Duke Nukem 3D Review

9.3

Format PC

Developer 3D Realms

Publisher US Gold

Genre Unknown

Take Duke Nukem 3D. Add Patrick McCarthy. Fry lightly in olive oil (not much, as he's quite fatty in his own right), with finely chopped garlic and chili (to taste). Drain and serve with a salad accompaniment. (Well, you think of a bloody intro then.)

Forget, for a moment, all this wanky 'Duke's better than Quake/ No it isn't' stuff. Duke's here, Quake isn't. Quake is going to be a stunning game. But it isn't here yet. So let's talk about Duke, shall we? Basically, it's a great game. It's inventive, amusing, cool, and it's very hard. Most of you will probably have already played the share-ware version, but some won't, so here's a quick run-down:

It's a Doom-clone, but better - buildings, for example, are proper buildings, with several floors and huge James Bond-style disappearing computer consoles. There are outsidey bits, and you can fly about with a jetpack, land on the roof of a building and work your way down through it. You can catch a tube, or go into the sewers and shoot sharks. You can shuttle around space stations with earth in the background. There are video monitors that you can use to check out your surroundings, and walls that can be blown out completely, allowing access to other areas. There are suspended walk-ways that can be brought crashing to the ground. There are ventilation shafts that you can get inside and crawl about in, emerging somewhere else. Most things (but not enough of them, some say) can be shot or blown up: windows, lights - you can even shoot aliens in the toilets, prompting all the usual 'blowing the shit out of them' jokes. It has puzzles and switches that are more hidden than Doom's, and levels that may get you stuck from time to time.

Your character is funny. I won't quote him too much here, because these things always seem more amusing when you are playing rather than in print, but he does say, during an earthquake, 'I ain't afraid of no 'quake.' And he does sing 'Born to be wi-i-i-i-ild' in a karaoke club.

One slight drawback is the mouse aiming system, whereby you can look up and down as you progress, and which had me vomiting copiously after one four-hour session. (A hot Indian dish, if you must know, and yes, it hurt.) About the only thing I can think of more likely to induce nausea is a video of Paul Daniels and Debbie Magee having sex.

New stuff

Then there are the extras - two extra episodes, along with loads of in-game stuff like new weapons, some of which show the aliens obviously have a good sense of humour. Hey, maybe we should just buy them a couple of beers and have a laugh together... but I suppose that might not make such a good game. There are the new enemies: the chaingun-carrying Enforcer; the airborne, mech-anised death-dealing Sentry Drone; the rocket-firing, gravity-defying Assault Commander and the Protozoid Slimer, which runs up your trouser leg and sucks your brains out (something many people would pay good money for).

There are evil bastards who are very hard to get rid of, like the Battle Lord, a huge lumbering bastard with no weak-nesses, who shoots rapid fire artillery and mortar shells at you and can only be killed by repeated attacks; the Over-lord, who launches powerful rocket attacks from a surgically implanted launcher on its back (in episode 2); and the extremely scary Cycloid Emperor, who appears in episode 3. Plus there's the level designer, and the facility to convert any Doom wad into a Duke map.

Walk into our office at the moment and you'll see everyone playing one of two games, and other people standing behind watching. One is (still) Champion-ship Manager 2 - and this is the other.

When it comes down to it, you could be a techno-snob and ignore this and wait for Quake to appear - or you could buy this and have a good time in the interim. It's easy for reviewers to suggest multiple purchases in situations like this, forgetting that everyone else has to pay for their games. But in this case,

I honestly think Duke is more than value for money. It's more inventive, and more entertaining, than Doom. I know they've had long enough to get it right (but so have many others, who've tried and failed), and I know that with Quake about to hit us, things have moved on in the meantime. Someone in the office said that this looks like a cartoon, and Quake looks real. This is also true, but that doesn't mean that this isn't a great game in its own right. We like it a lot. If Apogee don't make much money on it, they'll only have themselves to blame. They've timed its release really badly: it should have been out six months ago. But it's still good. Z