I have been wanting to write about this for quite some time. Duke Nukem is an Iconic character, an amalgam of 80's action heroes. He is full of one liners and bravado and in his most recent iteration something went horribly wrong. Duke's status of "All American Action Hero" has metamorphosed into something vulgar and generic.I am here to say that all is not lost, there is still hope. I am hear to defend Duke Nukem's character.
Duke 64
| It all started when I was a kid. I was just about eight years old when I first played Duke Nukem 64. It wasn't my first experience with a First Person Shooter (FPS), I had played games such as Doom and Wolfenstein on my cousin's PC countless times before, but Duke was different. Duke had personality, he wasn't a silent protagonist. He spoke, he reacted and he interacted with everything in his world. He would play pool, flip on light switches and when he took the bad guys down he had awesome one liners. |  Shooting pool. |
 I hated those "purple windows". | I was too young at the time to get a lot of the references to classic 80's movies but it didn't matter. I was blown away, I was hooked. Now, you might say that Duke is just a muscular idiot but he didn't come off that way at all. Every level and puzzle that he conquered, every "Babe" saved was just building him up higher and higher as a legend. Duke easily became one of my favorite videogame characters as a kid. He was right up there with Mario and Link. |
From my 8 year old perspective Duke Nukem was a strong, smart, witty, lone wolf that was systematically taking back LA from an alien menace. Now you might be saying “Well you played the 64 version of the game. The drug references and sexual innuendo were really toned down”. You're right about that, I didn't get that "Vitamin X" was supposed to be steroids or that the women covered in goo was supposed to be suggestive of anything. At the time all I understood was that Duke Nukem was saving these women and kicking alien. I loved this game because it let me play the action movies I loved watching as a kid.
When Duke Nukem 3D was released on Xbox Arcade I replayed the entire game. As you may know this version of the game is the uncensored version that was originally released on PC. Even playing through this time around Duke kept it pretty tame. The game is focused on fast paced action and combat. Anything suggestive is more or less in the background.
When Duke Nukem 3D was released on Xbox Arcade I replayed the entire game. As you may know this version of the game is the uncensored version that was originally released on PC. Even playing through this time around Duke kept it pretty tame. The game is focused on fast paced action and combat. Anything suggestive is more or less in the background.
Modern Duke
| Duke Nukem: Forever made the sleaze the forefront of the game. I am not going to link you anything but you probably already heard just how the game starts. Really not sure why they went in this direction. Who thought this was a good idea? Now I know I am a "male gamer" but by no means did I want the game to start like this. Throughout most of Duke Nukem: Forever he just stumbles around tossing out poorly constructed one liners such as "I am from Las Vegas and I say Kill them all". What? Duke no longer conveys any sort of wit or intelligence. Where before I loved to hear what he had to say I began to cringe at everything he said. Duke does try to crack jokes here and there about modern games. Yet he does everything modern FPS games do but worse. I actually didn't mind the regenerating health system. It made sense and worked with the character, after all the more of an ego Duke has the more powerful he is. The more of a beating he is taking the less ego he has. The Ego/Health mechanic works with the character and probably the only thing I liked about this version of Duke. |  This game... |
Before He Self Destructs
 Yippee-ki-yay... When designing a game a lot of it comes from the character. How would a character react if they were suddenly propelled into an alien invasion? What would they say? From here we can determine how they solve their conflicts and what direction the game/story should go. | If I were to redesign Duke I would hire some writers that can bring Duke's wit. We need to make him into a ladies man instead of a womanizing misogynist. He needs to be akin to James Bond. I would take out any of the low brow jokes and go for something that is more clever. Uninspired parody is the lowest form of comedy (Ex: Meet the Spartans).  The premise DNF had was great, we had aretired Duke Nukem making his way to the battlefield for another adventure. He should essentially be the Master Chief of this world. The Earth's greatest Champion ready for his greatest challenge yet, his triumphant return. This game should have showed us what we were missing all these years. |
The new Duke Nukem needs to be more like a Brock Samson (Venture Bros.). He needs to be humanized. Brock is a great character and for so many reasons. Not once in the series do you think of Brock as an idiot or a jerk. Everything he does is for a reason, he has a purpose and he has motivation. Duke needs to update his resume a bit, just going out there to Kick ass and save babes just isn't going to cut it anymore.
Not A Complete Meltdown
Duke still has some good in him. He can still be saved and I know that there are plenty of talented people out there that can make it happen. I just hope that if they ever do decide to make another game they can right the wrongs of Duke Nukem. Don't take the low road with the humor, don't just ignore that fact that women also play video games and don't want to be objectified. People have given up on Duke Nukem but I haven't.
- Danny Q
@Dannylv100
@Dannylv100
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