaued Gearbox for finally just getting this game out. I don't even care if it is a good game or not anymore; I just want the bloody thing to come out and get this demon seed over with.

This game is going to sell wether it's good or not, 14 years of hype will do that for you.