“Of all the things I planned to talk about tonight, the gay robot sidekick was not among them.” Randy Pitchford, current and final steward of Duke Nukem Forever, the video game that has been in development for longer than any other, shoots the front three rows of assembled journalists a glare. “But I am at a BAFTA event after all. You have to take a gamble with these things. Don’t screw me on this please.”

Gambling on things is something Pitchford became well acquainted with in 2009 when his studio, Gearbox Software acquired the rights to the beleaguered franchise. Part of that package was the code to Duke Nukem Forever, the game that 3D Realms had been toiling away at since 1997 before having to sell Duke away due to lack of funding. By that point the game had become an industry laughing stock, its shared acronym with the term ‘Did Not Finish’ a punch-line to a joke that, for staff at 3D Realms, at least, was more tragedy than comedy.

Pitchford describes looking over the scraps of the completed game that came to him in the deal as “feeling a bit like Indiana Jones, finding jewels of great worth that simply had to be shown to the wider world.” And so, for the next 24 months, Pitchford and his team have been working to tie up 3D Realms’ vision for the game, tailoring it for multiplatform release, and creating a slew of multiplayer modes to sit alongside the near-complete single-player campaign that they were given in the acquisition.

So why the gamble? Because Duke Nukem is a gung-ho, misogynist knucklehead; a Schwarzenegger parody whose quips have none of the wit of a Nathan Drake and whose character is as fleeting as the cigar smoke that leaks incessantly from his mouth. He is an anachronism born of gaming’s juvenile years when the hobby was a grubby niche and its primary audience horny teenage boys for whom a pixelated cleavage represented the dizzying height of puberty-era titillation.

Today, every computer is “a window to infinite pornography,” as Pitchford puts it with wry eloquence. What interest would a teenage boy have in a waxy-textured stripper? And what interest would a 30-something man have in a one-dimensional sexist monster? What hope has that of selling?

“Before we jumped in with the acquisition we all studied what the character and gameplay meant in today’s world. We reflected on this a lot, looked at the internet and studied trends trying to work out if Duke has a place in the contemporary landscape of games. In that process it became clear that Duke Nukem had become a meme. I don’t know why that happened. It has nothing to do with truly great Duke Nukem games because, honestly, there haven’t been any. It’s something to do with him: the character.”

Pitchford has no doubts that Nukem is relevant today, likening the character to Tony Stark in the recent Iron Man films. “When we think about Duke: he is such an interesting guy,” he enthuses. “He is nothing like me at all. He has the biggest ego in the world. In his universe everyone loves him. He is super rich and crazy. I think that is one of the reasons that Duke is so sticky at the moment. Most of our heroes in contemporary media have become emo. Even I am guilty of it. With Brothers In Arms [Gearbox's somewhat worthy-minded World War II-themed first person shooter series] we took a tone that was all about sacrifice and loss. Duke, by contrast, doesn’t have any freaking problems. He just kicks ass. It’s surprisingly fresh to have a guy turn up like that who doesn’t give a crap.”

Pitchford’s fondness for the character may have something to do with the length of time the pair has been acquainted. The designer’s first job in the industry was working at 3D Realms on Duke Nukem 3D. “I was studying law at UCLA paying my way through college as a professional magician. My girlfriend at the time [who later became his wife] pointed out that I was spending all my free time playing and making video games. So I decided to stop law and see what was out there in the industry. Very soon I had two offers on the table: one from LucasArts and the other was from 3D Realms who were working on Duke Nukem 3D.”

In 1997 Pitchford left 3D Realms to found Gearbox Software and it was his involvement in the series that made him such a suitable buyer for the IP. “Duke Nukem was one of the formative titles in the first-person shooter genre,” he explains. “The game brought to the table alternate ways to engage in combat: trip wires and pipe bombs. Pacing between action and puzzle solving. These things become the rulebook that we have all been evolving and iterating over the years.”

“But recently I feel like the shooter genre has become so narrow in its form of expression. If you boil down Call of Duty et al, there’s nothing more than a string of reaction tests going on there. Every test is a complication on that simple mechanic. But Duke Nukem always had more than that. There’s the chance to outsmart your opponents, for sure. But more than that, I love the non-sequitirs in the series. Just silly set pieces that are kind of throwaway. Half-Life 2 had that kind of thing. But it’s faded from the medium more recently. I think Duke Nukem Forever has many little things like this to remind us how great that kind of experience is. ”

Of course, it’s not easy to forget that many of these set-piece interactions are of the scatological or sexual variety. The opening scene of the game sees Nukem sitting down to play the video game of his exploits (which, after 12 years, has eventually been released) while receiving oral sex from a pair of twins. Pitchford sees this kind of interaction as somewhat shocking, but well within the realm of what is acceptable in a video game.

“We know as gamers that this medium is important,” he says. “I know from my own experience that the critical thinking that I have developed is a consequence of using video games as a pastime. They’ve forced me to be creative. This equips us for many things in life. Before games existed we played cops and robbers and would be horribly creative. All of us had this experience: that is fantasy. Runs the full spectrum from unicorns to the most extreme situations. That is where heroes are born. I think it’s okay to make games anywhere along that spectrum.”

And as for the gay robot sidekick? Unexpectedly, it’s a character that the Duke Nukem Forever team contemplated while at 3D Realms when exploring a possible origin story for the character. “We thought it might be interesting to see how Duke might relate to a partner that had a different sexual orientation. Ultimately we thought there’s an endpoint, where he’s a one-man show. I don’t want to spoil it too much, as we may go there. But Duke and the robot developed a great bond. We’ll see if he makes a return.”

Whatever you think of the series, its boisterous humor, juvenile titillation and contemptible attitudes, it’s hard to not be a little caught up in Pitchford’s unrelenting excitement for the project. There’s a lack of pretense here that is, somehow, appealing. And as the designer is quick to point out, no project can be in development for such a long time, unless there are people working on it that have passion and belief in what they are creating.

“That’s the spark that brought me into the project,” he says. “People gave up significant portions of their lives for this project. The end credits list is extensive and includes names that have gone on to work at Valve, or create the Uncharted games. Duke Nukem Forever is a part of our industry’s history. It’s going to be an amazing feeling to see this game ship.”

This feature was originally published at Gamasutra.

In the run-up to the release of Splash Damage’s team-based shooter Brink, there has been an odd reluctance to state plainly what, at heart, the game is about.

Perhaps it’s because Brink’s heritage lies in the mod scene, where its fundamental ideas were beaten into shape by amateurs. Or maybe it’s because Splash Damage’s Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, with which Brink shares its basic approach, sold only modestly. Or has it been fear on the part of publisher Bethesda that the team-based shooter at its core isn’t quite enough to raise blockbuster expectations on its own?

Instead, there has been much talk of parkour, with videos of free-running experts launching themselves over virtual crates, in the hope of lending an air of street chic to the hype. There have been tourist guides to the setting: the futuristic floating city The Ark, a final refuge for mankind whose offices and corridors furnish the game’s maps.

There’s been the focus on the divisive and unique character designs: Gears of War marines redrawn by a 19th-century Punch cartoonist, with an exaggerated gauntness and muscle. Most recently, there have been the in-depth tutorial videos discussing high-level tactics and the intricacies of Brink’s strategic game.

But what has somehow been missed in the marketing bluster is that Brink is a game of cops vs. robbers.

Yes, the S.M.A.R.T. system used to move your character through the environment is fluid and fascinating, allowing you to climb up and over obstacles in search of the quickest route to your objective. Yes, the Ark provides some interesting locations. There’s no denying that Splash Damage has refined the genre by way of a host of fine-level design details here.

But it’s important to be fully aware that Brink is Reds vs. Blues, Cowboys vs. Indians, Resistance vs. Security. There are eight men on each side, whether you’re playing online or alone – and it’s not quite as complicated as it’s been made out to be.

You can read the rest over at Eurogamer here.

Treasure’s latest, as with much of the company’s best output, carves its own determined path. Paying little mind to fashion or genre, Bangai-O HD: Missile Fury instead sticks tenaciously to its own vision.

Somewhere, buried deep at its core, this is a twin-stick shooter in which you pilot a gigantic weaponised bipedal robot, viewed side-on from a camera positioned a mile away. But we are a long way from Geometry Wars and its ilk; the mechanics and twists heaped on to Bangai-O mean it defies easy classification.

It looks like a bullet-curtain shoot-’em-up, projectiles filling the screen in a furious swarm. But while there is an intermittent demand for keen twitch reactions, very often it’s more like a puzzle game, a generous collection of stages conundrums that must be poked and picked at before they can be properly unravelled and understood. Or wait, should that be more like a racing game, in which you must dart towards an exit point before a crate falls to block your path? Or perhaps a sports game, in which you try to outwit a baseball bat-wielding enemy robot, sneaking around its maniacal swings to bring him down?

In truth, Bangai-O HD: Missile Fury is all this and more: a hotchpotch collection of discrete game design ideas arranged like a linear mini-game collection, somehow made coherent by way of the giant/minuscule robots and hails of missiles that fly through each one.

It’s the third game in the series. The first, released for Nintendo 64 and Dreamcast (in two slightly different variations) told a bats**t insane story of two child mecha pilots on a mission to take down the fruit-stealing Cosmo gang.

For the sequel, Bangai-O Spirits on DS, story and structure were largely discarded in favour of a dizzying array of standalone micro levels which could be tackled in any order. With no narrative to couch the game in, and no set order to play it in, Bangai-O Spirits felt like Treasure freestyling game design at an open mic night (or perhaps playing as support band for WarioWare). It was smart, infuriating, ingenious and exhilarating all at once, stripping the company’s previous output down to its constituent parts, a flurry of micro-games to show the world that the developer was more gifted than you, even when it wasn’t really trying.

Bangai-O HD: Missile Fury falls somewhere between its two predecessors. There’s no story here to frame the experience, but then Treasure’s stabs at narrative have always come across as half-hearted, the company preferring to let design do the talking. Instead, the preamble to each stage is more like a hurriedly scrawled note from its designer: “Watch out for ninjas”, “Be sure to use the napalm gun”, “Hurry to the exit before it’s too late.”

Very soon, these clues reveal themselves to be indispensable, often holding the key to finishing the extremely challenging stages. There’s no concession to newcomers. The Tokyo-based boutique developer has never shied away from challenging us, but Missile Fury’s learning curve is dispiritingly steep, even for veterans of the series.

You can read the rest over at Eurogamer here.

It’s the Tetris problem. Occasionally a game maker happens upon a flawless recipe on the first attempt, a kind of perfection that would be compromised if any of the ingredients were added to or taken away from. So it is with Sega AM3′s Virtua Tennis, an arcade game that translated the stretch-and-dive drama of professional tennis with such assured brilliance that, aside from a conspicuous lack of female players, precluded a sequel.

But while perfection may be the goal of every game designer, it’s the enemy of the businessmen that pay for the game designer’s computers, electricity and crunch-period pizzas. No, a publisher wants the recipe to be delicious, but somehow flawed or lacking. That way, it can be improved and built upon in sequels and the initial investment recouped time and time again. It’s the great unspoken tension at the heart of the sequel-driven games industry. And it’s a tension that runs through Virtua Tennis 4′s centre court.

Because the fundamentals of Virtua Tennis cannot be improved upon. Its breezy court play, with its arcade heritage, is as fresh and comfortable today as it was 12 years ago. Viewed at the ground level of matches, it remains the best video game approximation of the sport available. There have been tweaks made to the core engine – with characters less likely to leap into cross-court dives, and more balanced AI – but they are just tweaks, and the game has all of the delicate balance of its earliest predecessors: easy to pick up and play, difficult to master.

So it falls to the gimmicks and framing of the package to attempt to introduce relevance in an increasingly competitive niche. Virtua Tennis 4′s innovations come not in ground-level play, the way that lobs and volleys are handled, but in 3D television support, Kinect and Move control options (Wii MotionPlus having already been introduced in Virtua Tennis 2009) and an overhauled World Tour mode. They’re additions that give the illusion of expansion without messing with the secret recipe that earned Virtua Tennis its place in the canon.

You can reasd the rest at Eurogamer here.