Forever Begins Today

The man.

It once looked as if Duke Nukem Forever, the ever-vaporware sequel to the 1996 blockbuster PC game Duke Nukem 3D, would live up to its name by keeping gamers waiting endlessly: By the time a full decade had passed and the game was still in development, DNF had become the gaming industry’s biggest running joke of all time. But in May of 2009, right when the blonde bomber was poised to finally pound the plutonium pavement once more, the Duke of Nukem was blasted to an early grave when his parent company, 3D Realms, had a nuclear meltdown.

For months afterward, a toxic cloud hung over the heads of the Duke faithful, but as wise man once said, “Always bet on Duke.”

That man is an asshole; I lost thousands at the roulette table when I told them to “put it all on Duke” and the little ball instead landed on red 36. Yet it’s all worth it, because Duke Nukem Forever has finally been unleashed upon rabid fans and curious newcomers today, a mere 14 years after it was first announced.

And as you can see, I’ve got Balls of Steel.

I know I’ve been critical of shooters in the past, but Duke Nukem has become a radioactive ray of light in a world gone mad with realism. Hangin’ with the Dukester has always been about hittin’ on hot chicks, blowin’ stuff up, and layin’ the smackdown on a bunch of evil ETs straight from the pages of some sleazy comic book, not this super serious Tom Clancy dreck that the current crop of 14-year-old Xbox fanboys soils themselves over.

Thankfully, DNF holds true to the old run ‘n’ gun formula – for the most part. Forever’s got significant problems and doesn’t have the juice to surpass the legendary DN3D, but unless you’ve got lead shielding your heart, this Duke is gonna nuke his way right into your good gaming graces with a smile on his lips and a shotgun in his hands. The king is officially back, baby!

Relive the final battle of Duke 3D in Forever.

Damn, Duke is looking good in Forever with sweet textures and all the devious details you’ve come to expect from the franchise. The fang-toothed, snarling invaders from space are back too and looking as bloodthirsty as ever, but in all honesty, these graphics aren’t breaking much new ground. Also, besides Duke himself, the other human characters look a little uninspired; I guess one of Mr. Nukem’s stipulations for finally appearing was that no one could look better than him.

Speaking of self-indulgence: The classic numerical representation of Duke’s health is a thing of the past, replaced with an “ego bar” that rises whenever Duke does something manly, such as beating the heck out of an enemy with his bare hands or downing a cold brewskie. If the player hangs out awhile after being shot at or blown up, the Ego bar refills and Mr. Nukem has another chance to take out those slimy alien dirtbags. Regenerating health might make Duke’s latest adventure a little too easy for some, but it’s not all that different from the endless supply of health players can tap into by abusing water fountains in the original Duke 3D.

"He's really, really all out of gum."

You’re going to need all the ego boosts you can find if you plan on swapping lead with the alien menace besieging our planet and stealing our chicks, but Duke’s hardly the walking arsenal he was in previous titles. There’s a great variety of weaponry, ranging from handguns and shotguns to explosives and futuristic gadgets galore, but annoyingly, Duke can only hold two weapons at a time. To balance this out, there are plenty of guns hanging around in Duke’s domain, so switching weapons on the fly is easy. I suppose this mechanic adds a bit of strategy to the mix, but I much prefer toting around my own armory like in the first person shooters of old.

Sorry for the quality; I was using a TV and a crappy camera. But... PIG COP!

There’s a lot of interactivity with the manmade environments, from picking up and drawing with markers to using showers and toilets, but much of that interactivity disappears in more open levels like the desert, making them pretty stale in comparison. Furthermore, horrendous load times whenever the player starts or restarts a level are a real drag and the rude jokes Duke is known for sometimes cross the line from clever to just crass.

Duke's new pad, and his new women, the Holsom twins.

Occasionally Forever goes beyond self-awareness and reaches the point of unintentional self-parody, but I’m pleased to report that much of that old Duke magic has managed to survive three engine changes, 14 years and the efforts of countless programmers and artists. Even though it took forever, everybody’s favorite foulmouthed alien asskicker has once again delivered a dandy dose of old school, irreverent entertainment.

What are you waiting for, Christmas? Come get some!

It's good!

User Generated Content and the Path to an Interactive Education

My father purchased our family’s second real computer, a 166 MHz Gateway PC, in April of 1996 for the tidy sum of $5000. For the price of a nice used car, I was introduced to music and typing programs, e-mail and the internet at large. Around that same time is when I stumbled across one of my favorite games, Duke Nukem 3D, which allowed users to create and trade their own content.

Over the last two decades or so, user generated content – or “mods” for short – have become an indelible part of gaming, especially for the computer gamer crowd. As the name implies, user generated content is any sort of meaningful alteration for an existing game that is generated by the players, including new levels, graphics, or items. At its most base level, what user made content means to gamers is expanding the life of a preexisting game to virtually infinite extents. Ponder for a moment that ID Software’s seminal shooter DOOM was released in 1993 and new content is still being crafted for the title 17 years later, or that 14 years after the release of Duke Nukem 3D, one can download a program to make the game run in a high resolution mode on post DOS platforms.

Old Duke vs. high def Duke.

But user made content is about more than just exploring new worlds and situations for basically as long as the player wants; it’s also a way to empower young minds and reverse engineer the learning process. Take, for example, your average math problem. Throughout high school, I was asked to “solve for” a given variable in an equation. It was then up to me to find a solution (which, incidentally, took hours upon hours to pull off, was entirely useless, and made me hate school, but that’s fodder for another post).

But what if it were the student giving the teacher a math problem? What if it were up to the learner to construct an equation using a newly-learned formula, taking into consideration what would need to be done to create the problem and how one would need to think in order to effectively answer it?

Many educators believe that best way to learn something is to teach it. From personal experience with Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Albert Camus’ The Stranger and several other not-so-near-and-dear works I taught during my tenure as an English teacher, I can attest to this axiom’s truth.


It's big for such a little planet.

 Now consider what goes into making a good level for a game like Little Big Planet 2, the sequel to the PlayStation 3 side-scrolling mega hit of 2008. To make an effective level (and “effective” here means entertaining), one must first be familiar with layouts and conventions of basic levels, then think like their target player when designing a concept. Having graduated from fan to creator with Duke Nukem 3D, I can tell you that the designer should be sick of his or her level by the time it’s done, having checked every facet of its functionality – and fun factor – countless times.

It’s not unlike how I felt after designing about 100 lessons for my English classes during my student teaching: I felt like I knew everything there was to know about the subject at hand. Just like the game designer becomes intimately familiar with the capabilities of his or her game engine and what makes a “fun” level, I now understand The Diary of Anne Frank, The Great Gatsby and Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption from the inside out – more so than if I had simply read these works. As the one teaching the class, the one creating the content, I had to live and breathe the source material.

A simple way for students to “reverse engineer” what their educator wishes them to learn is to have them construct a lesson. Teachers have been utilizing this idea for decades by having students give short presentations on a particular subject; they expect that the student will become an “expert” in about the time it takes to thaw a frozen pizza. This is an excellent start, but it’s not enough: With only one or two class periods to work with, students don’t have time to commit to memory everything they discover.

Besides, that approach is getting tired. (I know because I tried it.) Today’s tech savvy students demand something more.

The logical evolution of the concept: Our digital native students create their own content for a relevant learning program, such as a video game. I understand that few good educational games exist – and even fewer are worth playing – but I look forward to some future superstar teacher creating just such an application.

Next stop: End of the level.

Though it’s been years since I fired up Ken Silverman’s Build, Duke Nukem 3D’s level editor, I can still remember how to use it and exactly what it can do. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same of math class; I find myself embarrassedly whipping out a calculator to do simple long division. Perhaps if by the guidance of my teachers I had generated a few math games for that old 166 MHz PC, number crunching would be as natural to me as collecting a medikit or making a mad dash to the exit of a Duke3D level - and just as fondly remembered.

Top Games of All Time #3: Duke Nukem 3D (PC)

Why isn't that gun isn't in the game?

“Who wants some?!” asks the man with the crew cut and the sunglasses as he picks up another groovy, highly explosive weapon.

The answer is “me.” One thousand times over, me.

Duke Nukem 3D was Texas-based game company 3D Realms’ vulgar answer to id Software’s 1993 megahit first person shooter, DooM. Though the games share too many similarities to deny that DooM was a major influence on the latter’s fast and furious gunplay, Duke Nukem 3D somehow manages to be everything DooM is and a lot of things it isn’t. DooM is scary and atmospheric. Duke is loaded with atmosphere was well, but instead of high-tech space stations, most of the action takes place in more familiar locals like cities and restaurants. There are of course the typical outer space levels in Duke’s sun-shaded world, but the underlying tongue-in-cheek, sophomoric humor resonates with fans in an entirely different manner than anything that came before. Instead of the serious, Silent Hill-like dread many people feel when they sat down to play id Software’s masterpiece, Duke Nukem 3D seems to say to its players, “Hey, this is a game, man. Enjoy it!”

The big baddie at the end of Episode 2 doesn't go down very easily.

The D3D team had created not just another generic first person shooter, but a likable, over the top persona in Duke Nukem himself. Whereas the gaming community had taken to referring to the unnamed hero of DooM simply as “DooM Guy” long before his appearance as such in Quake III Arena, Duke’s crass, oversexed mannerisms and borrowed one-liners are still instantly recognizable in today’s gaming world, despite the fact that the last true Duke Nukem adventure was released almost 15 years ago.

These "fine" gentlemen are responsible for Duke 3D!

Plenty of players picked up Duke Nukem 3D when it came out in 1996 to drink in its violent, crude content, but soon realized that 3D Realm’s “DooM killer” was about more than just firearms and breasts. By itself, Duke Nukem 3D is an excellent, albeit short, game. But what really shot D3D into stardom was the relatively simple level editor that was included on the CD, which made it easy for Dukeheads to craft their own worlds with a bit of time and effort. Most users puked out poorly designed wastelands full of ammo, weapons and mismatched textures, but some levels were truly a sight to behold. Never before had creating one’s own levels (called “maps”) in a 3D game been as easy and uniform as using the Build engine. For the first time in my life, I had graduated from  game player to game creator. Even though most of what I churned out was horrendous, there were a few maps I made that are worth loading up even today.

A shot from the first level.

Within just a few days of Duke 3D's release, the Internet was teeming with hundreds of user maps, extending the life of the game immeasurably. Collections of these levels began springing up as early as three months after the world was introduced to the Duke of Nukem, and fans were willing to shell out the bucks to “come get some.” One early compilation called Nuke It! 1000 found its way into my hands not long after I purchased Duke 3D, and I spent hours playing through its 1000-plus levels until early one summer morning when I nuked the final map. No problem – by then, there were other add-ons to be had, including Duke It Out in D.C., Duke! Zone 500, Nuclear Winter and, my personal favorite, Duke Caribbean: Life’s a Beach. There was also a dial-up multiplayer mode, the ability to edit art and music found within the game, and even totally new, user made episodes to download and play for free.

I have a few more, but they wouldn't fit in the picture. I'm not sure if that's awesome or embarrassing. Or both.

I’m pretty sure I've spent more time on Duke Nukem 3D than I have on any other video game – probably entire weeks, if not months, of my life all totaled. I regret not one second of it. It’s been said that the measure of a good video game is how often one goes back to it; if that’s the case, then Duke Nukem 3D more than deserves its place on this or any other top games of all time list.

* * *

Don’t forget to vote for your three favorite games, in order, as a comment to this post! The top games of the Wordsmith VG readership will be appearing in a future article. Have your voice heard!

Tomorrow: Wordsmith VG takes the fight for greatest game of all time to the streets!

The Lame Beginings of Duke Nukem 3D

With yesterday’s shocking announcement that Duke Nukem Forever is not only alive, but also blasting its way towards a release date sometime next year, it looks like the gaming public will finally get a mighty bootful of the most infamous vaporware title in history. Whether Duke’s crass attitude and cheap one-liners are still the stuff of gaming bliss nearly 15 years after the big man took the 2.75D plunge is up for debate, but it leads one to ponder how well the game would have faired if it had been released when it was supposed to be – approximately six months after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor.

Old DNF screen shot of... some guy

“Wait a minute,” you might suddenly have thought, “I bet there are at least 100,000 beta versions of DNF running on completely different engines.” (And even if you didn’t just think that, I thought it for you, you wienie.) While 3D Realms has stated that due to copyright issues they can’t distribute any of the beta versions of DNF even after the game is commercially released, I’m sure a large faction of devoted, sick fans will daydream about tearing into Duke Forevers of the past until the next title in the series is released 20 years from now. What foul and remarkable secrets could these former iterations of the man who tears off heads and defecates down necks possibly hold?

The hell if I know, but seasoned players will recall that 3D Realms has a habit of programming games to about 90 percent and then using them to line George Broussard’s fireplace on Christmas Eve, then starting over from scratch about a week into the New Year. Presumably this is done because the fellows at 3D Realms are obsessed with making the perfect game, but really it’s because Mr. Broussard and company hate money: After the release of Duke Nukem 3D they ran out of drawers in which to stuff their gargantuan piles of cash, so they had to make room in the office somehow.

George Broussard, seen here pointing at the computer where he personally deleted the 1998, 2002 and 2005 versions of Duke Nukem Forever.

Thus it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Duke 3D also got a complete makeover before hitting the net in January of 1996, but this time I can’t really fault 3D Realms’ decision to scrap what they had and try again. To celebrate the one year anniversary of DN3D’s shareware release, the company unleashed a Dec. 30, 1994 beta of the game – lovingly called “LameDuke” – on unsuspecting players. The result was like a taco with a sandpaper shell: a devilish mix of curiosities and interesting tidbits wrapped in an irritating, occasionally treacherous shell.

Strinking the Power Ranger pose!

LameDuke’s 30 or so levels are broken up into four episodes with names that sound like titles of dirty movies: MRR Caliber, Mission Cockroach, Suck Hole and Hard Landing. Most maps don’t have exits, but some are surprisingly playable in spite of it. There’s a city with a very familiar vampire poster and a dance club from 1986, a prison on a secluded island, and a mansion with a hidden underground chamber that’s accessed through the fireplace. It’s easy to see where some of the ideas from the retail version of DN3D came from, and plenty of graphics and level structures were copied wholesale or only slightly altered, then reused. The biggest issue is that many maps look the same and it’s excruciatingly easy to get lost in them, but I’m assuming that would have been ironed out in the final release.

Kano- Er, Dr. Proton

Unlike the sinister alien invasion that’s the catalyst of Mr. Nukem’s xenophobic rage in the retail version of Duke Nukem 3D, LameDuke appears to continue the plot set up in the side scrolling days of the franchise. That means you’ll be fighting a gaggle of riotous robots, presumably sent by mad scientist and DN1 antagonist Dr. Proton (who kind of looks like Kano) to rearrange Duke’s anatomy in return for a previous defeat. Both on the ground and in the air, the mechanical marauders do their best to take out Duke, but often that just boils down to running to him and posing. However, shooting them spawns blood and gibs, so maybe they’re just henchmen in spacesuits; no one knows for sure. On the organic side of things, we’ve got a fly-like ancestor to the Octabrain, who in some ways is more intimidating than its tan skinned, sharp toothed brethren. There’s also some sort of punk chick who sports a Mohawk and an outfit she apparently borrowed from Judy Jetson, but her chief function seems to be running into streams and drowning herself, so I guess she’s more emo than punk.

Octabrain Prime?

While you’re mowing down the same three dudes hundreds of times over, you’ll be jamming out to one of three whole music tracks: “Fastway,” which I think was stolen from Rise of the Triad; a slow, sad song I don’t recognize and, oddly enough, “Brown Eyed Girl” by Van Morrison presented in glorious two instrument midi form!

Duke’s trusty pistol is very similar to the one implemented in the final game, but here it’s got a cool-but-useless laser sight. Pipebombs look and function just like retail Duke 3D as well. However, instead of using his infamous Mighty Foot to do a little close quarters butt kicking, Duke instead wields a rather menacing tazer wrench for melee attacks. Using the weapon from a distance will cause Duke to spaz out and swing the weapon like a nerd in a slapfight, but get up close and you’ll be pumping thousands of volts of electricity through whoever is unfortunate (or dumb) enough to get in your way. Speaking of electricity, instead of the chaingun found in the Duke 3D we all know and love, there’s a sort of rapid-fire voltage cannon that cuts though lame enemies in two or three hits. Perhaps the biggest weapons change involves the RPG: Duke must ready the weapon before he can fire it, and it’s so honkin’ huge that it covers approximately 7000 percent of the screen.

"Did someone poke out my right eye!? Oh, it's just this RPG."

It’s pretty difficult to get LameDuke running on a modern PC and there used to be a virus in one of the .voc files way back when it was first released, but if you’d still like to give this beta a go, you can download it at http://www.3drealms.com/downloads.html. Just scroll down to the Duke Nukem 3D section and click on the link to LameDuke. But no worries if you can’t get it to work; I’ve uploaded a fairly interesting YouTube video of LameDuke screenshots I took just days after the beta was released. I recently rescued them from an ancient floppy disk made of papyrus and fossilized dinosaur droppings.

If you’re a fan of the original Duke 3D or you just can’t wait for Duke Forever, perhaps LameDuke can temporarily satiate your hunger for all things Nukem. Just let this be a lesson to those who are salivating over the DNF betas: If they all suck as hard as LameDuke, maybe it’s better that they stay lost to the annals of gaming history.

…oh, who am I kidding. Bring on those betas, 3D Realms, or the Duke gets it!

I'll do it! THERE WILL BE BLOOD!

Duke Nukem Forever is ALIVE and Gunning for a 2011 Release!

Always bet on Duke!

After last May's heartbreaking (or hilarious, depending on your point of view) news that Duke Nukem Forever was either canceled or indefinitely put on hold after most of the staff at 3D Realms was fired, it was confirmed just hours ago at the PAX gaming conference that everyone's favorite womanizing badass alien killer will indeed be seeing the light of day in after all. According to several websites, including vgreleases.com, Duke Nukem Forever will be coming to the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC sometime next year!

According to Wired.com, Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford exclaimed to a group of gamers waiting to play the two-level DNF demo, "You cannot kill Duke. You cannot kill Duke!" Pitchford is a former employee of 3D Realms and, said Wired.com, he was wearing the Duke Nukem shirt the company gave him in 1996.

How sweet it is!

If you know anything about the sordid history of DNF, you'll know to take this announcement with a grain of salt. Anyone who has been gaming for 15 years or more is probably well aware that Duke Nukem Forever was originally announced around 1997 running on the Quake II engine, and the dudes at 3D Realms have been "working" on it for more than a decade. They always said the game will be ready "when it's done" in order to make endless improvements - or perhaps just fool around - for years on end. After plenty of engine changes and total rewrites, this is the first time I can remember that Duke Nukem Forever has been given anything that looks like a solid release date, so we might actually see it in the next five years or so.

What's really exciting about this announcement is that DNF is still alive. And to the Duke faithful, that's all that matters.

The Xbox 360 demo's title screen 

I am now and will always be a huge fan of the original Duke Nukem 3D; I consider it the finest first person shooter title ever conceived. (Thanks for showing it to me all those years ago Tom; I'm FOREVER in your debt!) I nuked my way through all the official add-ons, like Duke Caribbean: Life's a Beach, Duke It Out in D.C. and Duke! Zone 2. I also finished the 1,000 level add-on Nuke It!, though it took me a good three years. I'm one of those guys who always had faith in Duke Nukem Forever, though I knew it wasn't coming out when they said it was... ever. Even if DNF turns out to be the worst game I've ever played, I'm ecstatic that it still has a chance to take its rightful place on my gaming shelf.

There's just one thing left to tell the naysayers: Come get some! (Maybe, possibly, one day. I hope!)