Genderswap the Gritty Reboot for Maximum Effect: Duke Nukem: A Time to Kill

Point taken: Since this game came out, pole dancing has become a hot exercise trend for suburban moms.

There may be many reasons to explain why Duke Nukem Forever languished in a development cycle that lasted for 15 years, but there is one that can’t be denied: as a game, it was already hopelessly out-of-date before work on it had even begun.

Duke Nukem Forever (2011) is the sequel to Duke Nukem 3D (1996), but it wasn’t the only Duke Nukem game released in the time between these two games. These other spin-offs are significant because while they enjoyed their release at the apex of the series’ popularity, they also displayed the franchise fatigue that signalled the end of the series, long before the inevitable sequel arrived in 2011.

One of these spin-offs, Duke Nukem: A Time to Kill (1998), was not made by original makers 3D Realms. Instead, this game freshens up the franchise with third-person jumping and dodging that are liberally inspired by Tomb Raider. As kickass as it is to shoot cops dressed as pigs (or the other way around, whichever lesson you learned from Animal Farm), this game is unfortunately still limited by the fact it’s a Duke Nukem game.

That sounds weird since Duke Nukem is a character about excess, but then, part of a life of excess is being self-indulgent.

Duke Nukem is a satire on 80’s action heroes. The reason why Duke Nukem was still relevant up until the late 90’s is because it had taken that long for all these great action movies and their dialog to come out. It was okay to enjoy Duke Nukem since we were still getting over the ridiculousness of the 80s. But as the 90s were running out, so too was the tolerance for the blatant misogyny shown by this game.

That’s not to say there isn’t a place in video to enjoy the female form, especially ever since scientists have perfected the physics required to animate it. However, everything exists in a context, because that’s the way how art (which is what games are, sigh) is appreciated.

“Gritty reboot” is the way old characters and stories get updated for a modern audience because it’s an instant way to make past ideals relevant for right now. If Duke Nukem was given this treatment, he’d be a washed up has-been trying to relive his glory days—just what Duke Nukem Forever turned out to be.

As a sign of uncanny prescience, Duke Nukem: A Time to Kill features a song on its opening cinematic that contains the lyric “I won’t become the thing I hate”.

15 years is a long time to hold onto the angst, kiddo.

 

How far did I get in an half an hour: got stuck after turning off the sewer water. It’s dark down there

Would I play this game once this year is over: Sorry, too busy chewing bubble gum, and I’ve got a lot of bubble gum

Days so far in the Year of the Play-a-DayStation: 8

A Treasure that Should Stay Buried: Crash Bandicoot

Soundgarden, cargo pants, the time Jim Carrey was funny… yep, I’m in the 90s.

I don’t know anything about Crash Bandicoot. Well, that’s not true: this game had some great commercials. And yet, the one thing for certain from playing this game for half an hour is that Crash Bandicoot has not aged well at all.

You can say that all Playstation One-era games look dated by today’s standards, but that’s also not true: Darkstalkers 3 looks like the ink on its animated sprites had just dried yesterday, while Castlevania: Symphony of the Night looks fresh enough to be adapted into the latest teen dystopia movie (I call it: Dracula Teens: The New Class) .

Those games might have a competitive edge by belonging to an older genre, making it easier to be inducted into the hallowed “timeless” category, but Crash Bandicoot had a lot going for it as well: great animation and graphics, deft gameplay and controls. and a sensibility stemming its own self-awareness. This ain’t your daddy’s 2D side-scrolling jumper.

And yet, despite all this and its blast processing (maybe I’m getting the attitudes mixed up), Crash Bandicoot is the quintessential 90s video game, every last “extreme” part of it. This is a franchise of completely its time, and maker Naughty Dog was right to leave this franchise behind; it was the only way to move forward and develop their ground-breaking series about a guy who wears a T-shirt and jeans.

Proof Poochie didn’t die on his way back to his home planet.

If abandoning its own mascot in its logo isn’t proof enough, just look at these graphics. Back when it came out, words like “state of the art” and “cutting edge” were likely used to describe Crash Bandicoot, but that’s all it was: indicative of its time. While this is by no means a way to harangue a great game, Crash Bandicoot still can’t be called awesome*.

While we’re awkwardly jumping over pits blocked by our protagonist’s own knees, the classic Super Mario World had us jumping across vast open worlds. While Crash weirdly appropriates the culture of its island world as a subtext you’re not sure you want to have explained for you, Street Fighter and Punch-Out had embraced international stereotypes to set up great fights (a phenomenon recently witnessed by the hype-himself, Connor McGregor)..

I want to really like Crash Bandicoot, I really do. But I missed its time, and its time was back in the 90s. Playing it now isn’t nostalgic or relevant, it just feels twenty years old.

* “Awesome” > “great” because we’re using 90s terminology here.

 

How far did I get in an hour: the Indiana Jones 5^th level.

Would I play this again once this year is up: Yes, but it’s lower on my list.

Numbers of days so far in the Year of the Play-a-DayStation: 5

Hail to the Gimp: Dino Crisis

So listen, I think we should just be friends from now on.

In all my years of being a bachelor, I’ve become sure of a few things: 1) if she leaves her underwear on the floor, the only person who’s going to pick it up is you; 2) a messy girlfriend is way more fun than an non-messy girlfriend (better if she can dance, then keep her for sure); and 3) the difference between ordering takeout and cooking food for yourself is that the latter takes longer to enter your mouth.

As this is not a dating blog, you don’t have to take these suggestions to heart (just try to refute such sage advice, however). But as I shuffle away from my swinging bachelor days and stop ordering so much takeout, I find that while regulation #3 technically hasn’t changed, my perspective of it has.

You see, making food for yourself isn’t a chore, it’s a privilege. It may take up more of your time, but it’s going to be as good as you make it. You spend the time to make a nice meal, and when you’re finished, you’re rewarded with it.

Cooking is a story, one where you get the time to savour all its details. The same is true for the video game Dino Crisis where every detail is especially slow and mundane.

This sounds a little long in the tooth (as is this introduction), but for a survival horror game, the whole point is have slow and mundane details so the suspense can get drawn out.

Let’s say it to make sure there’s no ambiguity for naysayers of the controls: the gimped controls in Dino Crisis and its far more superior brethren Resident Evil are what makes these games great.

Even twenty years ago, audiences were too sophisticated to take a simple ghost story seriously. When it first came along, what Resident Evil did was to utilize a new game convention as a way to better tell stories, just not a way to tell better stories.

As great and fun as these games may be, nothing has changed except to change the half-gallon Big Gulp  container with a brandy snifter. Half-Life is the same way. It has a very generic story about aliens and a government cover-up (uh, spoilers, I guess). What blew everyone’s minds at the time isn’t what the story was about, but how they told it: no division of levels, eradicating cutscenes, and providing rational explanations for power-ups that would otherwise be spinning and glowing.

Dino Crisis takes some generic story about secret agents and secrets labs and dials down the RPM so that you feel every analog bump. It gets gamers who regularly process information at the speed of Marvel vs Capcom 3 to slow down and savor the suspense that comes to us in the form of loading screens when our protagonists slowly open each door.

The slow pace and gimped controls are oppressive to a gamer who is more experienced to double-jumps and unlimited ammo. It’s supposed to be oppressive. An oppressive tone welcomes the dread that enables your fun. That’s survival horror.

Even though Dino Crisis has been doomed to obscurity, I have since learned to cook instead of always eating take-out, while Resident Evil has gone on to go full third-person action adventure to huge success. In both cases, better stories are being told, if you’re considering the horror stories they leave behind.

 

How far I got in 15 minutes: I met the first dinosaur, escaped, and then went back so that I could get properly eaten by him

Would I play this again once this year is over: Yes, just as I think secretly breeding dinosaurs on a secluded island is a good idea. I mean, anything to get Chris Pratt riding a motorcycle alongside a team of raptors, I’m in.

Numbers of days so far in the Year of the Play-a-DayStation: 4

Yippee-ki-yay, and a Good Day to You, Sir: Die Hard Trilogy

If you don’t play this game, the terrorists win.

The best thing about Die Hard (1988) is that it’s the best action film ever made. On the other hand, the worst thing about it is that because a better action film hasn’t been made ever since, we’re still stuck talking about it almost thirty years later.

So take it with a pinch of reality: any hot co-ed you ever manage to date will not have been alive when it came out.

With Die Hard being so old and yet so entrenched in our hearts, the nostalgia we feel for it is undeniable. That’s exactly why you should take a break from viewing this Christmas classic one more time in order to indulge your nostalgia with its licensed video game counterpart, Die Hard Trilogy.

The first noticeable thing between these two is that any similarities are superficial at best. The Die Hard films feature a post-modern action hero pitted against an antagonist that views him the same way the audience does, whereas the video game uses the same ten minutes of film as the basis for hours of gameplay.

And let’s not mince words: since it’s Die Hard, its an impressive ten minutes of film, and being that Die Hard Trilogy is a mash-up of three movies with three different genres (third-person shooter, on-rails shooter, and arcade racer), it’s more badassery than the 90s should have allowed. (See, it was X-treme was had no limits back then.)

So that’s where I left my keys–in my inventory!

(In video game terms, this is like what would happen if someone made a double-barreled shotgun with three barrels.)

The video game spin-off is a mere shadow of the films. Die Hard Trilogy goes so far as to embrace the “cowboy mentality” that gets ridiculed from within the first film by sending in endless waves of virtual cannon fodder as reputable video game content. Maybe it’s a little on the nose, but the terrorists even call you “cowboy”.

It’s ridiculous. And, since our nostalgia is as strong as our familiarity with the Die Hard films, this skewed perspective a great way to enjoy the films again.

This nostalgia trip is great because it challenges you to remember how the original version went. For instance, John McClean lacks the tail end of his trademark phrase that starts with “Yipee-ki-yay”, but he makes up for it by apologizing whenever he shoots an innocent bystander by mistake.

Die Hard Trilogy is mostly an ugly mess to look at, but represents the way licensed video games made from feature films should be made: by being as unfaithful to the source material in order to make a game as fun as it can be using the resources available to us of sheer ludicrousness.

Maybe you can’t blame Bruce Willis for phoning in performances at this point, but I hope there’s another installment of the franchise just so they can make another Die Hard Trilogy *.

Choosing your initials is to choose from hostages identified by a letter of the alphabet. Sucks to be you, Q.

* This doesn’t include the video game sequel, Die Hard Trilogy 2: Viva Las Vegas

 

How far I got in an hour: the beginning of all three genres/films, lots of deaths

Would I play this again once this year is up: Yipee-ki-yay, sir

Numbers of days so far in the Year of the Play-a-DayStation: 3