The Apocolypse Is Nigh

[Cloral]

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2010/09/03/controversial-long-awaited-duke-nukem-forever-will-finally-be-released/

[DarkFlameWolf]

as long as they can release it prior to December 2012. :P

[Beldaran]

Bull fucking shit. I will believe this game is out when I see it on my desk. Otherwise, no fucking dice. I've been hearing "will finally be released next year" since I was a junior in high school and I'm currently a 28 year old married man. Fuck that stupid game.

[rock_nog]

At least for once, there's video of actual gameplay associated with it... That's a huge step up, in my books. Yeah, obviously, it seems ridiculous to believe this thing might actually one day see the light of day, but whatever.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Rkt4ij_a-k

[*b*]

Never played a Duke Nukem game, ever. But if this is true, I might just have to play it, simply so I can say I played the game that never came out.

[DarkFlameWolf]

well as those who know my works, I've made stuff for the original Duke 3d. So I'm most likely going to get this when it comes out. If I'll be making levels for this game, probably not. Its hard enough trying to learn the current level builders for these shooters, they are so damn complicated these days.

[AtmaWeapon]

In the end, I don't think this is a good idea.

Duke Nukem Forever is a thing of legends; a huge part of gaming history that, while unreleased, represents a very interesting tale of a studio managing to lead along investors for decades before running out of cash. It's also a great cautionary tale to studios that set out to set the bar in their industry: if someone beats you to it it's best to release what you've got rather than start over.

I think DNF is going to sell really well at this point and represent a general commercial success for its current license holders; the people working on it now don't have nearly as much money invested in it as the previous investors had. But I don't think it's going to have the staying power to re-launch the franchise that DN really needs. When Duke 3D was released, it was a great technical achievement. It predated Quake by a few months, giving it the ability to claim it was the only 3D FPS available. Even after Quake released and the 3D FPS became standard, Duke 3D held its ground well. Level design was great, and clever interactivity made the environments more memorable. It was an excellent example of a gaming company pushing the bar higher. The parody and raunchy content was second to this: Duke 3D was a groundbreaking game.

I feel like, from what I've seen, DNF is going to show up with little more than the parody and raunchy content. The gameplay videos I've seen don't look like there's anything impressive going on. "Oh, but you press right trigger to pee!" Yeah, that's innovation. Wait, no it's not, it's an example of "push button to advance plot", the great-uncle of a QTE! I don't think "he says a bunch of bad words" is a good platform on which to differentiate your FPS these days; there's tons of games with profanity already on the market and the 12-18 year old demographic that Duke originally appealed to is busy simulating wars and providing their own colorful commentary over voice chat. Topless women in games isn't controversial anymore. Exploding enemies and gore aren't controversial anymore. Extraordinarily macho protagonists are definitely underrepresented in modern gaming, but I'd like to think it's because people are growing tired of playing a testosterone-fueled misogynist and want protagonists with more depth than a Miley Cyrus character. What's Duke going to bring to the table to push the envelope, fart jokes? Racial slurs? Beavis and Butthead-level double entendres? Duke pioneered this stuff and surely inspired tons of the shows I had to sneak to watch as a kid, but it takes real talent to make tasteless humor art and I'm not sure Duke's still got it. Considering how little new ground the game is promising to break in the FPS genre, I'd rather pay $10 for a CD with the one-liners on it and save myself the 6-10 hours of mediocre shooter.

DNF should have launched 10 years ago when the market still wanted it. Now it's just living off of the "we're releasing the legend" hype and I'm suspicious it'll fail to deliver anything you can't get from titles in the used/bargain bin.