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Hailinel

I wrote this little thing (it's not actually a little thing): http://www.giantbomb.com/profile/hailinel/blog/lightning-returns-wha...

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The Death of Duke Nukem: For the Best?

By Hailinel 1 Comments

With 3D Realms having shuttered its doors, there's still the possibility that Duke Nukem Forever could be sold to another developer to bring its long and extensive development cycle to an end.  With that in mind, I have to wonder.  If the game never comes out, would people actually miss it?

The now irrelevant (and actually kind of dopey looking) parody of masculinity.
The now irrelevant (and actually kind of dopey looking) parody of masculinity.
Duke Nukem 3D was an excellent game with a goofy sense of style (though it was a style that cribbed heavily from films like They Live and Army of Darkness).  That really can't be denied.  But, well, the game came out well over a decade ago.  I was still in high school when 3D Realms began work on DNF, and now I'm working forty hours a week with a salary.  Just as an individual's tastes can change as they mature, so has the landscape of the game industry.  In 1997, Duke was an absurd take on masculinity, with big muscles, big guns, and hot girls with big...well, you get the idea.

The problem here is that so many games have come and gone with characters and themes that have not only emphasized at least what some parts of what Duke Nukem games were about, but that have taken them to their utmost extreme.  Duke Nukem Forever was in development for so long that other characters have come along and out-Duked him, seemingly making him the punchline to his own joke.  The Gears of War series stars over-muscled meatheads with biceps larger than their skulls killing hordes of aliens.  Kratos is for all intents and purposes, a more serious, perpetually pissed off take on Duke, reveling in bloody carnage while taking time for the occasional threesome minigame.  Team Ninja's Dead or Alive and Ninja Gaiden titles have pretty much taken the concept of overly sexualized women about as far as one can reasonably go without earning an AO rating.  Formerly plotless (or relatively plotless) blargh-kill-kill-kill FPS series like Quake, Wolfenstein and Doom have all seen sequels that have at least tried to put more effort into narratives that require more than a single brain cell to understand.  Then there's Valve and all that they've accomplished in the FPS genre while 3D Realms kept running back to the drawing board.

So what does Duke have left that separates him from the pack?  A blond flattop and one-liners stolen from popular B-movies.  Not exactly what one could call a powerful arsenal in this day and age.

Everything that Duke represented has been done better by others in the years since.  So again, if Duke Nukem Forever never comes out, would anyone actually miss it?  If it ever does come out, who would care for it, aside from those that would buy it simply to be in on the long-running joke?
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Hailinel

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Edited By Hailinel

With 3D Realms having shuttered its doors, there's still the possibility that Duke Nukem Forever could be sold to another developer to bring its long and extensive development cycle to an end.  With that in mind, I have to wonder.  If the game never comes out, would people actually miss it?

The now irrelevant (and actually kind of dopey looking) parody of masculinity.
The now irrelevant (and actually kind of dopey looking) parody of masculinity.
Duke Nukem 3D was an excellent game with a goofy sense of style (though it was a style that cribbed heavily from films like They Live and Army of Darkness).  That really can't be denied.  But, well, the game came out well over a decade ago.  I was still in high school when 3D Realms began work on DNF, and now I'm working forty hours a week with a salary.  Just as an individual's tastes can change as they mature, so has the landscape of the game industry.  In 1997, Duke was an absurd take on masculinity, with big muscles, big guns, and hot girls with big...well, you get the idea.

The problem here is that so many games have come and gone with characters and themes that have not only emphasized at least what some parts of what Duke Nukem games were about, but that have taken them to their utmost extreme.  Duke Nukem Forever was in development for so long that other characters have come along and out-Duked him, seemingly making him the punchline to his own joke.  The Gears of War series stars over-muscled meatheads with biceps larger than their skulls killing hordes of aliens.  Kratos is for all intents and purposes, a more serious, perpetually pissed off take on Duke, reveling in bloody carnage while taking time for the occasional threesome minigame.  Team Ninja's Dead or Alive and Ninja Gaiden titles have pretty much taken the concept of overly sexualized women about as far as one can reasonably go without earning an AO rating.  Formerly plotless (or relatively plotless) blargh-kill-kill-kill FPS series like Quake, Wolfenstein and Doom have all seen sequels that have at least tried to put more effort into narratives that require more than a single brain cell to understand.  Then there's Valve and all that they've accomplished in the FPS genre while 3D Realms kept running back to the drawing board.

So what does Duke have left that separates him from the pack?  A blond flattop and one-liners stolen from popular B-movies.  Not exactly what one could call a powerful arsenal in this day and age.

Everything that Duke represented has been done better by others in the years since.  So again, if Duke Nukem Forever never comes out, would anyone actually miss it?  If it ever does come out, who would care for it, aside from those that would buy it simply to be in on the long-running joke?