No boot, linear levels, and two weapon limit killed all of my enthusiasm. I may buy it when it hits the bargain bin just for nostalgia's sake, especially if there is a modding community for the game. There is no way I'm paying full price for this, just no way. I'm not sending that message to the industry.

Played the demo, thought that maybe at bigger dose it will be better.

Hell no. I will just crosspost what someone wrote on Duke4.net forums:

"Played it today on an presentation in electronic market for an hour or so... that's how long took my soul to devour itself.
Duke3d was fast. DNF is slow and clunky.
Duke3d had a realistic levels full of interactive stuff. DNF is a scripted inteactive movie full of quick time events, closed in one room fights and limiting player's abilities every damn time. There is some interactive stuff, but often broken (pinball machine!!!) or making just one appearance. Also, rat in a microwave? Seriously? That's what we call humour now?
Duke3d had lot of weapons and balanced ammo/enemy count, to always make a challenge. DNF wants you to switch weapons every 3 minutes, and actually you need to do it as ammo limit is 1/5 of the one in Duke3d.
Duke3d was a tough, but balanced and fair game. In DNF you can't take more than 3 hits/shots before falling down, so you're constantly hiding. Power armour is for pussies? Then who's hiding behind that crate waiting for his "ego" to refill, douche?
Duke3d could run fluid on my friend's Pentium 100mhz machine, back in 1997. DNF needs quite a lot of time to load a level (on a console... how ironic, considering how much the gameplay was modified to fit those machines!). It's also one of the very few games,. which look better with additional effects turned off.
Duke3d was starring a badass guy, with backapack full of weapons, ammo and gadgets, always willing to deliver a mean kick in the face. In DNF, Duke is a retired douchebag, throwing f***ks and s**ts like a little kid, spewing lines during embarassing dialogues, who can't run 100 meters without asthma attack, hold more than two weapons and few clips to 'em or more than one special item.

DNF is for me a scripted mess of modern shooter cliches slapped together strung together with an awful plot and horrible dialogues, with slow, close-minded and unrewarding gameplay inbetween. I don't want to play it anymore, because I may never want to toouch a first person shooter anymore. I played most of 'em from Wolf3d through ROTT, Duke3d, Quake series, Call Of Duty, Crysis to Halo 2 and what-not in between. And DNF is an overpriced pun for an old, horrible joke."

Save your money for GOG stuff. Anything will be a better purchase. Except maybe Blood 2.

Duke Nukem Forever is GREAT, it's full of jokes and it's really fun to play, it's a fresh breeze compared to the average CoD\Halo stuff they publish nowadays.

Don't credit reviews, the game is awesome and it's full of references to duke nukem 3d. (there's a ball of steel-like working pinball, a billiard table like the one in DN3D, urinals of course and much more).

It's a linear game, you don't roam around that much searching for keycards (there's even a keycard joke about it) but it's very well made, hey, Half-Life 1 and 2 were linear too, and don't dare to say those aren't great.

It's also a challenging game, enemies will teleport behind you and fly around with jetpacks like in the old days, but they got few new tricks too.

It's true that you have that ego bar and only two weapons at time but it's still an awesome game, if you can't get past that "OMG HOW THEY DARE CHANGING THE HOLY DUKE 3D MECHANICS THIS WAY" you'll find the BEST duke nukem game only second to DN3D.

The humor is the same if not better, enemies are just the same ones but with new moves and tricks, the level are never ever boring, you constantly find yourself in a lot of funny set pieces.
The weapons are there, the holoduke is there and now it even has a funny robotic voice shouting one liners, and the levels are FULL of stuff to see and laugh at, from the vending machines to the greek-like amphorae picturing duke saving two chicks from a pigcop.
If you don't want to grab it full price then wait some months or even better get it on gamersgate.co.uk, i took it for something like 33 eur.

I'm really really enjoying it and just not caring about the reviews, as most the reviewers never played Duke Nukem 3D and it's clear when they criticize aspects of the game that are just the same from DN3D.

So in the end, is it a world changing masterpiece? No. Is it a very fun game in the spirit of Duke and the true sequel to DN3D? Hell yeah

I'm at the underwater level at the moment and loving it.

The two weapon thing isn't a big deal to me. There are always multiple weapons lying around, and enemies usually drop their weapons. It just means you have to pay attention to your environment. If anything it makes the game more exciting.

Except for the freeze ray. It sucks.

I'm not a fan of the ego bar, specifically having to interact with objects to increase it. That takes all of the fun out of the interactivity and makes it a chore (especially if you're trying to clear the pool table).

Review-wise, DNF is kind of the perfect storm. People want to hate it. And there are certainly a few things that can be brandished as proof. But it's a fun, solid shooter. It's heavily-influenced by Half-Life 2, and if DNF had come out in 2004, it would've been hailed for its achievements.

If I played more FPS I might have a different take on it. The only ones I've played lately are Portal 2, and Modern Warfare 2. (I did play Redneck Rampage and Postal 2 a bit via GoG, but that doesn't count).

My only real issue is that the game doesn't run that well on my PC. It pauses here and there, and I've had a few slowdowns. I didn't have these issues with the games I mentioned above, and they were a bit prettier.

I could go on, but I'll save that for some other time.

runs smoothly at 1920x1280 on my pc, with FSAA and everything, and even if it doesn't look like crysis it's definitely not bad looking, let's say it does his job.
Enemies and npcs aren't bad at all and the environments even if not jaw dropping are clearly constructed, there's a very good level design and style going on, a lot of care was spent lying funny stuff around, like posters, magazines (Duke 3d anyone?) and other objects depending on the setting. Levels are quite various too and you just don't expect what you're going to see next.

Reviewers giving it 2.5 or 3/10 votes ar just total assholes, the game has it's flaws but it's not Big Rigs, they're giving it such low scores only to troll

I finished it up today.

I guess I need to start thinking about upgrading my PC. Any kind of fog or haze effects would slow things down. But even running it on lower settings I didn't think it looked bad at all.

Watching the gameplay trailers was especially fun. It's amazing how different the story was versus what it wound up being. The development timeline was also interesting.