Matt’s Somewhat Serious Bit
Duke Nukem Forever has been the butt of jokes for many years – sometimes deservedly so; I mean I was 13 when the damn game was announced and a lot of things have happened in that time. While some still have faith in the game, many others think that it’ll turn out to be complete tosh. The two teaser trailers of the game that were released in 1998 and 2001 were quite impressive considering the technology they were built on, and what other games were around at the time. It was revealed yesterday that the game is in full production, with 3D Realms head honcho George Broussard revealing that they’re up to the point of tweaking and polishing the game “until it is fun”.
While every site on the Internet is covering that little nugget of news from Garland, everyone glossed over a very big announcement from Take Two Interactive, who will be publishing Duke Nukem Forever when it’s released. In the company’s recent SEC filing, it was revealed that they’ve already coughed up $US4.25M in milestone payments to 3D Realms, with a final payment of $US500,000 payable upon the game’s release “prior to December 31, 2006.” Could this mean that Duke Nukem Forever is actually going to be out this year?
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The best ever Oprah's Book Club
I, for one, still have a slither of anticipation remaining for the game. It’s been a while since 3D Realms have put out a product, and it’ll be interesting to see if they still have what it takes to make a good game. Duke Nukem 3D was something of a revolution for the first person shooter, but I honestly do not believe 3D Realms is capable of raising the bar as they did 10 years ago – that’s not to say that it’s not possible; I’d be delighted if they did, but I think it’s unreasonable to have that sort of level of expectation for the game. In fact, I think at this point it’s really unrealistic to have any sort of expectations for what the game will deliver, since we haven’t seen a damn thing in 5 years.
There are other issues to consider when approaching Duke Nukem Forever. If you’ve ever read Scott Miller’s blog, you’ll notice that the guy walks around with a marketing book shoved halfway up his arse, always using the latest greatest buzzwords, and looking at everything with dollar signs in his eyes. However, if Mr. Miller believes that he is some sort of marketing guru, then he should surely know about the strength of brands, and well…3D Realms has done very little to enhance the strength of the Duke Nukem brand since the release of Atomic Edition – Duke’s been farmed out to various studios for a range of games that feel rather tacky, and diminished in quality with each subsequent release.
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Where do you draw the line between homage and plagiarism?
What about the actual character of Duke? Doesn’t he seem a little bit irrelevant these days? I mean even back in 1996 3D Realms were walking a fine line between homage and plagiarism with their take on the character – it will be interesting to see if the team has the talent to keep the character likeable, if not fresh. Duke Nukem is a character from a different era, a time when walking clichés were acceptable in games – he really is just a brainless, muscle-bound, sex-crazed knucklehead with a gun. A lot of people will expect a bit more than that these days, but character development really dangerous territory; it can degenerate into touchy-feely bullshit like people’s need to “relate to a character.”
The most important thing for 3D Realms at this point in time is to start building up positive hype for the game; you don’t need me to tell you that it doesn’t exactly have a great reputation. They absolutely cannot afford to miss E3 this year, especially if the intention to release the game in 2006 is for real. Hopefully the boys from Texas will be smart enough to realise this (I mean, these guys thought that America – Fuck yeah! was a great patriotic song), and we can all throw Duke Nukem Forever onto our E3 hype lists.
I can’t believe it’s a video game #2
The less said the better
Blast from the Past #1
Since we seem to have our fair share of negative looks back to the past in Easy Mode, I thought I’d share a few of my favourite, less commonly known titles.
Double Dragon II: The Revenge is the largely ignored sequel to the smash hit and genre creating arcade game. While the arcade version of the game is forgettable, the NES version kicks all sorts of ass. Built from the ground up by Technos specifically for the then market leader, the NES version of Double Dragon II extends the plot, has better animation, more stages and more enemies than the arcade game, as well as some kick ass new moves like the super knee, which sends your opponent flying across the screen. The game also features an awesome soundtrack, and some truly memorable stages, such as a massive locomotive which the player must scale, and the trap room, which features one of the most unforgiving (yet not blatantly cheap) platforming sections on the system. It’s actually the first NES game I played, and one that I still play to this day. Double Dragon II is a prerequisite for all NES owners and beat ‘em up fans.
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Most useless boss power ever
Easy Mail
After doing my fair share of answering questions on the boards, and from e-mails that James forwards me all the time, I thought it might be good to try something of a mail bag for the site. Since we never got enough responses to previous mail bag attempts for the main site, I thought we might just restrict the responses to here. Of course, if you write in and ask a question, you’ll get a nifty response in the next Easy Mode. There’s no such thing as a stupid question…but a stupid answer is another thing entirely.
Send your questions to matt@palgn.com.au
The views expressed in the Easy Mode article are those of Matt Keller, and are not shared by PALGN, its affiliates or its advertisers.
But we still need to move towards that goal, of making videogames that contain characters that provoke empathy.
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