Duke Nukem was once, one of the greatest legends of video game history. Since the release of Duke Nukem Forever, he has slowly gone from being a legend to nothing more than a carrot on the end of a stick to increase sales. Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition shows exactly how much of a joke the Duke has become.
This isn’t what Duke Nukem does
Let’s start with the trailer above. Duke Nukem does not sit down with people dressed like they are from the victorian era and daintily sip tea while having an intellectual and posh chat. What the real Duke Nukem does is drink beer and eat bottles of steroids for breakfast before his morning workout.
Now I wouldn’t mind this trailer so much if it was at all humorous, entertaining and interesting, but it isn’t. This to me is like Jean-Claude Van Damme doing TV ads for Coors Light. It is a sign of a desperate time in someone’s career where they are willing to do anything to get back into the spotlight.
This trailer just shows Duke as some poor bastard that is washed up and attempting to cling on for dear life and what respect is left for him, from the disaster that has been his career since his rise to fame in 1996.
Between the average, at best PS1 spin-off titles and the unappreciated response that was Duke Nukem Forever, there is little left in the form of good memories for him. As if the trailer isn’t bad enough, it gets only worse with the actual game.
There is no respect paid to the character
It is no secret that the Duke Nukem Tour in Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition is a very half-hearted piece of work. Sure, Duke has his own unique lines, but that is about it. They couldn’t even be bothered to lip sync his lines nor change the dialogue of the other characters to refer to him as Duke.
Instead what we get is the other characters still referring to him as Gray, after the main protagonist of Bulletstorm, Grayson Hunt. There are none of Duke signature weapons included either, just the standard games weapons. There just isn’t an ounce of respect paid to the character in any shape or form.
Duke has just been thrown into this (at an extra price may I add unless you preordered the game), for no reason that to help drive sales of a game that already sold poorly in its initial release, and thus needed as much help as possible. Like I previously stated, here, Duke is nothing more than a carrot on the end of a stick that is used to entice people to spend more money.
Love him, hate him and just don’t give two craps about him, it doesn’t matter. How such an iconic character of video game history is treated this way, is quite frankly disgusting.
Let him die as a memorable legend
At this point, I honestly don’t want any more titles or DLCs with Duke Nukem in it. He is a character of the 90s and that is where he belongs. He is so politically incorrect that he simply doesn’t have a place in the touchy political place that is modern society.
While others from his era like Lo Wang, have returned with a massive personality change, this just isn’t possible with a character like Duke Nukem. He needs to share the same fate as that of Caleb, from Blood, that being a memory of the good old days.
It is better to remember him as the ultra-over-the-top macho man, one-line throwing, alien butt kicking badass he once was, as opposed to the sad existence he has in Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition.
