I remember the ads. I remember "John Romero's about to make you his bitch." I remember the feeling I got when I first read that. Whoa, this is gonna be awesome. This game is gonna blow me away. Fast-forward to when it was actually released, and my mindset was different. I knew that I was going to play a game that was barely finished and had problems. But I still had fun. Especially the multiplayer. I liked a lot of the levels and weapons. Duke Nukem Forever is going to go down in history as a sort of Daikatana, but it'd be a ridiculous comparison. DNF was a much better game at the time of release, even considering it came out many years later. But Daikatana was still enjoyable, and if you could approach it neutrally and spend some time with it, chances are you had fun too. And if you never got that chance, maybe you owe it to yourself now to give it to yourself. Just realize that you missed the boat and you're not going to get the same experience because we expect a lot more from games now than we did then.
3D Realms sold Blood to Monolith and decided instead to work on Shadow Warrior (SW). I'm not sure that was the best decision, but SW was and is still a great game. I made many levels for SW (and Blood). They're classics. We really need a sequel to SW (and a real sequel for Blood). We're seeing platformers return to their 2D look-and-feel roots while staying 3D. Perhaps that's what real sequels for these games should look like. Anyway, I recommend playing SW, even if you missed the boat. TEN, anyone? =) Hah.
