Duke Nukem Forever: Irreverent or Irrelevant?

by Levi Buchanan - IGN.com | 09 February 2011 12:00
 
Gearbox strives to complete the original vision of 3D Realms.
 
Whether Gearbox likes it or not, Duke Nukem Forever does not exist in a vacuum. Gaming did not stand still for over a decade, waiting for the zigzagging Duke Nukem Forever saga to come to this unexpected conclusion: after 12 years of troubled development at 3D Realms, the project is finally being finished by Gearbox, the studio behind the acclaimed Borderlands. Since 1997, when Duke Nukem Forever was revealed, little things like Halo and Call of Duty (even Gearbox's own Brothers in Arms) have redefined the shooter many times over.
 
And it seems like Duke Nukem Forever ignores almost every innovation and advancement pioneered by those and several other big-name shooters of the last decade.
 
This is, according to Gearbox president Randy Pitchford in an interviewing following a 90-minute play session at a Duke Nukem Forever preview event, entirely on purpose. The goal was to complete 3D Realms' original vision, offering up Duke Nukem Forever not just as a love letter to the rollercoaster ride of Duke's development cycle, but also as a throwback to The Way We Were-style video gaming. But the question remains if whether or not sticking to a formula that worked so well in the nineties works today, or if Duke Nukem Forever is now irrelevant instead of irreverent
 

Duke versus mothership

Duke Nukem once flourished because the gung-ho attitude of its hero was so over-the-top it came right back down the other side. Riffing with lines lifted from the Evil Dead film series and obsessed with women, Duke was a successful send-up of Hollywood action heroes and thick-necked video game super soldiers. Duke Nukem Forever maintains that tone, but too much has changed in the last decade, including storytelling in video games, for this singular approach to still be effective.
 
Sex jokes fly fast and hard in Duke Nukem Forever (such as where a woman would like to place a pint-sized Duke after he's zapped by some sort of shrink device), but with so many barriers broken down in games, it lacks punch. It's like tuning into a mid-1990s Howard Stern broadcast. Now, getting bent at Duke Nukem Forever for puerile humor is as pointless as raging at a porno for bad acting. But there is a risk in relying too much on this kind of look-at-me spectacle, especially if the creaky humor cannot be backed up by engaging gameplay.
 
There are signs of this during the opening acts of Duke Nukem Forever. I particularly liked the replacement of a health meter with Duke's ego. To increase this meter and survive longer in firefights, you must engage in ego-stoking activities like signing autographs and benching serious weights. That's clever and very much in keeping with the spirit of Duke. I also enjoyed some of the puzzle-solving, like taking control of an RC car to push an energy core out of a locked room while looking through a window, or adjusting the position of a Duke statue so I could climb up it and scale a casino interior. I appreciate Gearbox placing puzzles like these in Duke Nukem, and dealing away with inanity like juggling colored key cards and calling it puzzle-solving.
 
But the main activity – shooting – left me cold. Too many early shooting sequences funneled Duke into an enclosed space and left him firing away at enemies without any real rhythm, such as a scene where Duke has to protect his babes from aliens storming into an atrium. Enemies just drop in through the ceiling and zip around on jetpacks, disappearing and reappearing at random. There's no push and pull, no tension. It's just laying on the trigger shooting to get through a scene.
 

Here's the plan, boys.

And as a reminder of how dated shooting scenes like this are, when I used zoom to target an alien that came to a brief pause above me, no ironsights appeared whatsoever. The camera just zoomed in a little. How useful is that? The reason almost every shooter now uses ironsights is because it genuinely helps line up a good shot. That's a perfect example of a strange exclusion of post-1997 innovations.
 
Pitchford also mentioned to me in an interview that he was purposefully turning away from the big set pieces that punctuate games like Call of Duty and Halo. What that leaves behind, though, is just a string of shooting scenes like the one described above. Walk into a room, pop a few aliens, and move on. Big set pieces, when done correctly, inspire big emotions and it's become pretty clear gamers enjoy these giant narrative spikes. Instead, in the demo, Duke Nukem Forever slows things down with a too-long scene where shrunk-down Duke steers a toy car through a crumbling casino.
 
I'm not suggesting Gearbox shoehorn Duke Nukem into the Call of Duty formula because, well, there are plenty of games utilizing that bag of tricks. But the universe of Duke Nukem lends itself quite well to major set pieces, something only hinted at in the first 90 minutes with a very brief scene where you must shoot down an alien mothershp with a turret on top of Duke's casino. (Nice touch: as the mothership crumbles, Duke raises a triumphant middle finger.) Sticking to such an old-school rhythm threatens to make Duke Nukem Forever only relatable to a small group of older gamers that approach it with a sense of history. A gamer that has never picked up a Duke game prior to Duke Nukem Forever may be bewildered.
 
Duke Nukem Forever is still on course for its May release. Between now and then, Gearbox will open up on multiplayer, which is expected to be a major part of Duke Nukem Forever. I'm curious to see what Gearbox does with online considering its ample experience in multiplayer. Will that half of Duke also stick to its 1997 roots, or could we see a healthier dose of innovation creep into Duke Nukem Forever there?
 
Supplied by IGN.com