Growing up, I loved games like Doom, Wolfenstein, and Duke Nukem, I would spend hours playing them. Looking at those franchises now, though, is a different story.

Doom has been a solid enough franchise, Doom 3 was pretty OK, but it was released in 2004 and there's no word (yet) on a solid Doom 4. That said, I still had more fun playing Doom again on the Xbox Live Arcade than I did playing Doom 3.

Wolfenstein has fared better, the upcoming game looks awesome, and Return to Castle Wolfenstein wasn't a total waste (on the PC/Xbox, at least). The last iteration of the original Wolfenstein I played was on a mobile phone, and that wasn't so great, but the game itself still has good moments, though I still enjoyed Doom more.

Duke Nukem 3D came out in 1996. Thirteen years ago and we've barely seen anything from Duke since. Duke Nukem Forever has become a joke within the industry. So much of a joke, in fact, that no final product could ever live up to expectations or capture the glory. Too Human sure as hell didnt' do it, which was another game that was constantly pushed back.

Looking at the footage and pictures released after the controversy broke there was a sense of nostalgia, but that's about it. The game didn't look particularly good or fun to play. This could be due largely to the fact that we are inundated with FPS games, and most of them are pretty good. There is seemingly little room to innovate within the genre, and if a FPS doesn't have multiplayer to increase the value, it's overlooked and/or forgotten soon enough anyway.

Duke may be a character we grew up with, but his absence has caused a bit of a rift between generations, I'm sure. Young gamers probably only hear about the games historically, but are probably aware of the industry joke of Duke Nukem Forever never coming out. It just seems like a lame duck franchise to me, why bother?

There was some confusion about my blog about hitting 50,000 miles on my WRX...There may be a bike out there with similar initials, but I was referring to my Subaru Impreza WRX. Here are some pics from when I cleaned her up all pretty a few weeks back.

Also, I'm going to be having a surprise for my 200th blog. I don't normally even notice stats, but I did notice how close I was to 200 blogs, so I figured I'd do something special (this blog is #198 )

Put up a new banner last night...It's not a permanent fixture, I just grew tired of my NES Friday the 13th.

My next banner will be fairly epic...I can promise.

HINT: It will feature royalty