It’s no secret that the jury has been out on Duke Nukem Forever for a long while; most of the critics and most of the fans are markedly unimpressed by Duke’s return to gaming. Of course after about thirteen long years of waiting the game was never going to justify the hype of the king’s most excited enthusiasts, but even discounting those with a slight lack of understanding of the games industry, I’d argue that a lot of the hype surrounding the game was unjustified to begin with.
Now I’m not saying Duke Nukem Forever couldn’t have been a well-received game but many expecting DNF to be a refreshing and thrilling FPS title were expecting that the game could, purely by rekindling the aesthetics and gameplay of Duke Nukem 3D, be an experience that came close to emulating the experience they had with DN3D. The problems with this kind of logic were that A. Many people played this game in their younger years and B. Duke Nukem 3D was very much a game of its time. These are problems which impede the remaking of any classic game beyond a certain age, but in Duke Nukem these issues were only exacerbated because of the game’s focus on the protagonist and the history of the genre since DN3D.
The Character
I understood the game’s marketing making Duke himself the centre of attention, that only made sense, but in the year 2011 a lot of people seemed to be awaiting the resurgence of Duke on the edge of their seats so that they could experience Duke Nukem as a character all over again. When we were younger the hyper-masculine wise-cracking character of Duke appealed to many of us and there’s nothing wrong with that but we’ve grown up, our tastes have evolved, and we just can’t view Duke as we did when we were kids or adolescents.
Many have said that there just isn’t room for a crude, meat-headed character in the year 2011 but I disagree. In a lot of cases meat-headed fun is still a very enjoyable experience and a vulgar thick-headed character could still be a part of that but I’d argue Duke was never that character, and in a full-length game the joke of Duke and his world was only going to go so far. In Duke Nukem 3D the character of Duke was a little more than a collection of amusing voice clips and even some of Duke’s best remembered lines were actually borrowed snippets of dialogue from various films. This was impressive around the time that voice acting and really being able to depict a character was becoming part of games for the first time, but in 2011 blockbuster games have full casts of characters, greatly detailed worlds and sizeable cutscenes. That’s not to say that modern video games are inherently deep or need to be serious affairs but that they require more than a smattering of bad-ass movie lines if you want a game to carry itself heavily on the merits of the protagonist and the universe that they inhabit.
With DNF’s baffling history of development it was difficult to know exactly what the quality of the final product was going to be but I don’t think it was ever reasonable to expect Duke in his traditional form to work as a character in modern times. Mr. Nukem is a character built on his own ego and that means that when he falls, he falls hard, because as much as the denizens of his own world may pledge their undiscerning adoration to him, if he can’t resonate with players he just comes across as kind of sad and douchey, and that certainly seems to be the way many reviewers are treating him.
The Gameplay
Of course it wasn’t just the upcoming return of the aesthetics of Duke Nukem that sparked a child-like expectance in many, but also a promise of gameplay that harked back to the classic shooters of the 90s. The FPS genre is one that has seen huge changes since the time of Duke 3D and with the genre as evolved as it is I believe it’s impossible to have a truly classic FPS game which still works in its entirety modern times. A truly classic game actually doesn’t seem to be what Forever even aimed for in the end, understanding that at least some of the modern mechanics of the FPS genre are there for a reason, but if many fans had their way it would have been a very different story. That doesn’t mean your shooter game has to be littered with CoD and Gears tropes left and right to stand up to modern competition, but the large majority agree that the quality of gameplay takes precedence over every other aspect of a video game and a solely classic Duke experience wouldn’t have been in the interests of quality gameplay for most.
Duder, It’s Over
Hype can be a fantastic thing but it should always be assessed whether it’s simply an irrational emotional rush or it’s built on logical expectations, otherwise you could well be setting yourself up for disappointment.
For many Duke Fans, DNF has not only been an indicator of how much games have grown up (and specifically how FPS games have changed) since the times of Duke 3D, but also how much they as people have grown up. Despite this, I do feel that something inspiring has come out of Duke Nukem Forever. Making a game is hard, making a good game is very hard, but making a game for as long as the people at 3D Realms did is not only hard but it requires some serious dedication and I greatly respect that. I also hold an even greater respect for the small team of people who continued to work on the game from their homes, without pay, so that they could see their creative vision realised. Kudos guys, no matter whether Duke Nukem Forever is a good game or a bad game, you were some of the most dedicated devs around. Good luck, have balls of steel.
-Gamer_152
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