Duke Nukem 3D Review

It's time to kick ass and chew bubblegum, and I'm all
outta gum.

I think the above screenshot and the caption I've put along with it pretty much says all that needs to be said about Duke Nukem 3D, but then that wouldn't be enough information, would it? Especially not if you plan on buying the game yourself.

A building getting blown up!

Duke Nukem 3D is another FPS game in a sea of the things, and it has the usual formulaic FPS stuff from the era. You run around a level, finding your standard Blue, Yellow, and Red key cards to open doors, you shoot at things from a First-Person perspective, you have numerous weapons at your disposal to choose from (after you find them, of course.), etc, etc. The whole Yellow, Red, and Blue key card thing was so overused back in those days that it's become somewhat of a joke nowadays, but hey, back then, you got any video game that was good and you lived with it, unlike today. Speaking of weapons, in addition to the standard pistol, shotgun, chaingun, rocket launcher, and whatnot, you also get some sci-fi weapons, such as a shrink ray, a freezethrower, a weapon called "the devestator", and more. You also get a melee attack called the "mighty foot," which can help you conserve your ammo in a pinch, especially if you're low on ammo.

Duke is a bit of a narcissist.

The story of the game is simple, if a bit clichéd. Aliens have invaded the earth and, according to the text that appears at the start during an opening demo of the original version, "without so much as paying a security deposit." Also, after the events of the previous game, Duke Nukem II, as Duke was heading back to earth in his spaceship, it gets destroyed and Duke parachuted away and landed on a roof. As he sees his ship go up in flames, he mutters "Damn. Those alien bastards are gonna pay for shooting up my ride." And thus begins Duke's newest adventure.

Ready for action!

Duke Nukem 3D is a gorgeous game, in case you couldn't tell by the screenshots, and this is playing through the 20th anniversary release, too. On the DOS version, things are a bit blurrier, I think, but overall, the graphics are still pretty cool, and as for the music, it's great! It seems to have a good bit of Rock music in it, although not to the extent that Doom had, and Doom, for the most part, just ripped off of Heavy Metal bands of the time.

Looks like Doomguy didn't make it!

Of course, the thing that truly sets Duke Nukem 3D apart from the crowd is it's crude humor and tendency to poke fun at almost everything at the time that was the current generation's pop culture. For example, in the third level of the game, you can find the corpse of the space marine, A.K.A. Doomguy, from Doom, and Duke will say "Hmm. That's one Doomed space marine." And that isn't the only thing Duke will reference. You find references to not just other games at the time, you can find movie references, a music reference or two, voice clips from other characters that reference pop culture.

Now, I don't actually have a screenshot that shows this next part, but similar to Doom, Duke Nukem 3D also had, at the time, a rather large modding community, as the game shipped with the level editor that the dev team used to create the game, not only that, but you can actually go into the game's data files (labeled "GAME" and "USER") and edit those to your hearts content, which I had to do for some levels, and this leads me to my biggest gripe of this game, is that it is HARD! It's certainly a lot harder than Doom ever was. Well, Doom 1, anyways. Bosses of each episode come back in the next episode as miniature versions of themselves and they're fairly strong and you could be underpowered without knowing they're coming up. Then again, maybe I just suck at the game.

At the end of each level, you're told
how well you did.

The game, just like every other FPS game, also tells you how well you did during the level, in terms of how many aliens you killed, how many secrets you found, and how long it took you to complete the level.

Overall, if you're a fan of FPS games and crude humor, and you don't mind a fairly steep bit of difficulty, this is a game that I can easily recommend. I can also recommend it if you're looking for yet another FPS game from the 90s that's moddable. Just be aware of the game's difficulty!

I rate this game a 7/10. Check it out!

This review is © 2019 Jestan Diams. Jestan Diams, Jestan Diams Magical Tome of Games, and any other original characters are © and ™ Jestan Diams. Duke Nukem 3D belongs to Gearbox Software. All rights reserved.