Christopher Machell with six reasons why Doom is a great reboot – and Duke Nukem Forever isn’t…
The original Doom is one of the most influential games of all time, ranking alongside such icons as Pac-Man, Space Invaders, and Super Mario Bros. as emblems of the medium. After eight years in development hell, it’s nothing short of miraculous that the fourth game in the series is as polished and unfettered an experience as it is, garnering almost universally positive reviews.
But Doom’s success was never a given. Announced way back in 2008 and undergoing at least one significant overhaul in 2011, Doom (then titled Doom 4) was reported as having gameplay and cinematics more akin to Call of Duty, worrying news for a series known for its simplicity and lack of narrative padding.
It’s not the first time that a developer has tried to relive its past glories with a rebooted, modernised version of a classic series, so let’s take some time now to consider exactly why Doom succeeds as a reboot, and how badly it could have gone wrong. What better way to do that than by comparing it with Duke Nukem Forever, 3D Realms’ disastrously delayed 2011 sequel to their own iconic Duke Nukem 3D?
Legacy
Revelling in excess and a new-found sense of adolescent maturity, the original Doom was part of a new culture of games that courted controversy with its hellish imagery and ultra-violence. But there was also a purity to Doom’s vision, a synergy between the heavy-metal aesthetic, horror-inspired sound design and its excessive violence; Doom was about more than just being puerile. In contrast, 3D Realms’ 1996 Duke Nukem 3D took the controversial elements of Doom and ran with them. Aping the violent gameplay of Doom but throwing in nudity, crude jokes and a foul-mouthed, ultra-macho hero, Duke Nukem’s controversy was its central selling point.
A predictable E3 presence from the Duke’s marketing campaignIt’s Duke Nukem 3D’s sense of irony that accounts for the Duke’s success over the years, with a handful of spin-off games on the PSOne and Nintendo 64, and a cult status among fans. But there’s no doubt that Duke Nukem never quite hit the heights of Doom; Duke Nukem 3D was fun, sure, but how different would the gaming landscape really be without it? Doom, on the other hand, changed gaming forever, introducing network play, immersive environments and popularising the emergent first-person shooter genre. As awesome as the Duke is, there’s no contest over which series has the better legacy.
Development Hell
Duke Nukem Forever took a staggering fifteen years to be completed: so long did it take developer 3D Realms to make the game, they were eventually sued and the project handed over to Gearbox Software and Piranha Games to finish.
While not quite as excruciating as the Duke’s ordeal, Doom 2016 had a similarly painful birth. Officially announced in 2008 as Doom 4, reports that the game would have scripted, cinematic set pieces didn’t bode well for fans hoping for a return to Doom basics, earning the project the nickname ‘Call of Doom’. With the eventual departure of one of Doom’s spiritual fathers, John Carmack, the prospect of a decent fourth Doom game continued to look unlikely.
So how did developer Id finally got its act together where 3D Realms apparently couldn’t? It’s strange to think that there was a time that both games were in development at the same time, even though Duke Nukem Forever was announced when the original PlayStation was current. At least Doom only had to contend with one generation’s worth of technological change.
It’s clear that throughout its development, Doom was in crisis, and the worse that crisis became, the more its vision was muddied. But something happened at the end of the process, where everything seems to have snapped into place: in 2015, the project’s newly appointed chief, Marty Stratton, finally brought it back into focus, and Doom found itself once more.
Duke Nukem Forever was not so lucky, and with no strong direction at the development level, its vision is simply broken, from the dated graphics, half-baked humour and schizophrenic gameplay mechanics. With fifteen years’ worth of staff turnover and changing leadership, Forever’s lack of a cohesive vision is arguably its greatest weakness.
Humour
Duke Nukem’s enduring legacy is rooted in its irreverent and politically incorrect sense of humour, with the Duke himself typifying this with an arsenal of one liners knowingly cribbed from macho action movies. It’s fair to say that Doom isn’t as well known for its sense of humour, whose mute hero is incapable of muttering anything beyond a grunt.
So it’s perhaps a surprise, then, that Doom’s visual gags far outshine any of the lame semi-ironic humour of Duke Nukem Forever. Forever’s interminable one liners, dated sexist humour and non-existent wit is less like hanging out with the world’s most awesome badass and more like being stuck at the dinner table with a lecherous uncle who won’t stop cracking crap jokes.
Compare this to the Doom Slayer’s early reaction to superfluous exposition – impatiently hurling a talking computer across the room – or the comical noise of a bloodied, disembodied arm sliding across a finger-print scanner, and it’s clear that Doom is positively brimming with perfectly-timed humour that neither breaks the flow of gameplay nor detracts from the game’s tone.
Characters
It’s no surprise that the appeal of the Duke Nukem series lies squarely with its foul-mouthed hero, a pastiche of macho personality and swagger. The original Doom games, in contrast, were never really about the hero: Doom Guy doesn’t even have a real name. Doom was about putting the player themselves in the role of the hero, whereas Duke Nukem was more about hanging out with the hero to see what outrageous thing he might do or say next.
The problem with Duke is that as a pastiche he’s entirely one dimensional, and in Duke Nukem Forever his constant self-aggrandising and unreconstructed machismo can’t help but wear thin. Doom Guy (or Doom Slayer), conversely, is characterised through the player’s actions. It’s ironic that his silence invests the character with more depth than the endlessly wittering Duke; more of a brutal force of nature than a person, Doom Guy’s silence is infinitely more compelling than a whole phrasebook of tired one liners.
Graphics and Sound
While it’s not really fair to compare the graphical fidelity of games released five years apart and on different generations of hardware, it is fair to say that even by 2011 standards, Duke Nukem Forever is one of the ugliest games around. Everything in Forever bears the marks of generations-old development: muddy, low resolution textures, appalling lip synching and animation, stock character models and repetitive enemies, and technical glitches dog the whole experience. Doom suffers no such problems; despite also starting life on older hardware, it is one of the finest looking games of this generation while paying tribute to the look and feel of the original games. Iconic nasties Cacodemons, Revenants and Barons of Hell have never looked better, retaining their fundamental designs while benefiting from gorgeously detailed high-definition models.
Duke Nukem Forever’s soundtrack also compares unfavourably to Doom’s: where the former’s plays like an obnoxious medley of cheap rock covers, Doom’s dark heart has never been better represented than in its bassy, blood pumping score, courtesy of composer Mick Gordon. The score is so literally hellish, that when run through a spectrograph, it creates demonic symbols on the display – a wonderfully apt and witty Easter egg to which Forever could only ever aspire.
Gameplay
The technical issues, the outdated graphics, the embarrassing jokes: all of these could be excused if Duke Nukem Forever’s gameplay was even remotely up to scratch. Compared to Doom’s intense, frenetic action, Forever plays like it’s on horse tranquilizers: sluggish, dull, and achingly slow, apparently determined to keep the player away from anything resembling fun for as long as possible.
We’re here to blast cacodemons and chew bubblegum. And we’re all out of bubblegum.Doom doesn’t need to bother with half-baked jokes at its own expense, because it’s too busy being awesome. While the multiplayer has left some gamers cold, Doom’s single-player campaign has it where it counts. It’s insanely fast – a stark reminder of how slow some modern FPSs have become – and the controls tight and responsive. If you miss an imp with an ill-timed shotgun blast as it skids towards you, you know it’s your fault and no one else’s. Contrast this with Duke Nukem Forever’s wonky and unsatisfying shooting mechanics, with its dreadful hit detection and excruciating driving and platforming sections.
It’s tempting to view Doom’s opening sequence as a direct riposte to Forever’s tedious, exposition-heavy first level, dropping you straight into the carnage without so much as an opening cinematic. Doom’s loading screens, long though they are, pale in comparison to Forever’s endless load times, and even though Doom doesn’t completely avoid mandatory exposition, it’s sparse, with most of its backstory found in optional collectibles.
Although it’s not necessary to compare Doom and Duke Nukem Forever to know which is the better game, doing so tell us something fundamental about both. As well as sharing troubled development cycles, both games’ legacies are rooted in the same moment in gaming history, and both series are rightly remembered as icons of the medium.
Doom isn’t perfect, of course, but its clarity of purpose is self-evident, content with doing one thing extremely well. It’s a lesson that other AAA titles would do well to learn – Grand Theft Auto, we’re looking at you – that it’s better to be great at one thing than adequate at five. Sadly, it’s a lesson that Duke Nukem Forever never learned.
Christopher Machell
