Duke Nukem 3D review

[Anayo]

Duke Nukem 3D is a PC game released by 3D realms in 1996. Its genre is that of a first person shooter. Reviewing this game won't make much sense unless taken in the content of what first person shooters were like in those days. The biggest, baddest FPS of those times was Doom. Doom was insanely popular because it accomplished so many things that no game before it had ever done. Everything in Doom was rendered in 3D, with surface detail displayed on all the walls, floors, and ceilings. When you moved, the perspective shifted realistically, with walls smoothly growing closer and farther away depending on where you maneuvered – which was really amazing since everyone was used to 2D games like Mario. The lighting in the game was moody and ambient, with flickering lights causing the walls to brighten and darken realistically. Doom also had a lot of hidden rooms and secret areas with bonus weapons and items, which encouraged exploration and felt very rewarding to uncover.

Duke 3D is basically a clone of Doom, but with one exception – Doom was completely humorless and impersonal. The protagonist of Doom is still called “The Doom Guy”, since the storyline writers at Id software never told anyone his name. The 3D rendered levels in Doom looked cool, but they didn't look like anywhere in particular – they were little more than a nondescript succession of one gloomy dungeon after another.

Duke, on the other hand, is a talkative smart aleck. In his husky, testosterone pumped voice he remarks, “Who wants some?” or “I'm gonna rip em' a new one.” Like Doom, Duke 3D has many secret areas with hidden items, and to find them you often have to press the “open” button against random walls to see if anything will happen. When you press it repeatedly, Duke wonders aloud, “Where is it?”, which is pretty amusing.

Unlike Doom, with its generic levels that didn't look like anywhere in particular, Duke travels to places that are VERY particular, sometimes to the extent of verging on black comedy or even copyright infringement. The former category includes levels like a grocery store, where innocuous shopping muzak plays while you blow the face off of space aliens with a shotgun; or a fast food joint called “Duke Burger”, where approaching the drive thru window causes a wheezy teenager to mutter, “Go away. We're like... closed.”, and exploring the restaurant in its entirety reveals that the burgers are actually made of dog meat. The copyright infringement levels mostly include some alien-infested space ships that look suspiciously similar to the Alien movies.

It warrants admitting that playing Duke 3D today in 2009 will make you realize just how far first person shooters have come. Much of the actual gameplay in Duke 3D seems really old and quaint by modern standards, with its flat, pixelated enemies with single-minded attack patterns, and the formulaic affair of blasting pig cops with shotguns, hunting for ammo and health, and key and lock puzzles. Granted, there are some things in the game that rocked my world twelve years ago and still seem pretty cool. One random part involves a pool table in a bar, and if you shoot the pool balls they actually roll across the table and bounce against one another, clacking with a ceramic pool-ball sound as they do so. I thought that was really awesome when I first saw it and it's still kinda neat. The game's sound effects are still immersive and atmospheric, ranging from the ominous, distant growling of unseen enemies, to the hum of computer mainframes on a space station, to the fact that when you go into a narrow tunnel or underwater cave everything from your footsteps to gunfire gives off an ambient echo. The lighting is cool too, such as when you go into a room where the bulbs are flickering or everything is bathed in red light. With the kind of processing power available for games, today, though, I can't do much more than go back to the point that Duke 3D is little more than a Doom clone. Or, wouldn't be, that is, were it not for one thing that keeps Duke relevant – namely the game's sense of humor.

Duke Nukem makes fun of everything. If you approach a toilet in the game and press the action key, the toilet will flush, Duke will say, “Ahh, much better.”, and your health goes up by 10 points. One level takes place at a post office, and if you explore deeply enough you'll find a hidden room filled with guns, Winchester magazines (the sort you read), and a list of employees some disgruntled postal worker intends to bump off. One level takes place at a police station, and when it opens Duke says in an Austrian accent, “I'll be back.”, after which you hear an earsplitting screech of rubber against asphalt, a crash of rubble from a car crashing into the station, and a blaze of gunfire followed by half a dozen pig-cop enemies dying. There's even one level that alludes to 2001: Space Odyssey, with a monolith towering in silent, black, rectangular majesty in the middle of a room in a level that takes place on the moon. The most hilarious part in the game is when you break the stained glass in a cathedral and explore behind it, finding the mangled corpse of the main character from Doom, to which Duke remarks, “Hm, that's one doomed space marine!”

There are several options for how to go about playing Duke 3D today. The original PC version can be had for cheap on CD-Rom, but in order to play it in Windows XP you have to spend about 20 minutes patching it and installing some stuff to get it to work (instructions at this link: http://buildxp.deathmask.net/). There was a Sega Saturn version, but I recommend AGAINST it since it uses a different game engine than the PC version and consequently has all the secret areas removed. Duke Nukem Total Meltdown for the Playstation is a PC-perfect port, as is the X-Box live arcade version, which can be had for $10. The game has some nudity in it, mostly in the way of bare-chested pixelated women. Unless you're a rebellious 15 year old who goes bananas for softcore porn, though, you'll probably just prefer to turn on “kid mode”, which makes the ladies invisible.

Duke 3D is a game that's very derivative and steals its ideas from others (like Doom and the Alien movies.) However, because the game doesn't take itself seriously and has a really funny sense of humor, it's still worth playing, even for folks who don't usually like outdated games.

[Xonticus]

Great review! Duke definitely got the torch passed on from Wolfenstein 3d and Doom. Whereas Doom was innovative it officially supported modding (Square Enix would just HATE these guys!) Duke 3d built upon the humor from Duke Nukem 2 and did what "Eat Lead!" couldnt even achieve 15 years later; being progressively funny. "Eat Lead" tried too hard without introducing much (if anything) new to the genre.

[Dakinggamer87]

Duke Nukem 3D was such a fun game back in the day great review also..

[MrPopo]

Duke 3D also had sections where set pieces would sit on top of each other. The Doom engine didn't allow rooms to be on top of each other, so it wasn't nearly as 3D as we thought it was. But Duke 3D used some clever programming tricks to let rooms appear on top of each other. The example that sticks out most in my mind is stage 1. There's a bridge to the end of the level that sits above where you first enter the movie theater. That was huge, back in the day.

Plus, all the quotes. "Hmmm... don't have time to play with myself."

[otaku]

I recall loving this game and doom64 on my n64 back in 5th grade.

[otaku]

I recall loving this game and doom64 on my n64 back in 5th grade. shame duke nukem forever will never see the light of day

[marurun]

From this video at YouTube, it looks like the Saturn version has most of the original secrets, looks just as good, and has a higher frame rate than the PSX version.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPr7RfWGPHw&fmt=18

[Hatta]

If you want to play Duke 3D today, you should use eDuke32, an enhanced port of the original source. It's 3d accelerated, and even runs on Linux.

If you really want the original Duke 3D experience, just use Dosbox. Replace the DOS/4GW with DOS32/A for best results.

[Anayo]

From this video at YouTube, it looks like the Saturn version has most of the original secrets, looks just as good, and has a higher frame rate than the PSX version.

Dude, that's the Playstation version I mentioned.

[marurun]

Dude, it's both. 5 minutes of the PSX version followed by 5 minutes of the Sat version. Read the video description.