Duke Nukem Forever
Skip · Shooter · 2011
Steam Deck VerifiedThe verdict
SKIP IT.
The value isn't there at $4.99.
- Length
- 9.2h
- Value
- $0.54/hr
- Reviews
- 69% positive
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Minimum on the Steam store: 1 GB of memory, nVidia GeForce 7600 / ATI Radeon HD 2600, 10 GB of storage. Runs on Windows, macOS.
The King arrives with an arsenal of over-the-top weapons, giant explosions and pure unadulterated fun!
What drives the score
How to read this
Every input gets a grade, S to D, read from the buyer's side. The score is multiplicative, so an input only counts as raising when it sits near the top of its own scale. Anything with real room left is holding the score back, because that room is the gap to 100. ▲ marks a lift, ▼ a drag or a dock, ? an input we do not have, • a fact this genre's score does not use. The exact weights stay secret.
The value story
The lowest price on record is $2.99, set in July 2017. It has been discounted 93 times in the 14 years tracked here, typically at 75 percent off, with about 6 weeks between sales. Today's $4.99 at 75 percent off still sits 67 percent above the floor, so a deeper cut exists in its history.
Take the discount away and it is a 23. With it, 28.
It is pricier than 79 percent of its genre, and less well reviewed than 71 percent. Duke Nukem 3D: 20th Anniversary World Tour ($1.99, scores 69) outscores it, and so does Borderlands 3 ($5.99, scores 59). Both sit among its closest neighbours.
Steam's global achievement data says about 10 percent of players ever finish it. On a 9.2-hour game, that is a lot of paid-for hours most people never see. This site sampled 800 of its Steam-purchase reviews; 8 were written by buyers who refunded it, sampled from reviews written January 2022 to September 2026. Inside the two-hour refund window, 53 percent of the 980 reviews written there were positive, against 69 percent overall, and those are 15 percent of everything written about it.
The main story runs 9.2 hours. Doing everything runs 22, 2.4 times as long.
Valve rates it Steam Deck Verified, and at 9.2 hours it is short enough to finish on one.
The drop-off
89% start to 10% finishMost players never reach the end. On a 9.2-hour game, that's a lot you pay for and may never use. Steam global achievements
Players
24 players at peak in the last day.
The chart appears once this game has been counted more than once.Player counts via SteamSpy.
What players say
It's time to kick ass and chew bubble gum... and I'm all outta gum From its announcement in 1997 to its official release in 2011, this game underwent a 14-year development cycle. This is also why, when compared to much more polished 2011 releases like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and Battlefield 3, Duke Nukem Forever feels like something made by cavemen. Now to the game itself, I'm genuinely happy that this title...
Good god this game is trash. I try to go fullscreen and all i get is skipping and flickering.
Player reviews from Steam: the most helpful all-time, plus the newest that clear the same quality bar, with the hours each player had put in when they wrote it. The mix of Recommended and Not recommended follows the game's Steam ratio. Rotates daily. Opinions are theirs.
No data upstream: critic score (Metacritic).
Cite this score
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Duke Nukem Forever scores 28/100 on the BANG Score (a skip). The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/57900/duke-nukem-foreverThe BANG Score is one number for value, 0 to 100: price against how it reviews and how long it was built to be. It answers the money question and stops there; whether the game is for you is still your call.
Reviews set the ceiling and price moves you inside it, so a cheap game that reviews badly cannot climb. Ratings from few reviewers are shrunk toward the middle, so 100 percent from nine people does not outrank 96 percent from ninety thousand. Length comes from HowLongToBeat where it can be matched, measured against a per-genre floor so a five-hour narrative game is judged against other narrative games rather than against a sixty-hour RPG. Where no verified length exists the score says so and carries a dock, because the biggest input is then a guess. The full method, including where it is weak → Steam reviews as of Sep 13, price as of Sep 24.
A number here look wrong? Tell me what it got wrong and I will look at the inputs behind it.