Duke Nukem 3D (1996) L.A. Meltdown

Probably the best part of the game.

I've always been more of an id Tech than Build guy, but I'm home sick and Duke 3D was $2.50, which seemed like a reasonable amount to spend to sit on the couch and replay something. (Apparently I bought a Switch 2 mostly to play old games I could already play on my computer, but on the couch.)

I don't really have strong memories of Duke 3D, though I did play it when I was a kid. Well, I shot my way through the first level set, and here's what I noticed.

Good:

The environments are pretty well done. I've talked a bit about Doom-Cute in the Doom entries and Duke has it from the get go. Arcades, jails, etc. Even just a city street gets some nice details and nick nacks.

Likewise, there's a lot of nice little details. The bloody footprints when you step past an enemy, the mirrors in bathrooms, stuff like that.

Bad:

It's even worse on a controller (side note, the Switch port is not nearly as nicely done as the Doom one, get some weapon buttons! No quicksave!?), but Duke has always felt sloppy. It feels like you need to hit every button a half a second before you want to, and he just kind of glides along over stuff. The first secret (billboard RPG) feels like a weird speed-running glitch, not an intentional secret. Aiming is a certifiable pain in the ass, particularly on the vertical.

In general, there's a lot of stuff that just feels off. Enemies will ignore rockets flying past, hitboxes never feel quite right, you can get killed by opening a door the wrong way. It's just messy.

It's one of the first games in the bullet-sponge era of FPS games (Quake II is probably the worst offender.) enemies just sit there taking a ton of shots and not really reacting. There is a pain-chance ala Doom but it's much more minimally animated (as are enemy attacks). Combined with the fact that it can be hard to tell if you hit, combat can be a chore.

Why the hell does it switch to the RPG before the pistol? Doom (which came out 3 years earlier!) puts the Rocket Launcher at the bottom of the switch order AND has a "safety" so it's harder to accidentally blow yourself up. 

Level Quick Reviews:

1. Hollywood Holocaust: Way too busy for a first level. Too many weird jumps, etc. for secrets. 0/5 as a first level and 2/5 in general.

2. Red Light District: Much better. Kudos? for making the book store (where they seem to have put 3/4 of the work on the level) completely skippable. Minus for locking you in at the end (it's a cool set piece, but not worth stopping you from backtracking). 3/5

3. Death Row: Dark Forces (released a year before, and with an engine that feels a lot better as a player with similar features) did the "lose your guns" gimmick better. Duke gives most of them back after a couple of quick fights and doesn't really do anything with it. Pulling it on level 3 is way too early anyway. The Doom easter egg would be cool if it wasn't glitchy. Laser traps are lame (can't even shoot them, they double activate for the player?, monsters don't interact with them as expected). Too many monster closets (a flaw with the episode as a whole). Cell door "puzzle" is tedious and pointless. 1/5

4. Toxic Dump: 3D Realms really likes these button "puzzles" (a line of buttons, guess which ones need to be pushed/not pushed). I sure enjoyed randomly dying in the shrink tunnel. (I think the time ran out on the effect? Super fun to have a new mechanic to explore and have an unlabeled timer.) 2/5

S1. Launch Facility: + Passes the "you should end a secret level with more gear than you started" test. - Wastes a perfectly good gimmick by having the rocket explode/collapse instead of riding it. 3/5

5. The Abyss: Relies on an easily bypassed invisible trigger AND full of slime so if you miss it you waste the boots power up. Lame boss fight in a featureless arena (that the AI still struggles with). 0/5

S2. Faces of Death: I'm a fan of a good dev-easter-egg level. This is not a good one. This is the equivalent of dropping 7 Barons in a level with a bunch of guns and saying have fun. Add in a "puzzle" and a weird spinner that exists for no reason other than to try to simulate motion sickness and you've got a dumb level. Dumps you back at the START of Abyss so you can run the whole thing again (with fresh boots!) to get to the actual final boss. 1/5

This is a bad level set.

Weapons:

1: "Mighty Foot": Generic melee attack. BUT you can also use a "quick kick" as the first? offhand melee in an FPS. In early versions you could do both at once and float around dropkicking aliens. This was patched out, because tentacle porn is okay, but silliness is not.

2. Pistol: For some reason, has a magazine system. Why? No other weapon does (at the very least the shotty should). Sometimes it feels like annoyance was the goal at 3D Realsm. It's autofire, which is nice. 

3. Shotgun: Generic shotgun.

4. Chaingun Cannon: Slightly less generic three barreled chaingun.

5. RPG: Generic rocket launcher. 

6. Pipe Bomb: Okay, I think this is the first keyed remote detonate weapon in an FPS (Dark Forces and several others do time/proximity mines and grenades, but I can't think of anything with a secondary trigger for detonation). Switching weapons let you drop multiples, which is kind of cool (annoying in the Switch port with the shitty weapon select).

The demo episode leaves out all the weird stuff like the shrink and freeze rays. I think including one might've been prudent to show off the engine.

Items:

Keys: Now with an annoying animation to use!

Holoduke: Glitched, so it doesn't work!

Jetpack: Lets you fly, which is cool. It's a shame there's only 2 in the demo and you're locked out of it for two levels.

Night Vision Goggles: Yep.

Portable Medkit: It's a health pack you can carry.

Boots: Radsuit

Scuba Gear: Let's you breath underwater.

Steroids: Not as good of a melee boost as Berserk, but does boost your speed and unshrink you.

Health and Armor are both similar to Doom, but simpler (small and large health, plus an overboost, one armor that absorbs a random percentage).

Enemies:

Assault Trooper: The (surprisingly fancy) generic mook of the game. Has a weak ranged attack and can fly. (A bold choice for how iffy vertical aiming is.)

Assault Commander: Twice the health, and it randomly teleports. Kind of a cool gimmick, kind of annoying.

Pig Cop: Surprisingly beefy mid tier enemy. Has a shotgun that can knock off around half your health in a burst if you're not careful, and takes quite a few hits to bring down. 

Recon Patrol Vehicle: Flies faster than an Assault Trooper, hits like one, has more HP, and drops a Pig Cop when it dies. 

Octobrain: A Cacodemon with worse art. But not art directly ripped off of a D&D book cover.

Turrets: Are equally annoying in all games from this era.

Battlelord: If his pathing worked, he might actually be a challenging boss.  

Honestly, it's not a great game. It's a cool game, but not very fun. I once read an article saying Duke (the character) is a nerd's idea of a cool guy. The whole game is very style over substance. Even basic levels and combat feel janky, compared to Doom's clean readability. Compared to Dark Forces (1995) or even Heretic (updated Doom engine 1994) the engine is unimpressive (good job beating the 1993 version of the Doom engine, I guess?) and compared to Quake (also 1996) it's pretty far behind. Is ripping off a couple lines from Army of Darkness and some pixelated tiddies all this has going for it?