The 8 worst moments in Duke Nukem Forever

Mikel Reparaz, GamesRadar: Fourteen years. It took 14 years for Duke Nukem Forever to go from idea to finished product. Fourteen years of work by passionate individuals, some of whom wanted to finish the game so badly that they found ways to continue working on it even after its apparent demise. And after all that time, their efforts have amounted to a game that, while not as terrible as some critics would have you believe, is a relentlessly average disappointment that feels like a bland echo of its 15-year-old predecessor, Duke Nukem 3D.

[MintBerryCrunch]

werent the rights to the game bought off by gearbox from 3d realms?

so i dont see why people continue bringing up the 14 year dev cycle

[Stuart5756]

Agreed, a team of people haven't spent 14 years making the game, it was left for dead for years before it was picked up again.

[Biggest]

It was in development for 14 years. That is the truth. The final "team" took what was there and tried to make it playable. No, the entire 14 years was not spent with one team. Yes, it was 14 years in development.

[BYE]

It just shows how missinformed the gaming media is and gives readers a hint on what sources to avoid in the future.

[LightofDarkness]

The game was in development for 14 years. 3D Realms continually would begin working on it and then scrapping it about 2-3 years later because technology had moved on, ideas kept changing and nothing was ever completed. Finally, the publishers decided that haemorrhaging money with no return was a bad thing and decided to can the project and sue the developers for the wasted time and money.

What we see today is the fruits of 14 years of development, although some 1.5 years are attributed to Gearbox's own developments. Gearbox are not to be blamed for this, all they did was take the mess that was handed over to them and try to make a working game out of it.

[buckley]

The problem is that "14 years of development" should not be considered equivalent to "14 years worth of work" as it is often alluded to. There was a significant amount of downtime here.

[FragGen]

Absolutely. I get tired of people acting like there were people chained to their desks for 14 years slaving over this turd.

It's crappy and it took forever because it overshot its original schedule multiple times requiring the devs to do a full reset more than once (essentially ERASING previous development) eventually taking them out of business... after that, it went to the courts and was shuffled around to various places left for dead several times with NO ONE working on it, etc.

Gearbox finally swooped in and treated it like a crappy piece of shovelware trying to turn a quick buck on its name recognition.

It's hardly a mystery why it sucked but acting like it's taken fourteen years to make this is just typical media dumbness. Gearbox cranked this thing out in less than two years and it shows.

[ASSASSYN 36o]

I played the demo. I could not finish it. It was way to pathetic to play.

[e-p-ayeaH]

ur pathetic

[ASSASSYN 36o]

LMAO. You are the definition of offended. Let me guess... you spent money on this crap to bring it home and now you regret the reality that what sits in front of you is a pile of hyped mess. Lesson learned little kid.

[Are_The_MaDNess]

loved the game, it was actually fun to play for ones, unlike COD and all the other clones

[cochise313]

This game is pretty bad; It's definitely not worth the 60 bucks. Thank god for gamefly. I'll probably buy this game when it's really really cheap.