Duke Nukem 3D Review

Overview

I’m sure that I speak for a lot of people when i say that the Duke Nukem 3D trailer just wasn’t enough. I think that the few snappy, catchy facts about the arcade game left hardcore Duke Nukem fans drooling (Perhaps they were the only ones…), but we weren’t really shown any indication as to what the game play or the story was going to be like. We wanted more…

And, let’s face it, we didn’t really get much more did we? The trial game takes about half an hour to download and despite the graphics making you feel like you are at a real arcade and the controls very easy and simple to learn, I fail to see what the attraction could be to such a game. With no objectives screen and a totally messed up respawning system, the game starts to become a bit tedious and boring (Baring in mind I’m not an avid Duke Nukem player). I know this is only an arcade game but I can’t help feeling that there is something missing, a plot? A storyline? Where are they? From playing the trial game (Which has the total opposite effect of making me want to buy it, I might add) I am now totally confused as to what Duke Nukem is about. Surely every game has a purpose? Or maybe not? I mean this game isn’t anywhere near useless but it is somewhat lacking in some things. The graphics are good with the way that they are properly designed to make you feel involved in the arcade way of gaming. The controls are simple and easy to pick up and this helps when playing on the harder modes. I feel that the main feature that let the game down was the lack of purpose. I mean, all I saw was a guy, running around a buildings shooting what looked like 7 foot frogs with shotguns. Is this really what Duke Nukem is about? The respawn system also lets the game down. It looks to me like the creators looked for an alternative to checkpoint respawning and when you break it down and analyse it, it didn’t really work. I just think that it’s stupid that you can die at the end of the game, miss-click a few buttons and respawn at the beginning. Let’s face it, the only reason that there isn’t an alternative for checkpoint respawning is because there isn’t a decent one out there.

Overall, I would give this game a 5/10 based on what I played of the first level. I just think that it lacked some of the features that make people want to play arcade games more and more. Baring in mind that this is only the first level, I don’t think that this is an awful game but definitely needs improving to get me to buy it.

Duke Nukem 3D Review Results