Oh Duke. How we used to love your smartass tough-guy image. We all remember your Schwarzenegger-esque style and appearance, but with an even more biting edge to you. We loved your series of simple mindless shooters and waited with deep anticipation for your triumphant return. While we waited to battle hog men and aliens, you battled publishers in court. All the while this was happening, the world of gaming was continuing to go on without you and evolve. Now it’s 2011 and we’re expected to have the same level of enthusiasm this summer when you finally return that we had when you were supposed to appear in a new title in the 1990s. We don’t.
History has taught us that games like Duke Nukem Forever end up disappointing like no other. Does Too Human ring a bell? Xbox 360 fans got that exclusive from Silicon Knights after years of the game bouncing from platform (PS1) to platform (Gamecube)… *deep breath* to platform (Xbox 360), and while it offered some interesting play, it failed to live up to the hype it built up. Too Human was like a snow ball that rolled down Mount Everest, all the time growing larger and larger, only to have the impact of a snowflake once released. Duke Nukem Forever is poised to do the same.
The Duke we once knew and loved has devolved, which is astounding when you consider the caveman style of humor the game was known for. The latest publisher – 2K Games, the fourth since the game was announced fourteen years ago, is resorting to novelties like the promotional "Balls of Steel Edition". Videos of the game have shown it to be little more than a generic shooter packed with sophomoric humor. The cheesey “Capture the Babe” mode seems more like a desperate attempt to drum up publicity by getting advocacy groups to acknowledge and mention the game by name.
Will Duke Nukem return in some sort of epic shooter that makes us wish it had arrived sooner? We really doubt it. History isn’t on Duke’s side. Honestly, we think gaming would be better off with Duke Nukem Forever remaining some kind of mythical game that never releases. There’s always a chance that could happen since we’ve been close to release before and haven’t seen the game yet. If you remember back to 2000, Gearbox was the same developer that canceled Half Life (with the Blue Shit add-on) for the Sega Dreamcast after guide books and walkthroughs were already being sold to gamers at retail.
Can Duke live up to fourteen years of hype and development?
Comments
okay, maybe YOU don't, but i do, your judging a game based on simplistic and "un-modern" gameply, look at half-life 2, an amazing game with great characters and story, excluding the excellent use of physics, its basically the same gameplay, simple, but it breaks up the noise through pacing, which is something Duke 3D perfected, and is also present in DNF, and it also has character, Duke Nukem is more interesting than a thousand different "bald space-marines" and Mario's, he is crude but so full-of-himself that it's brilliant in its own way for being a parody of our own world. you guys can go enjoy some more COD and Halo clones, but i'm playing something original.
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