12 Hugely Delayed Video Games (That Ended Up Sucking)

2. Duke Nukem Forever

The Delay: Brace yourselves. Duke Nukem Forever began development in 1996 and was announced officially in 1997 with a planned 1998 release date. However, the decision to shift engines several times resulted in the game having to be rebooted repeatedly, causing it to be largely incomplete even in 1999. Despite a well-received trailer shown off at E3 2001, the game was still nowhere near ready, yet because director George Broussard funded the game himself, he was famously able to declare that the game would be ready "when it's done", a phrase which became something of an industry in-joke. By 2003, a late 2004 or early 2005 date was expected. It got to the point where would-be publisher Take-Two Interactive offered Broussard's company 3D Realms an extra $500,000 if they could deliver the game before the end of 2006. In 2007, despite encouragement from those around him, Broussard felt that the game was still two years away from being done. By 2008, funds began to run out, and after negotiations for more money from Take-Two fell through, the game was effectively suspended in May 2009. Through 2009, the game was essentially coded by ex-employees from their own homes, and with an injection of cash from Gearbox (on the conditions that they could port the game to consoles and add multiplayer), the game was finished. A May 2011 release date was announced, though to make gamers despair once more, it was again delayed until the next month, when it finally came out. The Result: The game has been in development for 15 years, and you could really feel that age by playing it. The combat sucks because there's a 2-gun limit, the graphics are supremely outdated, the loading screens are infuriatingly long, and the game just doesn't have the subversive quality that it should have, considering how much the video game landscape had changed since the previous Duke game. It's a game we all wanted to like in spite of our better instincts, but Duke really wasn't worth the wait.