Duke Nukem ForNever

Although in some instances we have strayed, the original intent of this blog was to discuss the trends and lessons in gaming and the development of games. This was because I do not expect readers to have played EVERY game. Nor for them to be too interested in the game we have to discuss as a case study, but rather for them to understand the concept at hand and filter it through their own previous experiences and then apply it towards future experiences, hopefully for the betterment of all gaming, and potentially, humanity. In this way, I'm not interested in telling you all the ways Duke Nukem Forever was terrible as a game, but rather, to tell you why it was bad as a concept of a modern game, or anything marketable.

Last year, when I heard about the impending arrival of DNF (and not the dozens of false alarms before), I was unimpressed. DNF was a zombie, being raised from the dead to prove a point: that what could not be made, finally was. But the highlights end there. I knew that this game would be hollow and incapable of impressing from that instant onwards. As I discussed with my friends that they shouldn't look for a blown-away experience, they responded that they sought nothing more than to own the legendary, nay, mythical title for its posterity.

It's unreasonable to expect that this shoddy production was to achieve little more than to end one of the greatest vaporware jokes in history, but what was reasonable? When I reflect back on my childhood, Duke wasn't even a big deal to me then. He was badass, but rather thin in terms of personality beyond that. I played him as an Apogee sidescroller, where he carried tons of guns and killed all sorts of aliens. Who really cared beyond that anyway? Then he got a FPS game, but honestly, people loved it because of how ridiculously wacky and broken it was (and perhaps the way it pushed the limits of censorship, or lack thereof). At least the gameplay was smooth and the controls were crisp though, which was a lot more than what I could say for DNF, which tried too hard to give that realistic clunkiness feeling. DNF shouldn't have tried at all to be like that, since it was NEVER like that. It was more in line with Serious Sam, which was an acceptable game, but the developers obviously wanted to accomplish more with the franchise, including the part where they make a ton of money and spawn a new set of sequels.

I'm not sure how to break it to them... But Duke wasn't really that great back then either. We just had a poor frame of reference. Surely, we'll find that Modern Warfare won't be so hot in another 15 years... Oh wait, I already feel that way 3 months after it released. =_= Sometimes, we have to take a good hard look at games we feel nostalgic about, and really consider if they were actually genuinely good experiences that can stand the test of time. Only then can they be true classics, and only then, can they be considered reviving.