Hail to the king, baby. Duke Nukem 3D was right up there with Doom in terms of early FPSes. The graphics are crap by modern standards, but for the time they were amazing. The action was good, fluid, and hard enough to keep the player interested, and there was a great selection of equipment. But the best part of this game, and what really sets it apart from Doom, is the voice acting. We all know Duke's voice. We all love Duke's voice. It's suave and deep, it sounds the same as he acts: A confident ladies' man who is not afraid to crack skulls. But even better are his lines. At some point you just played through the game and went around in every corner trying to find out what sort of things Duke would comment on. It never got old, and it was always tongue in cheek and funny. When you're awesome enough that Megadeth makes a theme song for you, you know you're badass. But why a 4 out of 5? Well, one reason: Control. I know that FPSes were just hitting their stride around this time and a "standard" control scheme was far off into the future, but really, why are the basic controls so butchered? The most important thing about an FPS is the ability to pick up and play. I wouldn't even have so much of a problem with it if it wasn't such aggravation trying to shoot upwards or downwards. Once I reconfigured the controls to my standards it got a lot easier, but the flying enemies were still a pain, and that's why the fifth star stays knocked off. Those goddamn hoverbike swine. Oh well. Still a classic. "Oooh, that's gotta hurt..."
Even though I confess to not taking as much enjoyment out of this game as I did when I was a child, it is still fascinating and a great way to while away time, just to see what kind of crazy stuff you can do. Rube Goldberg would be proud indeed. Perhaps it's just me being older, but the games did not seem to carry my attention the way they did when I was younger. Oh well. They're still great! Pick it up for the nostalgia value if nothing else.
This game seems to be an exercise in how many hours you have to devote into figuring out how the hell you're supposed to get across that friggin map without the sniper seeing you until you go insane. The missions in this game are BRUTALLY hard. Perhaps it's my lack of tactical sense, but the interface for this game is just bizzare. Worse, you're looking for the ONE way the designers programmed in to finish a certain level, in almost all cases. You will need to abuse savegames HEAVILY in order to survive. Combat? Useless. Your guys cannot fight well enough to do anything. I mean, I know you're outnumbered, but I'm a frigging SAS commando. I should be able to kill more than three germans in a firefight, especially when I have the surprise advantage. The worst part is is that the game had a lot of potential. I had fun... at least on the tutorial. Why couldn't you give me an introductory difficulty, one that lets you screw up a few times without death? More importantly, why the hell is the control system so BUTCHERED? Could you not have thought up an easier way? I hate to see wasted potential. Worse, I hate to come out and bash on a game everyone seems to enjoy, but it just doesn't seem to be made for me. I don't like wrestling with bad controls and I like having some leeway as I get used to the game.
I'm continually shocked and appalled that nobody has bothered to make a game that plays quite like this one. It's an excellent concept - you need to be a combination of financier, quartermaster and small unit tactician, working as a small, elite group of mercs to clear out numerically superior foes. There really should be more of games that play like this. You could easily make one of these turn based tactical games about a team of green berets in hostile territory (Hey, US Army? I'd PAY you to play that one. I'd enlist to play that one!) And yet it stands alone in it's class. I don't think there IS another TBT game out there that is anything like Jagged Alliance 2. I could go into a long discussion of the game's mechanics, story and gameplay, but really, what's the point? You NEED to play this if you want to consider yourself a tactical gamer. Not only that, but this game has mod potential, and a lot of it. There's one very, very large mod called JA 1.13, which is essentially a final patch to the game that adds a bajillion new weapons and several new features. There must be at least 250 guns in 1.13. (In your face, Combat Arms) It even comes packaged with a mod that fixes bugs in the original game as well as makes tactical maneuvering much more about fire and movement (surpressive fire becomes MUCH more valuable). Why am I still talking about this? GO BUY IT AND PLAY IT. NOW.
I'm sure this was mind blowing back in the days of the Amiga and Commodore 64, as well as on the NES. To be sure, it looks excellent and it's so bloody fluid. Not only that, the game has an abundance of atmosphere, working with it's excellent-for-the-time graphics (made far better in this release) to immerse the player in the alien landscape. Props. Unfortunately, the gameplay is really where it falls apart. Perhaps to a child with a NES this would be a great way to waste a weekend, and I'm sure many did indeed do just that. But after tasting modern gameplay, you really can't be satisfied with this, at least not for long. Perhaps I'm spoiled - I leave that up to you to judge. If you've seen reviews (or had the misfortune of playing) Dragons Lair for the NES, you've pretty much got the core gameplay mechanic of this game down. Ooh and ahh at the excellent animation, die. Figure out how to reload. Die. Die. Die. Ohh, you have to HOLD the button to get away from the seaweed. Next screen! Huh. Little crawling worms. I wonder if they - *SNKT* ... okay, they nick you and kill you instantly. Okay, jump over jump jump jump - *SNKT* GAH! Jump jump jump jump jump... Repeat for a while... Check the controls... Figure out how to attack. Kick the leeches in the face for the aggravation you've suffered. Move on. Face a beast. Get shredded. Reload. Get killed by the leeches. Make it to the beast. Get shredded. What to do? Okay, run BACK as fast as you can, get shredded. Try again, kill leeches, head up to beast, turn around and start RUNNING the moment he appears. Escape by the skin of your teeth, grab a vine, swing around behind him, hesitate for a moment as you wonder if it's safe, get shredded. Do it all over again, run back to the RIGHT after grabbing the vine... This entire game is an exercise in trial and error, and that is it's greatest weakness. It's just FRUSTRATING. You need to die and die repeatedly to figure out what to do. While it may have been acceptable for a virgin gamer, it's simply frustrating for me. At least you get a weapon in the second part, but by then my will to play more or less evaporated. If you don't mind trial and error gameplay, pick this one up. Otherwise, stay clear. It's not worth the price. It's a NES game with updated graphics, nothing more, and something that old really should be free - it's not good enough to charge for. On the other hand, if you can look past that and look to the game's wonderful atmosphere, which really makes you feel as if you have gotten sucked into another world, this may be interesting for you.
