The day is finally upon us. A mere 21 years after it was first teased, a leaked build of Duke Nukem Forever has popped up online.
The leak seems to have come from someone known enigmatically as simply “xOr”. This shadow lurking, “Nukem” sycophant has not only shared videos of what seems to be gameplay but inside info on the build, too.
According to x0r, every single level and chapter from the original game is still present in one form or another. Better yet, apparently, a large portion of the game is still very much playable. “All of the E3 content is there”, or so we are led to believe.
Further, all of the original arsenal remains functional, excepting the “freezer” and chainsaw. Again, x0r continued saying that the “shrink ray” remains in the game, a beloved weapon from the original series. You can check out the full leaked gameplay in the below video.
But the cherry on the cake is yet to come. The source revealed that this is but a taste of what’s in store for diehard fans. They revealed that they would leak the full game, or at least the playable portion of what remains of the code, in June this year. Certainly, the game’s original, much-maligned director isn’t in a glass half full kind of mood;
Honestly, who can say exactly what to expect come that tantalising deadline? Duke Nukem Forever is undoubtedly one of the most well-documented horror stories of game development, second only to Atari’s E.T. It set the bar for setting expectations far too high, ultimately never to release.
How and why this feat of exemplary ineptitude was achieved is far too long to get into in this post (but you can check out an incredible summary here). But 20 something years on, it seems that fateful game or part of it may finally see the light of day. Does it matter? Is it relevant? Who even is Duke Nukem? All very sensible questions. But perhaps the June deadline will finally put a lid on this ever-twisting tale.
Source; Eurogamer
“Video games are great. I should know, I’ve played some.”
Olly S, July 2020