It finally happened.

Fail to The King, Baby

Duke Nukem Forever, a game that many people have been waiting over a decade for, finally arrived. After going through a number of graphics engines, developers, publishers, and marketing teams, the game that was often-rumored, constantly screen-teased, and forever-doubted was picked up by Gearbox and released to the masses a couple of weeks ago.

..and it’s terrible.

I’ll go ahead and put this out in the open; I was never a huge fan of the Duke franchise to begin with. While I appreciated the leaps the original few games took with their adult humor, interactivity, and mechanics those ideas have now been shadowed by the monstrous canyons other shooters have created within the industry. The formulas Duke Nukem made famous have been vastly improved upon, evolved, and created into things wholly new and, let’s face it, better than the pit we left those old franchises in. As much as I dislike the repetitive nature of the Call of Duty games they are, without a doubt, better made and polished than Duke Nukem Forever – and they come out every year. If Duke Nukem would have arrived twelve years ago, I have the feeling we would be playing the exact same game we are today — but we would have been ok with it, because games made that long ago are pretty bad by today’s standards.

The game shifts between good-looking scenery and twelve-year old graphics. To the point that it gave me a headache.

And maybe that’s the problem; maybe if this game had only taken a year to make I would be more forgiving. I could blame the poor graphics, buggy nature, and terrible dialogue on time constraints, budget-issues, or a number of other things that give a bit of forgiveness to other titles. But, they’ve had twelve years.

I’m going to repeat that again; they’ve had twelve years to make this game good, and still couldn’t.

And even if you disregard the time that 3DRealms had with the franchise, Gearbox has had it for a couple of years on their own. Plenty of time to realize what you’re pushing out to the masses is a hot pile of childish, poorly-animated, broken junk.  Was it really worth it to release this to the world?

Gearbox, let’s go ahead and look at the stark reality of what just happened and what might happen in the future:

Fans, both old and new, realize that the love they had for the franchise was nothing more than nostalgia or an effect of the massive hype machine.  They have no desire to play another Duke Nukem game and the series finally gets put into the garbage bin – it gets put into the bin complete, but in the garbage bin nonetheless. Sure, you can make a couple more and squeeze out every dime you might be able to make on the game from fans that are in denial, but eventually they’ll see the light and turn you down as well. You’ll be like the fat chick at prom; while everyone knows you put out after ten minutes, no one actually wants the hot mess that you’re selling — no matter how desperate they are.  This may not only cost you a pretty penny as sales tank, but may jeopardize future titles you put out. Hopefully, no one will fault you; it’s something you had to do. You had to try and continue the legacy.

But, there is hope! You can redeem yourself by simply doing one very important thing: Put Duke Nukem to rest. Forever.

And I say that in the nicest way possible. The franchise, much like its brethren Doom and Quake, has its place in time. That time is the past – a place where we can all look back on it in fond memory and then appreciate more fully the games we have now. Know that a piece of Duke Nukem is in every shooting franchise that has come after it and just relish in the fact that you own one of the intellectual properties that started it all. Put a statue up in your home office, make coy references to it in the newest Borderlands (please let there be a new Borderlands), and let it sit there in glorious immortality.

Duke has served his time; let him sleep among the halls of gaming Valhalla where he belongs.