10 Video Games That Put Fans In Denial
7. Duke Nukem Forever
When a game spends 15 years in development, it's either going to be really good or really bad - and more often than not, it's the latter case.
Despite all signs pointing to Duke Nukem Forever being a mess, fans were nevertheless excited to see the game, nicknamed "Duke Nukem Taking Forever," finally released.
And when it eventually hit stores, there was considerable denial among fans, who suddenly had to ask of the creaky gameplay and cringe-worthy narrative - isn't the game supposed to be bad?
Well, not really. The better Duke Nukem games were genuinely well-crafted first-person shooters, while Duke himself served as a parody of the prototypical action movie protagonist.
But 3D Realms made depressingly little effort to move the game or Duke with the times, and so in addition to the woefully dated shooter gameplay, Duke himself came across as a lame meathead - the quietly desperate 35-year-old man who keeps hanging out with the college kids.
Duke Nukem Forever probably needed to be something akin to 2016's Doom - a self-aware reinvention of the series that nevertheless updated the core formula for modern tastes.
Instead, it was off-brand genre slop that genuinely left fans wondering whether Duke had always been this bad, and whether this was actually the point of the game.
Despite what its defenders might tell you, no, it wasn't.