Duke Nukem Forever

In a way I kinda wanted the game to be good. i wanted it to get 8.5's across the board, to be accepted in a new generattion as a game that still carried on the Duke Nukem Legacy. I liked the idea of an over the top game.

But really what is Duke's legacy. In a way, at this point he's a caricature of himself. The 1980's action movies that he imitated are now 20-30 years old, the references lost on many gamers now. People old enough to buy M-Rated games weren't yet born when the first Duke Nukem game came out, and were only 2 years old when the last one did. No one has been clamoring for the remakes because they are relics of a past generation. These are games that came out before Google existed. Game mechanics which were new are now completely outdated. Over the top action is now exemplified by the GTA series, whose first game hadn't even been released yet in 1996.

Another problem with the game's over the topness is the way women are portrayed. in the mid 90's a game with a humor style fitted for a pornographic film would have been more accepted, especially since gamers were mostly men. Nowadays, women comprise of a pretty large segment of the gaming population, and just from the trailers you can tell this is going to be bad. The benefit of GTA being around is that even though they use strip clubs and lapdances, women aren't treated in nearly the tawdry way as they are treated by duke. No one cares for a misogynist, especially since games of the last few years have used women as leads and sidekicks and to have a character like this, even in parody sets gaming back quite a few years. In reading reviews of the game, many terms that evoke images of sexual violence are used. Overt jokes and sight gags could get by in the 90's, but nowadays, not as much.

I realize a crux of this post is just me writing "Duke is old". Certain genres carry well over time. Puzzle games carry well over time. Shooters? Not as much. If you want proof of that try playing Goldeneye 64. Great at the time, but not at all now. As you can guess from the post, or already know, Duke has been pretty much universally panned as being awful despite everyone's best hopes. Everyone wanted the game to succeed to the point that Gearbox head Randy Pitchford bought the moribound franchise so that the game could be finished. But alas, it just isn't meant to be.