Duke Nukem Forever

If they can publish it, I'm sure as hell going to beat it.

I probably should have played this normal difficulty, but whenever posed with the question of easy, medium, or hard. I usually go with hard, not because I want to hate the game, but because I don't want it to be overly easy.

Choosing hard was the wrong choice... Apparently hard means that either you know exactly what you're doing or your dead. For boss fights it means, you know how to avoid more than one successive shot or you're dead. Tip, there is just about always a good cover spot to use in a boss fight, so find it! The boss fights where this does not apply, are obvious. Also, if you're reloading your weapon when you didn't plan to reload, you're also dead. This last rule got me many times when I just so happened to run out of shotgun ammo as a pigcop lunged at my face.

The weapons were all unique and enjoyable such that I found myself constantly switching out for a different weapon as they dropped and weighing my choices against how much ammo I had left. My main focus was picking up the Steam achievements, in case any of those required a particular weapon. After that, I just went with the weapons that provided the easiest kills.

As far as story, it was good enough for what I was expecting. This game  was in no way trying to take itself seriously, and I liked that.

The only mechanics I didn't enjoy were the sudden quicktime events in the middle of a fight. This completely pulled me out of my mouse/keyboard sniping mode and into "beating the keyboard with both hands like it's a drum on Guitar Hero". Despite that, they did a good job of using this only when it makes sense (struggling to pull open a door, lifting weights, pulling a tusk off a pigcop's face to stab him with it, etc.)

For saving mechanics, this game chose to go with the checkpoint saves as you progress through the game. I did not find this nearly as frustrating as I did in Alice, but that's because there wasn't anything to meticulously collect in DNF. So for this game, I didn't mind it. Also, the automatic cloud save for this was nice, even though I only played it at home.

Would I recommend playing this game? Yes, especially if you're a Duke Nukem fan. Would I personally buy it for the $50 price tag? No, but I did pick it up for $25 when Steam did their Summer Sale.