I played this for the first time in 2020. Is it a terrible game? No. Is it a remarkably good game? Also no. The graphics are incredibly dated even by 2011 standards. I mean compare it to something like Uncharted and its crazy how bad this game looks in comparison. It looks more like an N64 game than a ps3 one. However i had quite a bit of fun through it's first playthrough on the easiest difficulty. It's ok enough and it gives you enough variation and some interesting things to keep it from getting stale or repetitive. I like the minature and driving sections. Then I played it on the hardest difficulty and it's flaws really shined through on that. It's near impossible to ever be precise and you feel how terribly it plays. Your'e constantly getting stuck on doorways leaving yourself exposed, you die incredibly quickly, its impossible to have good aim. If there was no aim assist you would never hit anything. Hitting square to grab ammo doesn't ever work the first try so again you're leaving yourself exposed more. A couple of boss fights in this game were some of the most frustrating experiences I've ever had gaming and will severely test your patience. You couple this experience with it's highly publicized long dev cycle and it suddenly becomes a painfully obvious bad game. It becomes clear why this game was so heavily criticized upon release. There is absolutely no excuse for this game being so bad when it was in development for so long. I'm glad I bought this used for 2.99 instead of buying it new at $60. That made it not so bad for me.

As a sidenote, one wrinkle they could have added to make this game more interesting is leaning into a parody route. The whole game and character should be lampooning the genre yet Duke Nukem is the epitome of the action man hero guy type. It's so over the top that Duke comes off as embarrassing and you feel bad for the guy for how corny and try hard he is in 2020. I've read that Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard is like this where it is a parody of this type of character and genre yet it still got bad reviews. I'm planning on playing that next and will be curious to see what flaws that game has and what it got right.