Duke Nukem Forever and Portal 2: Gaming's Longest-Running Joke Returns

Duke Nukem Forever

To put into context the amount of time fans have been waiting for the latest Duke Nukem instalment, when the game was first announced there was no such thing as Google and the world’s male population was still a year off discussing whether it was morally okay to fancy Britney Spears. So as Gearbox Software finally pushes the original alien slayer back into the spotlight, the jury’s a tough crowd. The last time Duke Nukem was cool, Gillian Anderson was the Sexiest Woman in the World. Since 1997, the world’s changed; Duke hasn’t. Duke made his name by being the very opposite of your traditional computer game character. He was sarcastic, egotistical, non-PC before people had even thought of the term. Link he was not.

Fittingly, 14 years later, the first thing FHM does when handed control of Duke at the game’s opening – a urinal – is pull the right trigger to emit a long, steaming piss. The second, after some prompting by the game host, is put a rat in the microwave. Living in the penthouse of the Lady Killer casino in Las Vegas, a bespoke shrine built for him after he saved Earth from alien invasion, Duke splits his time between hosting TV shows, signing copies of his book, Why I’m So Great, and being pleasured by the ‘The Holsum Twins’. He’s Charlie Sheen, but without the debilitating psychotic breakdown.

Read FHM India in the digital libraryEvery issue, every shoot, on TCG Media.

Enter aliens. Big, ugly slimy beasts intent not just on invasion but on stealing Earth’s women. The game’s weapons, graphics and enemy are shoddy, but deliberately, precisely shoddy – this is made as a game that could have been released in the late ’90s. You’ve got an ego-meter, which you can replenish by pumping iron or lingering by a mirror. You can pick up turds and throw them at people and punch pesky army generals in the balls.

Teenage kicks. One-liners. Nudity. It ain’t sophisticated, but it’s idiotically brilliant.

*DNF is out on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC*

Did you know?

• The first Duke Nukem game was released for PC in 1991
• Duke has ‘Lani’ tattooed on his bum, in reference to his lost love
• The game has been through three different producers since it was first announced
• A Duke Nukem movie has been mooted since the late ’90s. Given this game’s delays, don’t expect it any time soon.

Portal 2

Portal’s come a long way since it was bundled alongside Valve Software’s more eminent Half Life 2 titles in 2007’s The Orange Box. An instant hit, it received slavering praise for its ingenuity, deadpan humour and ability, like a good teacher, to make you feel smart. Not bad for a game that was only three hours long.

After the truncated first instalment’s success, the sequel’s earned its place as a stand-alone title. It retains the same gameplay as before – you have to ‘shoot’ portals that will zap you to otherwise unreachable parts of a series of tricksy rooms – but the graphics are improved and Stephen Merchant’s been brought in to voice your chirpy robot guide. The level design is as inspired as last time, with new puzzle tools including funnels, springboards, vacuum tubes and special gels that can change an otherwise unremarkable wall into a trampoline, or a floor into a whizzy ‘slip ’n slide’. Oh, and murderous little laser beams can be twiddled this way and that with mirrored cubes. The sequel’s grown in size and profile, but the quirky creepiness lingers and the puzzles still strike the perfect balance between intricacy and inspiration. However, the fact that you can now play the game co-operatively, both locally and online, might be the achievement most worth marvelling at.

*Portal 2 is out on Xbox 360, PS3, PC and Mac*

From the May 2011 issue of FHM India.