The Saga Of The Duke.

Once upon a time, long, long ago, there was a game. And it was fun. It spawned sequels, and after a few years, the makers of the game decided that - post-DOOM - the Way Of The Future was First Person Shooter games.

And so was born Duke Nukem 3D.

It was popular - not as much as DOOM, but where DOOM's protagonist was totally faceless, silent, and really had no story other than "OMG ESCAPE ARRRRRGH!" The Duke had style. There were strippers in Duke Nukem's games. There was sarcasm; irony; black humor, and lots and lots and lots of guns.

Right; so, inevitably, the makers of Duke 3D - 3DRealms - decided to make a sequel to the FPS, and titled it Duke Nukem Forever.

You've never played this game.

This is because to date it has been in development for over a decade; it is easily the longest development cycle of any game ever, and has become an industry inside joke, as "the game that will never be released."

That's almost certainly not true; 3DRealms will virtually certainly release the game at some point. The question is, after 3 Duke side projects of varying degrees of success, ten years of development, and essentially giving the finger to the formerly enthusiastic fanbase, is there any way this game, when it DOES finally come out, can possibly be good enough to make up for a decade of development?

Yahtzee, of The Escapist's Zero Punctuation feature, says something along the lines of "unless this game is the greatest achievement in all of human history and simultaneously cures several kinds of cancer, it is going to be destroyed by critics."

But... here's the thing. When they first announced this game, I was all kinds of psyched to play it; Duke 3D was the bomb, IMO, and Duke Nukem: TTK was a damn fine addition to the series; I waited, and waited, and waited, and my eagerness to play this game gradually died down, faded away, what have you, but I thought it was gone completely.

Then they released this:

...And all that old enthusiasm just comes rushing right back.
GOD DAMN YOU 3DREALMS, BRING OUT MY GAME SO I CAN KICK ALIEN ASS!