To be honest, I think everyone and anyone involved in this situation is in the wrong. Yes, the opinion surrounding reviews of Duke Nukem are overwhelmingly negative, and there are quite a few legitimate reviews out there that outline exactly what flaws are in the game. Then there are legions of overly-privileged individuals, who, much like Redner, shoot their mouths off out of a purely emotional response to being let down by a game that took 12 years to develop, suffered numerous setbacks, and changed hands more often than dirty money. I think it can be hard for people to fathom that DNF was supposed to be released before, or just a little after, the turn of the millennium, and tastes have changed. The main problem I see people having with this game is the use of jokes that Duke uses, and the overall machismo involved in the game itself. They forget that its a really, really old concept, and had it got the care all games deserve, we wouldn't be in this situation right now. 
 
I'm not saying that reviewers are wrong, I think everyone has a right to say what they want, and rip a new asshole in any game that they think truly deserves it. But it really has to be done in context to the games background and original setting. Duke is a freaking old game, and people expected way too much out of a game that is basically a parody of itself. It's a dated game, but can anyone really blame it? I'm not disagreeing that the game doesn't deserve bad scores either, if it isn't worth the money you pay for it, then you have every right to think its crap.
 
Granted I don't back the dumbass decision to tweet his mood swings, but I can understand what he was saying. Some games deserve a good, old fashioned slamming: Two Worlds, Mindjack, FFXIII, DA2, off the top of my head would deserve nothing but shit from what they brought to the table, in recent years, when the technology and expectations of games are at an all time high. Now look at DNF...it was created years before we had these advances, and left to collect dust, only to have modern ideas grafted to it like a grotesque array of alien limbs, and instead of pitying the poor bastard, we're beating it with sticks, we aren't trying to save it, we aren't letting it die. Everything about this situation just screams 'wrong' to me, it makes me uncomfortable to think that games that are stale and repetitive get great scores because they have a brand established on them, which people flock to, but as soon as a game that has had a shitty life story gets released, oh dear god, we have to kill it with fire, we have to fire people who get angry because of an unending stream of harsh and unfair expectations towards a game that we should be thankful for coming out at all, at least, in the view of the developers.
 
This makes me uncomfortable, because this is the route gaming is taking. We give generic FPS' *cough* Call of Duty *cough* 5 star, 10/10 ratings, but are they really any different to Duke Nukem? Aren't they just as stale and dated in ideas, moreso of a punishable offense as they've had a shorter run, and dev cycles than DNF? I think a lot of people have a severe double standard, and, although DNF may not have been the best of games out there, I still think that in the grand scheme of things, it may be held up against many of today's games, and shed just a little light on their production value, showing us just how eerily they really are. That's what I'm hoping anyway. We might get a damn gaming Renaissance after that. Or so says my wishful thinking.

Sounds like Mr Redner needs a way to cheer himself up...perhaps he could fire up Duke Nukem Forever and throw some poo around!

Last sentence of the update is why I will continue using Giant Bomb as a paid member.

Who would have thought this was a good idea?

PR guy losing his cool. That doesn't happen publicly often.

@habibyjohnson said:

Well I for one agree with this guy. The review on this website and others, did seem to be unnecessarily harsh. The game certainly isn't perfect, but it also wasn't terrible. I really think the reviews are overly negative and overly nitpicky about stupid things. Such as complaining about the typical Duke humor being too over-the-top, well what the hell did you expect, and since when did you become so sophisticated. Complaining about lack of originality, when this kind of complaint goes unheard in reviews of Call Of Duty and other tired FPS's. And complaining about overstated graphical issues. Sure load times are horrendous (that is really its biggest flaw) and there a few frame-rate problems, but besides that it actually looks very nice. Not really sure why that overly negative attitude exists. I think if it wasn't called "Duke Nukem Forever" it would have gotten far more positive reviews.

If it wasn't called Duke Nukem Forever it would have been Matt Hazard, except not a parody of itself, and that game got poor reviews as well.

If there's someone I feel sorry for in all this, it's everyone who works at the Redner Group besides the one person who made the ill-advised tweet. Sucks for them to lose out on what's probably a very lucrative client just because one idiot shot his mouth off.

You guys should have a ticker or something on the front page when you don't get a review copy early. Not that it's shameful...but yes, use it to shame people.