Duke Nukem Forever tops Wired‘s Annual Vaporware List this year again, and seriously, I have to ask: who gives a shit about Duke Nukem? I mean, really?
I’m not just talking about “giving a shit about Duke Nukem” in the sense that it has been years and a lot since Duke Nukem 3D came out (what is it now, thirteen years? Fourteen?). Yes, I know all the Duke Nukem jokes and plays on the word “forever” (HEY GUYS THE GAME IS CALLED “DUKE NUKEM FOREVER” AND IT IS TAKING FOREVER TO COME OUT AMIRITE). I’m talking about the actual value of Duke Nukem itself.
Let’s be blunt: Duke Nukem isn’t particularly cool. The character is just a vehicle for recycling catchphrases from other, better settings – Bruce Campbell one-liners, quips from They Live and other John Carpenter flicks back when John Carpenter was still good, that sort of thing. The “attitude” is the product of a more conservative time, back when the original Grand Theft Auto was scandalous (imagine what people back then would have thought of Grand Theft Auto IV), when any minor dig at authority seemed like total and utter rebellion. “Eat shit and die” is not particularly clever.
And the game itself was pretty average, warmed over Doom 2 with a few minor tweaks and shittier weapons. The fact that you could flush the toilets and ogle a highly pixelated stripper didn’t make the game good. It made the game a little grimier, and to the authenticity-starved world of computer gaming in the mid-1990s, I can understand that this almost seemed like the same thing. But we’re nearly fifteen years later now; surely we understand that just a few swears isn’t a big deal any more, right?
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I had thought that Wired had given Duke the Vaporware Lifetime Achievement award and removed it from further contention, but I guess not.
STICK IT UP YOUR ASS
Oh man, nostalgia goggles are great. I downloaded 3D to play a while back, and it was TERRIBLE but I had a lot of fun anyway because I was a 13 year old kid again for about half an hour. So I’m probably going to like it anyway because I am a tasteless boychild when it comes to games I played as a kid. For at least half an hour.
Also my sister was in a Duke Nukem Forever pisstake video for a parody group, and the episode – and group – are so bad that one of the two clips from it they use for the group’s promo trailer is just her saying ‘tits’. I can only preten- er, assume she was talking about ornithology.
Oh, there’s no question. Duke Nukem Forever, the absentee phenomenon, has by now so totally eclipsed any actual interest in a Duke Nukem game or character that honestly, putting out an actual game would be downright mean of them. It’s much more interesting as a running gag on vaporware than any actual Duke Nukem game could ever be.
I assume everyone has seen this list?
http://duke.a-13.net/
Awww, I thought by the title of the blog post that you were going to talk about the planned “They Live” remake.
I always thought that Duke Nukem was a parody of the cliched 80’s one liner spouting action hero. Exagerated to ubsurdity. The game itself was good for its time. I bought it on XBLA a couple of months ago, and while parts of it have aged very badly (the distortion of the fake 3d effect when you look up or down is horrendous, the strippers which were edgy and awesome when I was 13 are now mainly just faintly embarressing) its actually still quite a fun game with some decent level designs. A lot of the levels had more than one possible path through them (even if it was as simple as using the jetpack to bypass parts of the game).
I dont know how much of my enjoyment was tinted by nostalgia, but to be honest I enjoyed Duke 3D, and if Forever came out tomorrow I would at least give the demo a look.
Shuma-Gorath.
http://fullbodytransplant.wordpress.com/2008/12/30/vintage-playstation-endings/
That is all.
Am I the only one who has fond memories of Duke Nukem 1 and 2? Who thought Duke Nukem 3D was the weakest of the franchise?
Ah well…
You’re not alone, sonofzeal. I recently replayed the first episode of DN2 (and marveled at how much of it I remembered), then played the first stage of DN1, and enjoyed both thoroughly. I also downloaded DN3D and realized that it hadn’t aged well, and that I now found the character of Duke quite obnoxious.
There’s nothing they can do now that would justify the approaching-12-years of development time it’s taken. I was also disappointed that the enemies are going to be the same as 3D – Duke 1 had Dr Proton, Duke 2 had the Rigelitans, Duke 3 had those other aliens, but now the 4th major installment looks to be just a rehash of the 3rd one.
THANK YOU. You’ve said everything about Duke Nukem that I’ve always felt, but only occasionally felt roused enough to say.
I especially agree with the “warmed over Doom 2 with a few minor tweaks and shittier weapons” part. When a friend first showed me the game years ago, and said I should get it, I just said I already had all the Doom versions, and none of them had that stupid face at the bottom, so why would I bother? He said some crap about the jokes and character, and I just said I had other sources than games for that kind of thing.
Yeesh. Some hard criticism here for what was, in it’s time, a really fun game. Sure some of it’s outdated now, what game over 10 years old isn’t now outdated in graphics and concepts? And yeah Duke Nukem was just a Ash ripoff, but that was the point.
Also Duke 3D was the first game to integrate more adult themes into a commercial videogame, of which it copped a lot of criticism from people who now probably hail GTA 4 as a masterpiece.
I’d buy DK Forever if it came out tomorrow. But it’s not ever coming out, it is now really the definition of vapourware
Busting on Duke Nukem is like busting on [comic company editor in chief] for raping comic book characters. That’s all.
You’re making too much of the atmosphere of Duke Nukem. That added a certain spice but it really had very little to do with why the game was such a hit. It was the gameplay that made it so memorable.
I used to get together every week with a group of gamers at the time and we took up the new-fangled hobby of networked first person shooter games. We played everything that came out, and Duke Nukem was always a favourite.
It had probably the best set of weapons I’ve ever seen for a game. Every single gun was useful, fun, and tactically different. Even the basic pistol had certain advantages and could fairly easily score kills.
It was the first game I remember where you had to actually aim vertically (Doom aimed automatically). It had really fun powerups that contributed to game balance. For example, the adreneline would not only make your character speed up, it would counter the effect of the shrink ray. And the shrink ray itself was fun. It was always hilarious to shrink people and them step on them. That hadn’t been done before either.
So don’t sell the game short. It was a cutting-edge true classic for its time that contributed to the game play of every game in its genre that came later. You seem to be attacking fans for liking the game only for superficial reasons, but it’s pretty clear to me that it’s your own memories that are superficial here.
What it boils down to is that you have no idea how amused games writers are by Duke Nukem Forever at this point. It’s our silly running gag.
I’VE GOT BALLS
BALLS
BALLS
BALLS
BALLS OF STEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEL