How to Use Psychology to be a Better Duke Nukem

He stands a proud 6 foot 4 inches, he’s able to bench press more than 600lbs and the only thing that hits harder than his wisecracks are his two fists of iron. Basically, Duke Nukem is an all-American hero with a chip on his shoulder and the desire to stick it to the bad guys. Unfortunately, as much as we hate to break it to you, you’re not Duke Nukem. Yes, you might know everything about him and even model yourself on him in life, but even the best impersonator would still fall short of this man’s imposing demeanour.

However, even though you aren’t quite as capable as Mr Nukem, that doesn’t mean you can’t walk a few miles in his shoes and, in your own way, become a bad ass. With Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition reviving the Duke Nukem gaming brand in April 2017, fans have been busy putting on their best hero guise and busting some bad guys. Now, as we’ve said, trying to be just like Duke is bound to fail. But this doesn’t mean you can’t use your own personality to triumph in the game.

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Who Are You?

Just like a poker player needs to know their personality before they ante up, you should assess your own attributes before you start searching the Echo maps and rushing through the Overkill campaign. But how do you know what type of Duke Nukem player you are? Well, this is far from an exact science, but we can borrow some ideas from the poker world to help guide us in this area.

As much as poker is a game of logic and mathematics, a successful strategy is also based heavily on psychology. Knowing what you’re opponent is thinking and, more importantly, what your opponent thinks you’re thinking is crucial at the felt. Because of this, poker players work hard to understand themselves before they try to come up with a winning strategy.

For example, when a novice first joins 888poker, they’re able to take a test to determine their optimal playing style. Because online poker lacks the visual cues of live poker, knowing the best way to play based on your tendencies is highly important. To support this, the 888poker what’s your place in the pack test sets out to give newbies a chance to gain a psychological advantage over their peers.

The Perfect Person for the Perfect Strategy

Much like the Briggs-Myers personality type indicator test, this poker-based quiz requires you to say how often you play, the stakes you play for, your general perception of your playing style and so on. One of the most interesting questions relates to how you’d react if a player was “raising wildly” and playing in an aggressive manner. This question could easily be applied to Duke Nukem games: when attacks are flying in from all sides and your opponents are pressing an aggressive offence, how do you react?

Do you fight fire with fire? Do you flank to the right, take cover and logically think through the best course of action? When the tough gets rough, do you run and hide? The way you answer this question could be the key that unlocks your Duke Nukem personality type. In the poker quiz we mentioned earlier there are five main types:

  • The Rock – solid and only moves in favourable situations.
  • The Fish – weak and will go with anything.
  • The Shark – a sniper who’s always watching and waiting for the right time to attack.
  • The Maniac – someone who puts their head down and goes for it every time.
  • The Bully – the fearless aggressor who gives back more than they get.

Although you might not be exactly one type of another, you can use your answer to our question to see which personality you’re most like. From this you can start to build a solid strategy. For example, if you’re a maniac, you’ll need to tone it down in a heavy gunfight but then use this to your advantage when you’re up against just a few opponents. Similarly, if you’re the shark, you’ll be best in epic gun battles because you’ll be able to stand back and pick off the weakest targets one-by-one.

The new Duke Nukem game is a great way for you to enjoy another action-packed adventure with the man himself. However, if you want to keep up and get the most out of it, you need to work out exactly who you are before any shots are fired.

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