As SirDesmond has already stated in part one of this tag-team story, 3d Realms has shut its doors, leaving the fate of Duke Nukem Forever in limbo. As much as I love fails, I would love to see this game picked up by another developer. However, a team that's been working on the same game for over 12 years will have a harder time finding someone new to clean up after them than Cory Worthington.
SirDesmond and I have our own opinions about the more-than-likely ditched game's storyline would have, could have, and should have been. He's shared his ideas with you. However, I actually found a copy of this mostly-completed game floating around on the Interwebs! I can assure you, I've played it, the wait was worth it and I need to share this M-A-zing story with you.
The game opens with your "hero" Duke Nukem receiving a lap dance from his favorite dancer, Puddin Pop, at his preferred gentleman's club, The Rusty Trombone. The camera begins in a sweeping third-person mode for a few seconds before entering the back of Duke's head, allowing the player to give Puddin the once-over over and over again. Duke spouts off his first one-liner in over a decade: "Honey, you got a license for these bazookas?" as he is put on the recieving end of her preposterously large bosoms.
Suddenly, a loud squeal emits from the main part of the club. Duke's lip curls as he reaches for his pistol. He throws Puddin to the ground without hesitation. He steps out into the club to see dead strippers and perverts everywhere. The culprits? Pig-men? Not this time. About 12 years ago, the writers of DNF decided to take this game to a whole new, and at the time, untapped direction. Zombies! Pig-Zombies!!
As a horde of undead porkers come charging toward Nukem, he utters, "Nothing worse than spoiled bacon." He fights his way through the strip club with what seems to be great pleasure. Just as he's about to pop a cap in the last visible Zompig, the Duke disappears in a sudden static-y *poof*.
The next thing he knows, he's on the beaches of Normandy in full US Army uniform. The Duke Nukem Forever writers also decided to take a second fresh look at the shooter genre and allow the plot to be based around events from World War II, another success! Duke's almost immediately taken prisoner by the Nazis and placed into a special work camp. The very night he arrives, he becomes curious of their plans (having only reached the 2nd grade, Duke has no knowledge of any history whatsoever).
He works his way into the test facility which is conveniently located at the very same work camp. Once inside, the next few chapters become a completely new and unseen experience within the gaming world, known by the term coined by the DNF writers, a "Third-Person Stealth" game. Nukem slinks in the shadows, hides in, under, around, above, and below stuff, like boxes, and... boxes, and... crates. Then he jumps out and snaps necks and/or stabs Nazi guards while whispering sweet-nothings into their ear like "At least I didn't rape you... yet." and "That's not a knife stuck in your spine. Hehe." He has to be careful as not to alert the guards or, just like in real life, an exclamation mark appears above their head until they can't see you for 3-5 seconds.
After this phase in the game, Duke finds himself face-to-face with evil (of course they're evil, they're not American) scientists. Duke kills one and steals his labcoat and vocal cords to blend in with the others. Using a complicated, choice-driven dialog sub-game, Mr. Nukem begins to unravel the mysteries of the zombie pigs in the future and finds out that the Zompig mutation is caused by the German-created "Swine Flu" (just like real life).
Getting the information he needed, he completely eradicates the entire work camp of life, even the Jews (if that offends you, pretend they're the strippers from the beginning of the game). Using his Bloodhound senses (he has them), Duke sniffs out Hitler and in a matter of 1 shotgun blast to the head (I guess they went for realism), kills him. Upon Hitler's death, our man grinds the corpse into a fine paste and puts it into a tin can for later. Why? Who knows, he's the Duke. He then mounts his steed (I told you, he's the Duke) and rides into the forest to find the Book of the Dead.
I should mention at this point, the original writers for DNF were fired due to a lack of funding and in a last-ditch effort to flesh out the game, 3d Realms began using the Sam Raimi movie, Army of Darkness. Actually, the rest of the game is a very lengthy cut scene, and is nothing more than a laserdisc-quality copy of the movie with Duke's head pasted over Ash's body and a pistol-toting hand pasted over Ash's chainsaw hand. Also, Embeth Davidtz' breasts were pasted over with those from someone whose chest is more fitting to the game. Then... a fade to black.
I will admit, I didn't see it coming, but still I'm slightly disappointed.
So many open plot holes left unfilled. How did he get transported back to WWII? Why did they capture him? How did he find Hitler? Why did he kill Hitler, then puree him? No one will ever know, but what did you expect, they only had 12 years to write it.
They did have rag-doll physics for the boobs though. That was cool.
Never Bet on the Duke. Ever.
Never ever.
Forever.
Seriously.
1 Comments:
Cory Worthington references always make for a good article, that's for sure.
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