It took more than a decade to complete, but the long-awaited sequel to Duke Nukem 3D has finally arrived. We take a look at the performance of Duke Nukem Forever to see how much horsepower it takes to get this iconic character back in action on your PC.
Once in a while a game comes along that brings something fresh to the medium. And of these, only a handful resonate so well that everything else is held to a higher standard. For example, Far Cry showed us what a graphically-stunning sandbox shooter could be. The original Half-Life set a new benchmark for storytelling interwoven with game play. Doom opened our eyes to the first-person shooter experience.
What did Duke Nukem 3D do? It let you pee in urinals, hand money to topless dancing girls, and a bunch of other stuff that has no bearing whatsoever on the actual story.
That hardly sounds like a quality worthy of praise in 2011. But to wrap your head around the hype, you have to imagine what it was like in 1996.Doom cast the die of the standard first-person shooter, and copycats were everywhere: run, shoot, hit a switch, unlock a new area, and repeat. But Duke Nukem 3D gave us something completely new, and for the first time we tasted the possibility of a truly interactive game world. See a payphone? Use it and hear a busy signal. See a pool table? Try a round of snooker. Watch a show in the theatre. Play an arcade game. The first time I played Duke Nukem 3D, it was magical. I saw the boundaries of interactivity being pushed. Every area held the promise of discovery, and I saw potential that I never previously considered. In this light, causing Duke to hand money to a topless dancer and say “Shake it, baby!” was a lot more impactful and funny than you’d imagine after 15 years of the genre continually evolving. Despite that passage of time, the memory of my first foray into Duke’s 3D realm (pun intended) is forever burned into my memory.
) while I waited for it to come out.
