Girls and guns! (Duke Nukem 3D (PC))

Member Name: rob_writer

Product:	Duke Nukem 3D (PC)
Date:	24/07/01 (606 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Still fun, The girls

Disadvantages: Looks old, The girls

6 time. 6 whole times. 6 WHOLE BLOODY TIMES my PC crashed while I tried to run Duke Nukem. My old 486 played it fine, so it's least you could expect from a recently new Pentium 3? Isn't it?

First of all it's the sound. Every other old DOS game has an auto sound card detect program. Not this one. Oh, and should you choose the wrong one, it crashes. Not just crashes the window its running, the whole PC. My Soundblaster 64 isn't exactly state of the art, but the closest thing I find in the Duke Nukem options menu is the AWE 32. So I choose that. And it crashes. Fiddling with settings gets me sound effects working, but no music. Eventually after much fiddling, I realise that the Soundblaster 64 I have actually emulates a number of old sound cards, so I get it to run using Soundscape emulation. 30 minutes later and I've sorted the sound, next up is the graphics.....

Once upon a time, before 3D accelerators there was this thing called VESA. It was all to do with graphics, buses (not of the red double-decker type) and was an attempt at standardising the graphics market. DirectX is what we use now, but even though my ageing TNT2 is about 100x better than any of the old VESA cards, it still doesn't like playing most of the games that want VESA graphics. Luckily this time the card didn't complain, but the monitor did. At the rather blocky looking 800x600 resolution, the monitor snapped in to a 60Hz refresh rate, even though it should be capable of much more. I haven't got a clue how to sort that one, so I'll just have to hope my eyes don't suffer too much.

Sorry for that rant, but yes, that is the trouble that awaits anyone who fancies playing an old DOS game on their new PC. The really old games run fine, Doom is a treat, but it's the period of games just before Windows became a real gaming environment, those are the ones that cause you trouble!

So, anyway, back to Duke Nukem........

Duk
e Nukem is very much a game in the mould of Doom. It looks similar, it plays similar, but it's better. It heralds back to a time when sprites were used over polygons, and it looks rather blocky due to this. But it does feature a real 3D environment, you can look up and down, jump etc. It's also rather....risque!

Duke Nukem is James Bond gone wrong. He's tough, single handedly saves the world, but does it in the seediest manner possible. The aliens have decided to hang around in 'choice' cinemas. Later you work your way in to strip joints, where the 'ladies' seem fine to be surrounded by aliens (and yes, they do take their clothes off!). And when you're in the alien ship, the aliens seem to like to take hostage scantily clad females.

Now, you could put this down to the fact that the invading aliens are just a little perverted, I mean if you were invading earth then strip joints may be a good place to go, but personally I put it down to the developers of the game, 3D Realms, wanting to sell some more copies by making the game controversial. And it worked.

The game comes with an 18 certificate, just like a film, but as things like this go I never thought shops cared too much about games. Until I tried to buy this, I may add. I had it on the PC, but my PC was old and struggled to run even this game, so I saw it on sale at a reputable gaming shop and I wanted it. I marched up to the counter, money in hand, only to be greeted by the question 'Are you 18?'. Back then I wasn't, and stupidly I never thought to reply 'Yes I am'. So I trundled off, put it back on the shelf and was about to leave when my friend had the ingenious idea that he would buy it for me. Ludicrous I thought, he's even younger than I am (we were both 16 I think, though my birthday was earlier). He marched up to the counter, was asked if he was 18, and being more confident than me, said he was. He even used that age old ex
cuse that it was his birthday, and the woman bought it. So I got the game, but lost my pride.

The plot of the game is simple, aliens have invaded, kidnapped our women, and playing as Duke you must go and rescue them. And kill the aliens. No one seems to be going to lend you a hand, but fear not, because in true computer game style Duke can single handedly take on thousands of alien scum. These aliens, technologically advanced enough to fly to earth, who can still be killed by Duke and a few shots of a pistol. But the plot wasn't important, it was the action that was.

Duke Nukem heralds back to a time when there was this thing called shareware. A try before you buy if you like. This meant it was split up in to episodes, where you got the first episode (or a part of it) for free, and then paid for the other episodes. Duke Nukem 3D has 3 episodes, which get progressively harder and do have a story running throughout. The Playstation version has an extra episode, but this isn't a review of that version so I'll keep my mouth shut!

As far as the game goes, you know the score. You have a gun and run around shooting the aliens. As you move further through the game your gun gets better and the aliens tougher. You have to find keys to open doors - yes, this is classic FPS gaming from the days of Doom! Or not quite, Duke Nukem does add a little few interesting edges to the tried and tested formula. You get various items to play around with, which include a jetpack and a remote holo-duke to fool the enemy. Guns are just your average, although one of my favourites is the pipe bomb.

The graphics aren't great, a little blocky at places, but they are reasonably good considering how old this game is! From a distance they look fine, but close up they turn to pixels, a problem that comes from the fact the game uses sprites rather than polygons, as later games do! Sound is nothing special, just your usual bangs and booms!

Co
ntrols are a problem though, for anyone used to the latest method the mouse looking all round the screen, because as hard as I have tried I haven't managed to make it do this in Duke Nukem 3D.

As I mentioned before the game does have an 18 rating, although by today?s standards it looks cartoony and tame! With three long episodes the game will last you a while, and it's fun and challenging to play throughout.


Overall it's still a good game, although it's starting to show its age.

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