I don't really know the development history, but didn't part of the game pre-Gearbox survive or something?įor all the Duke talk, easter eggs like OJ Simpson or Doom marine, and jokes like the cops turning into giant swine, the game is actually really dark. And the kamikaze pigs :PĪs for Forever, I always felt the second half of the game was much better than the first - once you were out of the city and into the desert it began to remind me a bit more of classic Duke. The second and third Old West levels stand out in particular - two creepy vast abandoned mines, a fair bit of underwater stuff, lots of verticality, and it was just you and the monsters.
Maybe I'm just nostalgic over it because I've known it for as long as I've known Duke3D, but I feel that TTK matches 3D - perhaps even surpassing it in places. I mostly agree, but maybe Time to Kill is worth mentioning. All the games after it Duke almost became a parody of himself, even worse so for Duke Forever (I have a feeling none of the Duke dialogue was recorded before 3DRealms shutdown and Gearbox not understanding the character).
Duke 1 and 2 before it didn't have too much of the attitude besides him saying I'm Back and him having a book called Why I'm So Great. It's why no other Duke game came close to it because 3DRealms took it really seriously.
