Duke Nukem Forever Restoration mod releasing first slice this month

After a build of Duke Nukem Forever from 2001 was leaked earlier this year, a modder cohort now calling themselves Mighty Foot Productions quickly assembled to take on the task of reconstructing Duke Nukem Forever as it might have been in a better timeline. They're building on the framework of the leaked version, which was an unfinished build made to demo at E3, and the result looks a lot like the kind of low-budget retro shooter a small studio might make today. In a good way.

According to the latest update, "Current progress has been focused on finishing the polish for the first chapter of the game, 'High Stakes, Lady Killer' and working on a plethora of render and engine fixes alike; with many major and small fixes already developed, such as a proper 'hair fix' and progress on an entirely new renderer for the game in DirectX® 9. Much of the content seen in the E3 trailers and promotional material for the game have been restored, with an all-new story being developed by a story team to bridge the gaps between what we know about the game and what we don't."

That first chapter is set in a casino whose opening night, to be attended by the President and also one Mr. Dukolas Nukemton [check this – Ed.], has been interrupted in violent fashion. Expect a whole lot of neon lights, a showy Las Vegas skyline, and gunfights around a swimming pool and across a rooftop. It's a Duke Nukem game after all, you gotta have a rooftop battle. And some secrets.

This first slice of the Duke Nukem Forever Restoration Project will include a map editor and deathmatch mode. There will be 12 weapons for Duke to play with including pipe bombs, laser tripbombs, a freeze cannon, a flame thrower, and the venerable mighty foot itself alongside more typical options like the pistol, shotgun, and a plain old machine gun. There's also a riot shield, and a visual comparison with the leak showed they were keeping the motorbike sequence so that's something to look forward to.

The enemies include a lot of zombified civilians with alien parasites bursting out of them and regular-looking cops, though there's a brief glimpse of pig cops as well. Here's hoping for more alien enemies rather than just dudes with guns.

We'll have a chance to try it for ourselves when the first slice is available to download on December 21. Check out the project's page on ModDB for more.

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.