But sometime mid-last year you probably gave up hope, with the news that 3D Realms had bitten the dust and that Duke Nukem forever was pretty much buried in the ground forever you probably reluctantly returned back to playing Duke Nukem 3D for the twenty thousandth time and every now and again looking at this trailer and thinking what could have been.

Well if none of you out there haven’t, I certainly have. I love Duke Nukem, and Duke Nukem 3D has to be one of the best FPS shooters ever made. But to have to wait 13 years for the next FPS installment and then have that very idea taken away from you as the game developers go out of business feels like you have been kicked in the stomach by a rather angry goat.

But as I was scanning IGN.com and Kotaku this morning, a glint of hope has emerged from the libs of both sites. Duke Nukem forever looks like it will finally be finished, and it will finally come out for all keen FPS gamers to play.

Both sites have mentioned that Boarderlands creators Gearbox have taken the half developed game and are planning to put the finishing touches onto it. As 3D realms was sued by the publisher Take-Two May last year for breaching contract with Duke Nukem Forever and then subsequently going bust, the game has been left in an undeveloped pile. So Gearbox have picked up the pieces according to Kotaku and are finalising it.

Of course both Take-Two and Gearbox are remaining tight-lipped about the whole situation, but hell this looks promising. Why? Well this is because Gearbox went ahead and tried to develop a brand new Duke Nukem game called Duke Begins but then were later spotted trying to make the game and taken to court. So we are rest assured that Gearbox really do have a vested interest in the Duke Nukem franchise, making this very strong rumour even stronger.

So when will the official information come to light from both developer and publisher? We are going to be looking at September’s PAX for more info on the game, it has also been said that the demo for Duke Nukem forever could come out as early as this year.

I would be lying if i said i wasn’t just a little bit excited. I am hoping to god that Duke Nukem Forever will be released. So with my fingers crossed, I will be giving you more news as I hear it.

Garv.

Before I dive straight into this review. I would just like to highlight that I have only played this game in single player. This game has been advertised as a co-op game as much as a single player game. But I have found that this game works damn well in single player, and here are my thoughts.

Cunningly dubbed as an RPS (Role Playing Shooter) Boarderlands, like any good game out there, throws you into the story line from the get go, there are four mercenaries, or mercs as they like to be called, on a bus they have just flown into a desolate and baron planet called Pandora to seek out something called the vault. Legend has it the Vault contains advanced alien weaponless with technology so advanced it will blow your mind, or indeed you enemies.

As the bus rolls on you get the choice to choose one of the mercs who have come along for the ride. You have the soldier named Roland, who is your classic, assault rifle and shot gun squaddy who most FPS fans are used to when playing things such as halo, duke nukem, doom, any FPS game under the sun. Then you have Lilth, the siren phase walker, If stealth and speed is your game, this is the chick you wanna be. If sniper rifles and range attacks are more your cuppa you will be be a lot happier playing as Mordecai. But if your a full on FPS guy who loves explosives and ripping people apart with your bare hands then take my advice and choose Brick.

Each of these four characters has a special skill that can be used, the soldier has a deployable turret, the siren can turn invisible and have a great increase in speed, the sniper has a friendly hawk like bird creature that will happily peck enemies eyes out and Brick, well he just goes absolutely nuts with his berserk mode and has an insane increase in melee attack and is slightly invunrable. All these skills last a limited amount of time before they conk out and have to regenerate again. This is your classic FPS gaming element, Quake had it with Quad Damage, Doom had it with Berserk packs and Nukem had it with an array of equipment top use, and for me it never gets old, there is nothing like have a short boost of power to get you out of a sticky situation.

This game does the FPS genre justice. It has the aiming system where you look down the barrel/sight, that we associate with games like Modern Warfare and FEAR. There is a huge amount of weapons to find, make and customize, kind of in the same vein as Bioshock. Hell it also has re-generating shields from the likes of Halo. Speaking of Halo, you remember how the vehicles in that game controlled? Mainly using the left stick to accelerate, reverse etc. Boarderlands uses the same set up here when it comes to it vehicles. So you can see Gear Box has taken inspiration from a lot of First Person Shooter games. I love it when a game developer does its research.

But as you are fully aware this is as much of an RPG game as it is an FPS game. As you can imagine this is a real time combat RPG. When aiming at an enemy you will get his/her/its health and shield bars and what level they are at so if you level 4 and your opponent is level 12. Run away. You are given experience for each kill, each mission you complete and for each of the huge ammo boxes that are hidden and scattered across Pandora. With each level up you gain skill points which you can assign to a skill tree. This skill tree is linked to both your characters special skill and your character his/her self. So if you play the game with the Soldier Roland, such as I did you will get a skill tree linked to you and the scorpion turret. With skill points going towards things like your health and ammo capacity, to your scorpion turrets power and regeneration time. You can also acquire skills that enable your turret to regenerate the players health and shield. So you really can have a good play with what skills you want to assign and how you want your character to grow. You can also customise your character to a curtain extent, by changing his/her colour and name. Its a nice little touch and can be done at any time but as you can probably gather, you can’t customise every aspect of their appearance like you can with say Fallout 3. But you can’t have everything.

Graphically this game takes the cell shaded approach to its visuals. In one word it looks fantastic. It is very stylised and some what refreshing to see the FPS point of view taking on that graphical style. Sure XIII did it back on the original Xbox, but to see a game of this generation do it is nice to see. There is a lot of detail in this game visuals, and really reminds me of the drawing style that graphic novels such as Spawn and The Darkness use. You get bugs and glitches every now and then in this game, but I have come to realise that huge games such as this and fallout. Your not going to get every single bug and glitch out of there because quite frankly, it is just to big.

I never though I would see the day that and FPS and an RPG would get on so well and produce a game such as this. I tried to come up with an FPS, RPG idea in my game design module back in uni and miserably faild. So thanks Gear Box and 2K, This is awesome!

Garv.