Stop the press! Duke Nukem is back! If you’re anything like me (a stoner in his mid 20’s) then you probably spent a good portion of your early teens playing first person shooters on your PC, the pinnacle of which was probably something like Half Life 2 or Quake 3. One of the earliest – and coolest – though was Duke Nukem, where you played a wisecracking idiot who had to rid the world of a bunch of scary ass aliens and monsters who would regularly tell you to SUCK IT DOWN in a scary voice.

Duke Nukem was cool because he was a total badass and whipped out dumb lines like ‘it’s time to kick ass and chew bubble gum, but I’m all out of gum’ and the game also featured naked women who would be hanging out in strip clubs dancing. If you went up to them and pressed the space bar Duke Nukem would hand them a dollar bill and they would flash their tits. This was like the coolest thing ever when I was 12 and it was harder to find smut on the internet without getting caught by my mom and dad.

Anyway, Quake had a sequel, Doom had a sequel, Unreal had a sequel, Half Life had a sequel, Wolfenstein had a sequel even Sin had a sequel but the most eagerly awaited of them all – Duke Nukem Forever – never emerged. All we had was one screenshot to whet our appetite. I can’t find it right now but it looked a bit like this one:

That is until now, and the official announcement of the release date of Duke Nukem Forever. It’s June 14th. Over 14 years in the making – which is longer than the research, development, testing and deployment of the atomic bomb or the trip to the moon from a concept on paper to reality – will Duke Nukem Forever live up to the hype? More importantly, do I even care enough about video games anymore to check it out? Here’s a trailer:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVuuyRGB_BA

I mean it looks OK, the graphics are sick and the monsters are scary, but the jokes are the same (I guess they had to be) so I don’t really know what to make of it….is it going to be any good and will it be able to stand up to stuff like Half Life 2 or COD or Halo or whatever people play now? I guess I’ll have to wait until June 14th and hope that one of my friends buys it to find out.