Come Get Some!
“I don’t know whether the humour is worse, or it’s just not as fresh as it was in Duke Nukem 3D”, said my friend about Duke Nukem Forever. “I think it’s the same,” I replied, “but we are fiftees years older.”
In 1996 Duke Nukem 3D blew our minds. It was completely new experience of interacting with the game world – you could tip a stripper, pee in a urinal, sing on karaoke, play pool… You even had a chance to demolish a whole building, trample shrinked enemies or smash frozen ones into pieces by a well placed kick! Plus, it was full of pop culture references (“Aliens”, “Predator”, “Terminator”, “Doom”…) and finally - there was the Hero: huge, muscular blonde guy, delivering macho one-liners with a voice in which you could hear those gallons of beer he drank and hundreds of cigars he smoke.
He was The Duke. He was obnoxious and foul-mouthed, and – just like the scantily-clad ladies in the game – we loved him.
The developers quickly announced a sequel to be released soon. So we waited. And waited, as the gaming world changed around us. Revolutions came in the meantime – Half-Life introduced scripted sequences, System Shock 2 and Deus eX introduced RPG elements, countless WWII games added more reality to game combat, making all games look the same greyish-brown – and we all forgot about Duke. We only heard his swan song in May 2009, as 3D Realms studio – the developers of Duke Nukem Forever – ceased to exist. It seemed we’d never see him again.
Then, in February 2011, followed by collective gasps from die hard fans all around the world (I actually know such people), the news came that Duke is back and will DEFINITELY see the light of day in May.
The trailers looked… disappointing. They gave me absolutely no reason to believe that this is not just more of the same outdated essence of the 90s, copied and pasted into the world of 2010s. Duke Nukem Forever looked exactly like fifteen years ago: it’s still the same obnoxious, muscular blonde guy, delivering the same macho one-liners, while killing the same enemies with the same guns, even tipping the same strippers. Why on Earth would that be of any interest to anyone who hand longterm relationships with Gordon Freeman, Sam Fisher and agent Denton over the last decade?
Well Here We Are Again...
Want to know how to make a perfect sequel to a memetic video game that defined a generation? Take example from Valve and how they approached Portal 2, a sequel to the game that made thousands of people pee themselves every time they hear the word “cake” (I know such people too). In Portal 2 – which is some 2-3 times longer than the first – you will encounter the word “cake” exactly once, and only if you pay attention. The Companion Cube also appears just once. The rest is completely new – the whole backstory, amazing locations, new (and better!) ending song, plus the whole co-op experience. It was very bold of them to remove everything that made the first Portal so awesome.
Wait, everything? Were those really baked dessert and a metal box with heart painted on its side what made Portal so great? Or maybe was that a perfect mixture of gameplay innovations, clever puzzles and wonderfully served black humour? Because if so, then Portal 2 actually is more of the same, only the developers were clever enough to pick the right things to keep, and added enough of the new.
And that is how you make a good sequel.
Having said that, I just remembered Mass Effect 2, The Witcher 2 and Deus eX: Human Revolution await me in the near future…
