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. |
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. |
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
Before He Self Destructs
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. |
Not A Complete Meltdown
@Dannylv100