This Week In Retro: Duke Nukem Forever (Patreon)

June 10, 2011: Don't take gambling advice from Duke Nukem

by Diamond Feit

[CONTENT WARNING: this column describes various sex acts and sexual violence]

June has arrived and I hope everyone out there is having a happy Pride month. This is a difficult time for me as I only came out two years ago so I'm still getting used to the idea that I "belong" at Pride, especially as the ongoing pandemic means that I have yet to attend a proper Pride event (living in a very conservative society doesn't make it any easier). There's also the complication that since I spent so many years assuming that I was a straight man, I often held dismissive views of this celebration which linger in the back of my mind. Lord knows I've laughed at Norm McDonald's infamous Gay Pride joke way too many times before I considered why Pride is actually important.

June 2021 also means it's time to acknowledge an awkward anniversary, as it was ten years ago that Duke Nukem Forever transitioned from "vaporware punchline" to "actual video game." The game languished in development hell for over a decade, meaning that even ten years later, it still hasn't existed for as long as it was "coming soon." It's no surprise that a project with such a troubled history disappointed fans and critics upon its eventual release, but the depths to which it sank is still shocking in hindsight. Duke Nukem Forever is not merely a "bad" game, it is reprehensible and marks a low-point of the medium itself.

For context's sake, let us hail to the king where the king is due: Duke Nukem 3D was a terrific first-person shooter when it debuted in January 1996. Ostensibly a "Doom clone" as that was the popular nomenclature at the time, it took bold steps to stand out in a market that was flooded with wannabe shooters hoping to cash in on Doom's success. The biggest draw was Duke Nukem himself; in a genre famously lacking in standout personalities (the canonical name for the guy in Doom is "Doomguy" after all) Duke made it big by quipping as he killed monsters, boasting about his own awesomeness, and dropping colorful metaphors aplenty when such language was nigh unspeakable in video games.

Duke Nukem 3D courted controversy with liberal adult content like strippers and profanity, but it delivered a stellar shooting experience. Duke's arsenal was as varied as his vocabulary as he could wield far-out sci-fi weapons like shrink rays and ice beams, or explore levels vertically with a jetpack. Said levels were also notably grounded compared to other shooters, as many of them were based on everyday locations like movie theaters or sports stadiums.

Duke Nukem 3D sold very well, and the PC original was ported to all the major consoles (and even a few not-so-major ones), so a sequel was announced in 1997 with a targeted release year of 1998. Developer 3D Realms did not hit that target, nor any of the subsequent targets, as the game would be delayed, re-announced, and delayed again repeatedly over the next 12 years. In May 2009, 3D Realms downsized staff and the project seemed to be dead, only to catch a magical reprieve in the form of multiple other studios jumping on board to help complete and release the game. That rescue still took an additional two years before the game's final, eventual, actual release on June 10, 2011.

This is perhaps the best time to say for the record that I have never played Duke Nukem Forever. I had fond memories of 3D from the 1990s, and I always had a sensible chuckle each year when Duke topped WIRED's annual Vaporware Awards, but the game's selling points just weren't strong enough in 2011. Chatty video game protagonists were no longer novel, foul language was hardly taboo, and if I want to look at scantily clad women on my computer, I don't need to play a video game to do it.

What I hadn't expected, however, was that spending over a decade in the oven had left Duke Nukem desiccated and deplorably devoid of charm. Hearing lines from awesome movies like They Live and Army of Darkness quoted in a video game sufficed for character development in 1996, but by 2011 the bar had been raised substantially. Duke Nukem Forever arrived two months after Portal 2 launched, a genuinely hilarious game that still makes me laugh even when I know what gags are coming. John St. John has a great voice, but growling a series of non-sequiturs doesn't give Duke a real personality.

Worse, the game's lowest-common-denominator writing makes Duke an actively awful person, a man whose non-stop pop culture references do not reflect the events around him. Throughout the campaign, other soldiers and even civilians around Duke are killed by invading aliens, but this doesn't faze him at all; all that matters is his self-aggrandizing monologue where he boasts about his strength, sexual prowess, and the size of his dick. It's like the game itself is desperately trying to convince the player that Duke Nukem really is as awesome as he believes, and in turn that this game is more fun than it could possibly be.

The over-the-top masculinity of Duke Nukem Forever might have played for laughs if the game wasn't so openly misogynistic. Nearly every woman who makes an appearance is there to be ogled by both the player and Duke himself, with many of them fawning over Duke as if just being in his presence stimulates them sexually.

Like hundreds of other video games, Duke Nukem Forever relies on damsels in distress to motivate Duke to action. This was a plot point in Duke Nukem 3D as well, with occasional static "babes" placed in alien environments. Interacting with these women produced a quiet request to "Kill me," a direct nod to Aliens. They can be ignored or they can be killed, but the hostages are practically inanimate objects; the entire concept seems intended to justify Duke delivering the line "nobody steals our chicks and lives."

In Duke Nukem Forever, however, there is an entire level called "The Hive" where Duke encounters a variety of topless women trapped in alien slime. While stuck in place, they are not immobile, as they writhe in agony, sob audibly, and make explicit references to having been raped. The game offers no means to rescue them, and talking to them has Duke lament his inability to help, although he is also all too willing to make jokes about their situation. There are even disembodied breasts on the walls that Duke can grope and giggle at while these women scream.

It gets worse: Left alone, these women will eventually explode, releasing parasites that attack Duke, so it is in the player's best interest to kill them before this happens. Melee attacks seem to be the closest thing to a humane choice, as the women will quietly go limp without bursting into gore. Either way, this is a video game level designed around executing rape victims with the misguided notion that it would be funny.

Duke Nukem Forever is an abominable creation based on its own merits, but there's another layer to my distaste for this game. As I said at the start, it is Pride month, a celebration of queer people and a time to acknowledge that human sexuality and gender are broad spectrums of alignments, not just "man or woman" or "gay or straight." It can be controversial to herald these beliefs in popular media because there will be outcries of "making things political" by "forcing" people (especially *gasp* children) to see anything outside of the heteronormative standard.

There are queer developers who have to fight to include stories about themselves in front of an audience because of these concerns. Robert Yang, creator of numerous games with gay themes, has seen his work routinely banned from Twitch. Yet Duke Nukem Forever, a big-budget production that aggressively advances a deplorable vision of macho heterosexuality, never gets labelled as "political." Duke Nukem leers at women's bodies, has multiple sexual partners, and fantasizes about receiving anonymous blowjobs via a glory hole. He also, as described above, meets multiple incapacitated naked women and kills them. None of this content required the application of an "Adults Only" ESRB rating; instead, Duke Nukem Forever is rated "Mature" like most AAA shooters. As such, it is widely available in digital and physical formats even ten years later, and can freely be viewed on streaming platforms like YouTube and Twitch.

So forgive me if I can't smirk at a grotesque corporate creation that makes bags of cash for executives and stockholders, while independent artists continue to struggle with arbitrary restrictions on their work because they happen to be queer. Maybe Duke Nukem Forever is genuinely fun to play, but I'll never find out and I'm 100% OK with remaining ignorant on this point...forever.

Diamond Feit lives in Osaka, Japan but is forever online, sharing idle thoughts on Twitter and playing games on Twitch.