Okay I know people would hang me for this but let me just say that I haven’t bought Duke Nukem Forever yet. Most of the comments I’ll be posting in this would come from the demo I got to play on steam. I also want to point out that I’m becoming all “hipster aye” on you guys because the everyone and their mom hates DNF (with a passion which goes without saying).
So Why Did You LIKE DNF!?
To explain that I would like you guys to suffer through a slight history lesson. When I was a kid, I used to hang around older dudes at school who have their own PCs since I was one of those kids who only got hold of a SNES a few years after it was released. I only got to experience three titles on the PC back then (actually there’s a fourth but I already forgot that one), it was Duke Nukem, Doom and Hexen.
The only memorable moment I had with Duke back then was that there’s an action where Duke pays the strippers and as a reward, you’ll get to see their ta-tas (which were tied with a green luminescent string). You have the option to shoot them and if you did, the pig squad would suddenly appear in front of you and of course you’d find yourself in a middle of a shoot-fest.
Now fast forward to the Playstation days, that’s where I got to meet Duke (Duke Nukem, Total Meltdown) once again. The short reunion was fun and because of that I kind of had a liking to this blonde cigar toting, gun shooting hero.
The thing about my experiences with Duke is that, it was mindless shooting fun. I never got around the concept that he was supposed to be a parody of sorts or that he symbolize some high-minded concept (or low-brow machismo). For me, he was a macho-dude showing his guns, getting it on with girls and saving the world- and that’s the charm that I liked in Duke games.
So?
I do have to clear it out that I don’t think DNF is a GREAT game. DNF feels like it’s a mish-mash of different ideas of the various developers who were part of DNF’s history and I do agree with a lot of reviewers that the game suck on a lot of levels.
However, there is this one point that I think was retained even after the hullabaloo of the game’s development and that is it’s fun factor.
Now recall what I just narrated. I never thought of Duke as some parody or symbol or whatever. So I can say that I can take the game with a grain of salt. DNF (at least in the demo) was fun, it was mindless, you get to shoot big guns against bigger foes and kick their eyes over the field goal, you get to screw around with the environment, you even get to “vicariously” experience getting a blow job from twins. Duke was never a character you have to think deeply about.
He was and has been the action hero, the macho man, the slayer of pigs and the savior of the world.
But then this is just me, trying out the demo. DNF is not a game that I’d like to pay for it’s full price. That enough shows that the game’s fun factor isn’t enough of an excuse for it’s shoddy worksmanship. However, I appreciate a no-brainer game once in a while since I’d like to go home and just plug in a game and just shoot the hell out of everyone and I doing that in GTA is a getting too boring nowadays. Personally, you can’t have your brain on all the time and if you ask me I’d rather be brainless in DNF than… I don’t know, getting high with drugs or whatever- It’s safer at least.
So now all I’m waiting for is that sale….
