Multiplayer

Honestly, I didn’t spend any time playing the multiplayer, but it’s there if you want it. You have classic game types like deathmatch, team deathmatch, capture the flag, and king of the hill, which are playable on ten different maps with up to eight players. (By the way, you can use jetpacks in multiplayer, despite their absence from the campaign.) There is some persistent player progression, meaning you can gain experience and level up, either through regular play or by completing challenges such as “Get 150 kills with the pistol.”

Fortunately, the rewards for leveling up are strictly cosmetic, serving to customize your Duke and differentiate him from all the rest of the clones online, or will help you deck out your personal club house. Notable unlockables for your “digs” include bronzed babe statues, unique art to hang on the wall, and a variety of interactive arcade games, like air hockey, pool, pinball, and video poker. It was just recently announced the first DLC for DNF will feature new maps that parody other popular multiplayer games (Call of Duke, 2Forts1Bridge, etc.), and it will be free for First Access Club members.

Consolitis

Though Duke Nukem Forever was created first on PC (indeed, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 didn’t exist until after the game’s last overhaul), it was certainly influenced by the prospect of being ported to other platforms. The linear, highly-segmented level design is a clear indication that they struggled to make the game fit the consoles’ memory restrictions, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that there are exactly 4 inventory items this time around. Of course everyone’s favorite, the quick-time event, is present throughout the game, requiring you mash a key repeatedly to open some doors or avoid being gored by a berserk pig cop that gets a little too close. The worst bit of all, to be sure, is definitely the checkpoint-only save system that invariably serves to frustrate you, despite how frequent they sometimes are.

Graphics

To put it nicely, DNF’s visuals are dated. I’d say it looks to be about five years old overall, but it’s not exactly an eyesore; there are plenty of games from the past few years that look worse. Animations are clunky (see Duke’s jump technique) and models are rough around the edges, but textures are mostly above-average. That’s unsurprising when you consider that a lot of the gags and other environmental attractions depend on the textures offering crisp text or imagery. Outdoor levels suffer from some bland landscapes, though, and you should definitely turn off the post-processing effects to disable the horrible motion blurring and depth-of-field action. The difference is practically night and day when you do that, for the better.