Of course. If it ever gets released, it will be a giant let down. Nothing they release now, no matter how good, will live up to 14 years of expectations.

I played DNF at PAX. The graphics are a bit dated, but goddamn is it fun. In an era where every shooter has to be hyper-realistic and penned by Tom Clancy himself, Duke is kind of a breath of fresh air.

Second that. Graphics were passable but it was damn fun.

Sure, but I've played games that were incredibly fun and had a tiny (or none at all) budget and were finished in a matter of months.

DNF will have to be very special to make up for the 14 year wait. If people make fun games in 6 months, I'd expect DNF to have a lot more. I still play Genesis games, so graphical flash isn't something I put much value on, usually, but after such a long development time, I'd expect DNF to be at least on-par with the current generation of high end game AS WELL AS being fun and addictive, having replayability, great storyline, physics, AI, dialogue whatever.

So (IMO) my point stands: no matter how great DNF really is, it will never live up to the expectations built up by 1) previous DN games, 2) marketing and hype, 3) the 14 years of development and 4) the amount of money 3D Realms and Gearbox Software put into it. Thats my opinion anyway.

So you've set it up to fail entirely. With all that's happened to Duke Nukem: Forever. I don't think all of those years should be "held against it"; and we should enjoy it for what it will be.

Agreed. Not only that - there's honestly nothing like Duke (old or new) on the market right now. We have a glut of hyper-realistic shooters (CoD, MoH, Halo, Killzone, etc) and just not enough silliness.

That alone is enough to make Duke stand out from the rest I think. I mean, how many games start off with you taking a piss in a urinal, using the right thumbstick to control your aim?

you should try bulletstorm, it has one of these "hyper realistic" graphics, but it surely will remind you of duke

But we were so close this time. We even had demos at a game conference!

Exactly - it's like the movie you play in your mind when you read a good book. No movie you see after that will ever raise to your expectation level.

Lord Of The Rings came pretty close.

Fortunately it works the other way too, c.f. Battlefield Earth

Thats right, having the actual game would break the magic of something you can't have and it's epic