In 1997, the video game world was a bit of a different place than it is today. Blizzard was just releasing Diablo on the PC, which would become one of their best loves RPG series and not only spawn a sequel complete with an expansion pack, but also spiritual successors in the form of titles like Torchlight. Goldeneye 007 infiltrated its way onto the Nintendo 64 to lauded acclaim from just about every single critic who happened to play it – and for good reason – at the time it was an amazing game. Activision acquired Raven Software, which would produce Singularity a bit over a decade later. Bungie Studios West was formed out of Bungie studios, years before Halo would ever arrive on the Xbox and industry great Gunpei Yokoi was killed in a traffic accident. But of all these things, nothing has such terrible notoriety as the announcement of Duke Nukem Forever being in development. The pleasure of announcing the game went to 3D Realms director George Broussard, one of the original hands involved in the Duke Nukem series. The game was suppose to change everything and remind us above all else, why Duke Nukem was one of the greatest video game characters to ever grace a digital game space.
Slowly though the game slipped from being released by the end of the millennium to sometime in early 2001, by then it was stated publicly that the game would arrive at retail, “when it’s done”. Despite rumors of spending a fair amount of time in Development Hell, it didn’t help matters at all when it came to light in May of last year that 3D Realms was downsizing due to financial reasons, effectively capitulating the game’s development team. Shortly thereafter, rumors began slipping that the game was to go gold any day now, much to the continued amusement of the gaming community at large who by now considered Duke Nukem Forever to be the punch line to a joke no one bothered to tell anymore. Leaked assets that could only be described as bullshots of a product that many anticipated would never see the light of day circulated on the internet to the chagrin of a few faithful gamers clinging to the deliverance that Duke would bring them. And earlier this month, on September 3rd at PAX, it was made public that Gearbox Software would pick up the mess that this game had become and finish what 3D Realms couldn’t. While many of the hands-on accounts of the game have reinforced the amazement that DNF simply exists in a playable form – it stands to reason that a lot of it is simply nostalgic shock.
It’s like hearing about the Lost City of Gold, The Fountain of Youth or a f-cking unicorn and finding out that they actually exist. But for a game that was initially created over a decade ago, the world is a vastly different place. Gamers expect vastly different things. And frankly, it seems like now more than ever, Duke Nukem is still the same one trick pony he ever was. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure there are tons of people who are going to flock to play this game, if for no other reason than to confirm the existence of something that had long since been believed to fall off the radar. Other however, will most likely have moved on to bigger and better games that have been created in the interim of Forever’s understandably ridiculous development cycle. After all, how can you hold on to the hope of playing a game that was torn down and redone every couple of months because it seemed to developers that their game wasn’t big enough or good enough. A simple glance at the FPS market will tell you how things have shifted as far as FPS titles are concerned. Halo, Killzone and Call of Duty are the biggest First Person Shooters available to the gaming community right now and anyone who will have a burning desire to play some more Duke after all these years is just yearning to fondly remember their days in college.
Look at the only other major competitor that was close to Duke Nukem at the time and you’ll find Doom. Doom 2 proved to be as memorable as the first with a few minute changes, but Doom 3 despite being a leap forward technologically wasn’t the same game people had grown up with knowing and loving. Suffice to say, thanks to the damn flashlight mechanic – it was the most beautiful game that you couldn’t see. At all. Since then, id has moved on to the next great thing – Rage – leaving Doom and Quake to wallow in the dust. That’s just how things go as time changes. More or less, Duke is nothing more than a misogynistic pig, pretty much on par with the disgusting aliens he’s perpetually trying to kick ass unto – thanks to his forever being out of bubble gum. His red-blooded, all-American douchbagery encapsulates the worst qualities of the male sector of our species and if kept intact from his previous adventures of slaughter and stripper patronage, is absolutely embarrassing in this day and age. To the people who “Always Bet on Duke” and believe I’m simply hating on a ‘beloved’ video game character. Duke Nukem is like the old college buddy who was in the same frat as you. Except, when you moved on to get a career, have a life and do all the cool things you wanted to do – he still goes back to sit on the couch at the frat house during pledge week.
It’s pretty pathetic than an archaic game character such as Duke Nukem, who is so positively ridiculous that anything other than apathy towards him is immeasurably difficult, can even exist in this day and age. Where other FPS titles, despite being relatively contrived, attempt to have solid narratives – Duke tosses all that out the window for the sake of scraping aliens off his boot and seeing tits. It’s the type of machismo gameplay that makes it all the more difficult to be a gamer – not just because of a hackney douche of a main character – but because it ultimately has little if any redeeming value. So, if you’re excited for Duke’s long awaited return, good on you, because you’re braver in having such a significant lack of taste than I could ever possibly dare broach upon. You can have your aliens and tits – in the meantime – I can actually enjoy something thought-provoking like Bioshock or Killzone. While I’m glad that there are going to be developers, artists, coders and producers all garnering a paycheck as a result of working on this game, I never said I had to applaud the subject matter. Frankly, I could have been perfectly happy knowing that this trite bit of fuckall would never see the light of day.
