Overthinking Terrible: Duke Nukem Forever('s Fans)

Duke Nukem Forever came out in Europe last week, and is set to drop in the NORTH AMERICA any moment now.  Two things have so far been found out:

1) Anyone objective playing this game pretty much hates it.  As someone who watched a let's play of it on youtube, I can tell you that these opinions are all correct.  Duke Nukem Forever is goddamned terrible.  I don't care about the graphics, but Duke Nukem 3d was an FPS that prided itself on exploration and well-executed item placement.  I'm still more of a giant Doom nerd, but Duke Nukem 3D was superior in the fact that discovering secrets was not just a matter of "hit spacebar in front of every wall and listen for opening doors."  So, now we have a game that is literally a bad joke of modern FPS shittery, with endless linear corridors, two-weapon limits, and best of all, REGENERATING HEALTH.  You could honestly get a far more legitimate Duke Nukem Experience by playing Painkiller (NOT Overdose, which now that I think about it is sort of the Duke Nukem Forever of Painkiller) again and yelling slurs at women whenever you reach a new arena.  But this post isn't about that.  It's about the fact that:

2) People are literally losing their minds over the fact that Duke Nukem Forever is a bad game.  Go on the reviews that are already up, go on youtube comments, go on any message board (save for the official DNF message board, you'll probably die of the stench) and read the furious, mind-altering screams of people that refuse to believe that the game might not be that fun.  People accusing the reviews of not being TRU FANS and only TRU FANS can understand what it means to always bet on the Duke, death squads downvoting and screeching against youtube comments who seem skeptical of the "capture the babe" multiplayer mode where you smack a woman on the behind to shut her up, and giant bro group therapy sessions of people telling each other how best to deal with duke haters.

Of course, this isn't by itself a big thing.  Every popular series has its fans that fan out like rabid dogs if an installment of the series gets less than a 9.0 on Gamespot.  But the thing is this:  Duke Nukem 3D was released on January 29, 1996.  The true horror may have dawned on you: there are people who are emotionally invested in the sequel to a fifteen-year-old game.  I have to ask: who are these people?  I believe there are probably two subtypes of these Duke fans, both representing alot of what's wrong with the gaming world.  One of these problems is natural and understandable, but the other represents a disturbing subfacet about life.

The first group are just kids that don't know any better.  I refer to recent gamers, aged roughly ten to sixteen, who fucking love video games.  They of course didn't play the DN3D when it first game out, though they might have downloaded it from GOG or downloaded a ROM of the N64 version.  It's just as possible they just watched a Let's Play of the original, or didn't even witness the game, just finding a masculine dude with shades who tells people to blow it out their ass to be omgroffle hilarious.  These are more likely the people telling the detractors to OMG SHUT UP .  As they likely never played the game, the only thing about Duke Nukem Forever that matters is how bawdy and boob-filled everything is.  As Gearbox took care to ensure that the only thing remaining from the original game was Duke's outdated-then humor, they are satisfied and don't understand people bewailing the FPS mechanics they've come to love.

I don't have a problem with this, really.  After all, I was as much a consumerist whore at 13 as any of these brats, getting into online arguments with people about how it was TOTALLY OKAY for Nintendo to fuck over people with fifteen versions of the gameboy and harsh censoring laws didn't matter glub glub glub.  I grew up pretty okay, and with any luck, a good number of these guys will soon outgrow their awful youtube meme videos and start actually thinking for themselves.  What's troublesome is that some in my generation clearly never figured things out.

Witness the second group.  The people that clearly played Duke Nukem 3D when it initially came out, and are STILL incapable of distinguishing what is good and what is shit.  Again, fifteen year difference means that even if you're being generous and assuming that alot of ten-year-olds were blasting pig cops, we now have twenty-five year old men going WELL I ENJOY THE GAME I GUESS I'M JUST A FREE MIND THAT LOVES WHAT HE LOVES ENJOY HATING EVERYTHING FOREVER HATER.  I'm a judgmental bastard, but I can tolerate most dumb things from people younger than me.  It's just that when people in my generation are trying to come up with complex sociological arguments why it's okay for them to really like what is for all intents the video game version of Nickleback that I just hate you all.  Yeah duders, even as someone who watched the game I acknowledge there's alot of wrong comments on the negative reviews, but at the end of the day you're still goddamned desperate not to admit that you've wasted years of your life anticipating what is surely a game that will be forgotten by everyone but yourselves and your gross comments.

I could keep going on, but I think this quote from the gearbox duke boards (topic: "People seem to be enjoying DNF a lot, despite being in the age of pompous critics.") pretty much encapsulates what I'm saying here:

So far ive spent 31 hours playing Duke since release here in the UK
My eyes are blurry , I feel lethargic , I have missed quite a few meals since its come out , Ive smoke LOADS and drunk I dont know how much coke all this and im 40 years old. 

I feel now at this very moment like I used to feel back playing D3D / Quake / Wolfenstein 3D all those years ago and I will say I AM LOVING EVERY SECOND OF THE GAME.

Is it D3D ? Nope no its not ... Is it a Duke Nukem game ?? Hell yeah it is and a great 1 at that.Ive finished the game on hard ( not yet tried insaine ) and im still having fun going back in game to replay levels and look for things ive missed ... not just ego items either , im having a load of fun just looking for little things I have not found yet like newpaper headlines and clipboards with bits and pieces written on them.

A closing anecdote/lesson: My father was once really into Wing Commander (even buying a mid-tier joystick for max killening), but his biggest love was the spin-off Privateer.  He and I played the shit out of that game, for all the problems there were it was just a perfect little sandbox spacesim.  So, three years later we were HYPE for Privateer 2: The Darkening.  Goddamned, my dad tried to like that game, playing through all of the exactly the same side missions and playing the impossible to actually play market.  Eventually, I just walked up to him and said, "Dad, this game is really terrible, isn't it?"

He looked at the screen (trying to pursue one of those GODDAMNED KIOWAN SKULLS), shugged, and nodded.