Chris Trottier on Nostr: I still can’t believe I waited 12 years to play Duke Nukem Forever. In that time, I ...

I still can’t believe I waited 12 years to play Duke Nukem Forever.

In that time, I graduated high school, went to college, got my first job, got married… and when the game finally came out, it was terrible. Awful. Just absolutely horrible in every way.

I bought it more out of spite than excitement. It felt like they didn’t even want me to play it. So, like an idiot, I paid full price for it on Xbox 360.

And what can I say? It doesn’t feel like a Duke Nukem game. In fact, it feels like it’s fighting not to be one. Sure, they lean into the dumb macho parody, but that’s surface-level.

The original Duke Nukem 3D was a boomer shooter—fast, explosive, and immediate. You’d be on a rooftop, blow something up, and get right to work killing aliens.

Here, you spend an absurd amount of time doing nothing. Spinning chairs. Pissing in a urinal. I’m not kidding—the game opens with you pissing. It’s a colossal waste of time.

And it never gets better. It takes forever for the action to start. You’ll be sitting there an hour in, wondering when the game’s actually going to begin, only to get saddled with dumb puzzles. The original had secrets to discover, sure, but it didn’t waste your time with this nonsense. It was about guns, shooting, and blowing stuff up—not puzzle-solving.

And like the fool I am, I bought it again on PC years later, thinking maybe it’d be better. It wasn’t. I got it cheap, thankfully, but any enhancements over the 360 version are barely noticeable. Visually, it hasn’t aged well at all. There are plenty of games from that era that still look great. This is not one of them.

I can’t believe I waited 12 years for this crap. Honestly, you’re better off playing good games that exist now instead of waiting for some mythical future release. The longer the wait, the higher the expectations—and the more likely those expectations won’t be met.

Look at Borderlands 4. Is it good? No. I’ve had way more fun with FPS games built on GZDoom than with most modern AAA titles.

That’s not to say AAA can’t deliver. Control is incredible. Remedy knows what they’re doing with Control and Alan Wake. They keep striking gold.

But the point is this: don’t do what I did. Don’t wait over a decade. Don’t pay full price. Don’t buy it twice out of contrarian hope that maybe you were wrong the first time. I wasn’t wrong.

Duke Nukem Forever stinks.