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The Return of the Duke: How far have we come?

I guess it would stand to say that I am incredibly excited about the release of Duke Nukem Forever. Let’s traverse my childhood. Let’s traverse our culture, and how far we’ve come.

I’m originally from Southern California. Los Angeles, as a matter of fact. Things were a bit different then. Unbeknownst to us, we were actually fairly bad off. Not the best of incomes, not the best of situations, but it didn’t matter to us. My parents busted their asses to provide everything they could, and expose us carefully to the media around us, letting us approach it as they figured we could comfortably on our own.

My brothers and I got a kick out of Duke Nukem when we first got our hands on the demo. We were already enthralled with First Person Shooters at that time, and we had a real fun time out of it. The one-liners of sheer humor and ridiculousness made us laugh heartily, the appreciation of the females resonated well with us, as hey, we’re guys and we had a comfortable relationship with the women around us and our mother. It was edgey, colorful, and fun.

But since then, things have sort of got twisted for us. Outside of the little world my parents gave us to prevent us from ending up in street gangs, jail or worse, there was a nasty world outside of it. War and death was common, famine was beginning to encroach on my friends and family while the capital leaders sought to keep more of it to themselves. And our gaming media began to take on more and more of this.

I think the last FPS I really enjoyed playing that didn’t have to do with things we dealt with in life was… Well, it’s difficult to say, but I loved playing in premises that had nothing to do with Earth, things far-off and unreal. The Quake series before 4, the Doom series, Half-Life, and Portal… all terrific games whose premise never had anything we could primitively draw similarities to unless we did a lot of mind-altering substances. I became disheartened in everything else. Call of Duty, Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat, Halo… these games all had primitive similarities we could draw to our lives. War, dwindling resources, suffering were the names of these games. Some, to remind us of what we’ve come from, and others to remind us of what we’re going to end up at.

We had our time, over the past 10 years or so, to figure ourselves out and band together to buck the system that tried to encroach us. We theoretically had the tools to do so, even a massive distribution engine to utilize and disperse our message. The time to fight is now, but so is the time to remember what we’re fighting for, and what we love to do best. It’s time we do everything we can to do what we did as kids: Enjoy ourselves, despite a world trying to come down around our ears.

I draw similarities to some things I see in the music media. For example? I was disgusted at Korn’s track “Oildale“, and Disturbed’s track “Another Way to Die“. Look guys, I’m well aware of what the fuck is happening in the world. Our TV and peers shove it down our fucking throats all the time. And yet, while we are powerless to do anything about it as we don’t have the capital to, and we’re getting our very right to assembly and speech taken away, you’re sitting here fucking shoving it down our throats too. I have an idea, guys: Take the money you used to write and produce those songs and videos, and buy out our politicians to make them stop doing the things destroying our world. I bet the $200k it took to make that one song could go a long way buying out 20 politicians so they vote to provide government funding to clean alternatives. Or better yet, I bet that same money could’ve been used to buy 5 US researchers’ time or equipment to do the same thing. Quit fucking reminding me about how bad it is and do something about it.

Duke Nukem provides us with a crazy escape. Something unreal and fun. I’ve found that when I’m not listening to music to orchestrate slaughters on a supermassive level to, I am consuming media providing inspiration to be creative, whimsical and fun. For example, something that really resonated with me was My Darkest Days’ track “Porn Star Dancing“. It’s about just having fun, and loving the women that give us the chance to escape the grind. Even as a fairly hardcore metalhead, I have taken quite a fancy to Lady Gaga’s media concepts and music. It’s truly inspiring, creative, and gets me a chance to get away from the grind.

There is no better time than now to bring the Duke back into our lives. It’s a sorely needed reprieve. And I’m hoping it’s going to be all that we’ve wanted it to be, and more. And I hope it inspires people to hang loose and have fun, get away from the grind, even for a little bit.

And love those great tits.