Release date: June 10^th 1998 2011

This isn’t the way it was supposed to be. I was psyched to hear I’d get to play Duke Nukem Forever at Gadget Show Live at Birmingham’s epic NEC venue, but I left the Duke’s area and its collection of PR girls in schoolgirl outfits feeling empty and confused.

If Duke Nukem Forever is released after 13 years of development in the condition I played it on Tuesday morning, there’s going to be a backlash of epic proportions. Hopefully the recent delay is seeing Gearbox adding a few buckets of polish to it.

But maybe I’m panicking too soon. It’s entirely possible that 2K have just had a bit of a lazy fail moment with their demo choice. It would seem that it’s almost the same preview demo that our very own Matt Gardner played back in October. But why would 2K want people to play the game in this condition which appears bland, ugly and unfinished? Will the final game look better, or is the frightening truth that this is taken from a close-to-complete final build? Pray they couldn’t be bothered making a new demo.

This is the infamous demo that begins with Duke having a slash in a football stadium locker room. But hey, I’ve been waiting a while, no time to start shit-slinging or wash my hands as I make a beeline for something to shoot. After dashing through a few corridors I emerge in the middle of the stadium’s field facing the old nemesis, the Cycloid boss. After realising that punching it in the knee was going to take a while I picked up the Devastator, a dual-rocket firing beast. Taking down the Cycloid then becomes a simple task of circle-strafing and occasionally dodging a charge attack. Hopefully this is just a throwback to old times and we’ll see a bit more invention for future bosses because this is an awkwardly weak start.

Oh dear. Click here to read the rest of my preview over at Dealspwn.com.