If you’ve ever handled a video game controller or a computer keyboard, chances are you know Duke Nukem. Even if you’ve never played the game, you might have come across news surrounding its several controversies. For starters, it is violent, obscene, sexual and graphic. The biggest controversy, however, is how long the sequel to “Duke Nukem 3D,” “Duke Nukem Forever,” has been in development. It seems like Americans decided to go to the moon and got there quicker than this first-person shooter came to fruition.
However, 2011 seems to be the year. After an announcement of its development — in 1997 — it seems that the long-anticipated video game is finally ready to embrace the arms of its adoring fans. Or is it? Can we believe anything we are told these days? Once upon a time people would say they were retiring and then they did, but Brett Favre has single-handedly destroyed that belief. Then, hilariously, 3D Realms, the company heading the development of the video game, got so tired of deferring release dates that, in 2001, they simply made a statement, which ended all speculation by saying the game would be released, “when it’s done.” Way to go 3D Realms.
I suggest changing the name of the game from “Duke Nukem Forever” to “Duke’s Odyssey,” “Retirement Home Nukem,” or “Duke Nukem Eternity: Forever’s just not long enough.”
Still, the official release date was announced as May 3, and by 3D Realms’ words, we can take this to assume that the game is “done.” However, 3D Realms is no longer the developer after it was downsized in 2009. The task was assumed by 2K Games who developed the game with Gearbox Software Develop-ment Company.
May 3 is around the corner and Duke Nukem will have to face its moment of truth. Let’s hope, for the sake of gamers everywhere, who are thirsting to enter the bloody world of Nukem, that the game will be released this year for gaming pleasure. If not, that title might just have to be changed again to, “Waiting for Nukem: The game that never was.”
