For years, 3D Realms toiled on Duke Nukem Forever. After the game languished, another studio (Gearbox Software) came in and finished it. Now, 3D Realms is working on a new game. A game it's been working on for a while—and it wants your money to finish it.

The game is Earth No More, a first-person shooter that seems to be inspired by War of the Worlds. Thing is, this title that was originally supposed to be out in 2009, but was later put on ice.

Development on it was hardly smooth, and 3D Realms was actually sued for allegedly stealing the game's concept.

Today, however, 3D Realms is announcing that it's taking Earth No More to crowd funding site Gambitious, which is different from Kickstarter in that investors can buy equity in a project. (Oh, and Eurogamer reports that 3D Realms co-founder Scott Miller is one of the five people on the Gambitious advisory board.)

Still, it sounds like 3D Realms is keen to give the game another go. So if you really like 3D Realms games and are confident that this won't turn into Duke Nukem Forever and Ever, it might be worth checking out the Gambitious site.

3D Realms returns with post-apocalyptic FPS Earth No More on new crowdfunding site Gambitious [Eurogamer]

It's been over a year since Duke Nukem Forever was released, and to commemorate (commiserate?) the whole experience, Sideshow is next year bringing out this 16" statue of the Duke.

Selling for USD$300, he's certainly not cheap, and given the reception to the last game in the franchise, may seem entirely unwarranted. But then, there's the beauty in leaving the character himself largely unchanged between games. Fans of Duke 3D or even the originals can get this and, if they ignore the contemporary enemy corpse embedded in the base, pretend this is 1996's most advanced and expensive adult collectible based on a video game.

Duke Nukem [Sideshow]

If anyone would know what it's like to show up late to a party it's the man that worked on Duke Nukem Forever for over a dozen years.

Fanning the flames of the smartphone versus dedicated gaming handheld debate via Twitter yesterday, Duke Nukem co-creator George Broussard compared the launch of Sony's latest shiny gaming toy to the last remnant of Earth's one-time reptilian masters stumbling into monkey town. At least that's how I am imagining it. The monkeys are all standing on two legs, crafting tools, and drinking martinis; the dinosaur (I'm thinking velociraptor) starts flailing its tiny arms in frustration.

Of course the last dinosaur showing up at the mammal party could still do a great deal of damage, unlike Duke Nukem Forever, released last year after being handed off to Gearbox Software to reviews that amounted to pages of repressed laughter.

Where the comparison really falls through, however, is the fact that the Japanese love giant lizards.

Didn't see that coming, did you? The years-in-development Duke Nukem Forever is getting pushed back in Japan: from March 8 to March 29. [Famitsu]

Duke Nukem Forever was, I thought, an absolute disaster. I was not alone in this. Yet Gearbox co-founder Brian Martel thinks the game's poor reviews weren't a consequence of the game being terrible. They were because reviewers were somehow unfair to the game.

"There were [review scores] towards the high and things towards the low, but the middle just didn't get any traction. It's pretty obvious that people were using it in some ways to kind of use it as a soapbox or whatever," he told Eurogamer in an interview, originally held at GamesCom in August but only now being published.

When he was asked if that meant the game was reviewed unfairly, he replied, "I think that if we were going to review the reviews fairly, no."

"We've had this internal debate," he added later. "Would Half-Life today be reviewed as highly as it is, you know, even today? As a new IP coming out with the same sort of mechanics Half-Life had."

"I think we all have a nostalgia and love for that particular brand. Obviously Gearbox got its start working on Opposing Force so we love Half-Life. But is the current gamer, would they have the same love for that? It'd be interesting. I think the same kind of thing happened with Duke."

Sometimes, even if you feel like the whole world is against you, you just have to take it on the chin and let it go. Before you start sounding a little crazy. This is one of those times.

Gearbox: Duke Nukem Forever wasn't reviewed fairly [Eurogamer]

Today's the day 2K Games delivers the "Hail to the Icons Parody Pack" downloadable content for Duke Nukem Forever, featuring new game modes and maps that parody much better games.

Along with the new Freeze Tag, Hail to the King, and Hot Potato game modes, the "Hail to the Icons" pack adds four new maps based on the best in first-person shooting: Call of Duke, Sandbox, Inferno, and 2Forts1Bridge. In case you can't figure out what games are being parodied here, we've got a post for that.

The "Hail to the Icons Parody Pack" is available today for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC for $9.99 or 800 Microsoft points, unless of course you're a member of the Duke Nukem Forever First Access Club, in which case all this is yours for free. Don't you feel special?

Gearbox knows what I think of Duke Nukem Forever. Why not let them know what you think, as part of the studio's public survey on gamer's opinions of the game.

You don't acquire the rights to one of video game's most famous characters without planning on doing something great with him.

And if you're Randy Pitchford, the Gearbox game development chief who expected to discover a "trainwreck" of a game when he set about reviving Duke Nukem Forever, you don't plan to let a flawed, critically eviscerated Duke game be the last and best one you're associated with.

In what amounted to a State of the Duke Union Address at the Gearbox community panel at the Penny Arcade Expo this past weekend, Pitchford explained how low his expectations for DNF were, what he's proud of with that game, and that, yes, beyond reviving DNF, Gearbox "wanted to make our own Duke game." He added: "Soon, we'll talk about that, but not today."

This being the Duke part of the panel, Pitchford even managed to make a boob joke. Here's the speech, picking up with a discussion of the review scores for Duke Nukem Forever. Pitchford was speaking in front of about 900 Gearbox fans, few of whom clapped when he asked if the press who slammed the game were "full of shit":

"It's such a polarizing thing... There was this one guy that mapped out the different review scores. Here's the number of people who gave it a zero to 10. And here's the number of people who gave it 11-20, 21-30, and so on and so forth. And most games have a perfect bell curve, you know, where the center of the curve is the average score. Duke had two curves. There were people who panned it and there were people who kind of liked it. And Alan [one of the long-time developers on the game] pointed out: 'It looks like a pair of boobs.'" [much laughter from the audience] That was our plan from the beginning! That actually happened. That's a true story.

"I hope some people kind of enjoyed it. When I dug through all the stuff that [the orignal development studio[ 3D Realms had done, I expected a trainwreck and I was actually quite pleased. I had a lot of fun with it. It was fun for me, and I'm really glad that we not only rescued the franchise but took the time to make sure the world could see what those guys had been doing for all of those years. And I'm also proud of the things we added to it. I think we did some things to make it a little better.

"I liked it. And we're no giving up. We've updated the game. I know the load times weren't very good on the 360 and so some of the patches improve that. I don't know if you guys noticed.

"And then, we also have some DLC coming. It's pretty cool. It's pretty fun. So if you like Duke… I think you're really going to like the DLC coming out that's being developed by the guys that actually made Duke Nukem Forever—the guys at Piranha, the guys at Triptych. The Triptych guys are the ex-3D Realms developers. And they're still working at our studio on the 10th floor, and they're committed. They're going to go all the way.

"And then soon… I know that you guys figured out that, when Gearbox acquired the franchise, we didn't do it just to make sure we could all play Duke Forever, but because we wanted to make our own Duke game. Soon, we'll talk about that, but not today. [the crowd cheers]"

That sure sounds like a new Duke game is underway at Gearbox, a new one we can guess will not laden with old tech and ill-suited game design. We can guess these things because the "we" Pitchford is talking about, when he says "we wanted to make our own Duke game," would be Gearbox, makers of modern, acclaimed shooters like Brothers in Arms and Borderlands. Ready for their Duke?

The PC version of Duke Nukem Forever will be getting patched, and that patch will enable the game's hero to carry four weapons instead of just two (take that, Master Chief!). The official Gearbox forums list a few other coming changes for PC, but none detailed just yet for future Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 patches. [via Rock Paper Shotgun.]

We're not done with Duke Nukem Forever. Gearbox Software has revealed the "Hail to the Icons Parody Pack," an add-on for the recently released Duke Nukem game, downloadable content that takes a few shots at games like Doom, Call of Duty and Team Fortress 2.

Continuing the tradition of mocking games to which it is largely inferior, Duke Nukem Forever's first downloadable add-on will introduce four new multiplayer maps, four new weapons and three new gameplay modes.

Let's take a look at what "Hail to the Icons" is all about.

Call of Duke – Duke engages in modern combat in a war-torn city. Foes don't stand a chance against the Duke when he spams the map with the N00b T00b.
Sandpit – Players take the role of mini-Duke in a giant sandbox with two bases at either end made out of children's toys. This map features Sticky Bombs.
Inferno – Time machine engage! Duke does combat in a hellish landscape of lava and teleporters. Who turned on the 16-bit graphics, and more importantly, where did this DFG come from?
2Forts1Bridge – Hats? Duke doesn't need no stinking hats. Give him a minigun and he'll beat off all comers.

Heh. "Beat off." I get it. What I don't quite get is what game Sandpit might be parodying. Suggestions? (Some commenters are suggesting Halo...)

In addition to those new maps and weapons, Duke Nukem Forever brings Freeze Tag, a cooperative mode that asks players to "freeze and shatter their opponents in succession for huge point streaks and combos"; Hot Potato, a spin on Capture The Babe; and Hail to the King, DNF's free-for-all mode.

Hail to the Icons comes to Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC this fall. It's free for First Access Club members who registered before the game launched.

New Duke Nukem Forever Content Coming This Fall! [Gearbox]