More expensive with less content than the Megaton Edition, rips off the EDuke32 Polymer renderer, marketed as a 'remaster' when the only thing new is some light points, Jon St. John sounds bored out of his mind, and they continue to market it with their terrible attempts at /comedy/. Go and look at http://www.dukenukem.com/ and scroll to the bottom where it says in big letters 'I WANT THE D - PRE-ORDER NOW!'. They're clearly continuing to drag this franchise through the mud.

Surely I can't be the only person who remembers Duke in the 90s through to the early 2000s when he was the 'Ultimate Alien Ass-Kicker' and 'babes' and comedy were only small elements of the franchise before Pitchford blew it out of proportion with Duke Nukem Forever, which I'll have to say before anyone calls me out and say it was 3D Realms work - which it wasn't, was actually written by two inexperienced writers around the most completed parts of the game under the direction of Gearbox Software and Randy Pitchford in order to shovel the game out as quickly as they could from the cobbled together elements of what 3D Realms were working on that were the most complete, they never finished the game they just threw together what was done.

Anyone remember the original Duke3D, Zero Hour, Time To Kill, Manhattan Project when Duke was a bad-ass first and the tongue in cheek elements and the one-liners were supplementary to that? What about the E3 2001 trailer for Duke Nukem Forever that looked absolutely bad-ass? I miss that Duke.

The positives here are: new maps by Levelord/Allen Blum, new music by Lee Jackson, and uh, that's it..I'll pick it up on sale because I'm interested in the new maps but if you watched the PAX live stream Randy basically talked out of his ass the entire time 'WE GOT THE OLD DUKE TEAM BACK!' Oh, you did?! Where's Todd Replogle? Keith Schuler? Chuck Jones? George Broussard? Scott Miller? Fuck off, Randy. You have Allen Blum who already works for you anyway, Levelord - who I'm actually surprised you got to return as he's a fantastic level designer, Lee Jackson - who's a great music composer but wasn't the sole person who did the sound for the game, and one map that was sort of designed by Pitchford himself. You've got four people, two of which work for Gearbox, out of over a dozen. The maps will be good for sure as they've got the talent behind them, but it's still under the direction of someone who has no idea how the franchise worked in the past and who seemingly basses everything off of the Balls of Steel ventrillo harassment video as far as direction for the franchise and character go.

If they made a real effort they would have put out a compilation including the new episode in addition to the console titles that never made their way to any other platforms that they have the rights to, 3D Realms/Interceptor had plans to port them over even going as far as saying they had recovered the source code for Time To Kill, and that they had all the rights to the games. Gearbox could have even done a remake in UE4, but no. We get a re-release with LESS content than the previous releases, at $20 with a new episode.

Straight up I'm excited for the new maps, I really am, because Levelord and Allen Blum are great level designers. Hell, even supported by tracks by Lee Jackson! Cool! But really, take a step back and have a little perspective. The biggest criticisms to Duke Nukem Forever were the direction the franchise went in and how the character changed into a dick joke spouting jackass. Duke Nukem can still be something cool, but under the direction of Pitchford I have my doubts. Give it to a group of fans that have the passion, the EDuke32 guys have their own company called Voidpoint and I hear that a couple of them are even working on that FPS prequel to Bombshell in the BUILD engine - give it to them! Why not let Interceptor finish their UE3 remake of Duke Nukem 3D? They've been drooling over the franchise for ages and even bought out 3D Realms! Work on it yourselves with the old heads of 3DR as advisers or producers to help direct the character! Just do something that isn't continuing to throw the franchise over a barrel and destroy it's former glory because that's exactly what's happening. You're retroactively destroying the great games that were released in the past.

Will get this re-release on sale, oh by the way thanks for taking down Megaton Edition and the releases on GoG and releasing this for double the price with less content. Maybe you could give the former owners a discount or something, that'd show you care a little bit. Oh, and if anyone was wondering why Pitchford keeps claiming he was part of the original team his actual contribution was working on the Plutonium Pak expansion at the small capacity of assisting on the development on a couple of maps - he never designed anything and left after about a year. You know who else was 'part of the original team'? The janitor who worked there and the guy that delivered packages. So, basically, he's full of shit. Bring back the real Duke.