Duke Nukem Creators Working on an Original Title

I think a lot of us tend to look back at Duke Nukem 3D with rose tinted glasses. For its time the game ran very smooth and had some great action... but Duke Nukem has always been a pretty stupid character. Duke had evolved into a kind of one dimensional parody of action movie heroes, and pretty much has stayed there ever since.

Gearbox has since taken over the Duke Nukem franchise (for better or worse), but 3D Realms is still making titles. In fact they were working on a new Duke Nukem game called Duke Nukem: Mass Destruction- an action RPG take on the series being worked on by the original creator of Duke Nukem. When the game was briefly revealed back in February, Gearbox slapped them with a lawsuit and Mass Destruction was put on ice.

It seems rather than scrap the game entirely, 3D Realms is rebranding the game as Bombshell. Rather than just making her Duke Nukem with tits... it seems there is some attempt to make the character a little more two dimensional (although I'm sure there's a "DD" joke there somewhere). I mean after all her name is Shelly and she had her arm blown off by a bomb... so of course she would change her name to Bombshell. At first glance you might think the character was just thought up in between playing Bionic Commando and watching The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo, but 3D Realms is claiming she was an unused character concept from previous Duke Nukem titles. The reveal trailer is a little hard to watch... it is pretty obvious they've only had this character done for about a month (at least have her hair move when she rides a motorcycle).

Bombshell isn't slated to come out until 2015 though, so there's plenty of time to add more polish. There is no gameplay footage in the trailer, but screenshots confirm it is an action RPG that looks an awful lot like what Mass Destruction was supposed to be.