Duke Nukem - Review [English]
45Sunglasses? Check! Gun? Check! Self-conceit? Check! We all know Duke Nukem as alienass-kicking, babe saving, badass and antihero.
It’s 1997. Our earth is being plagued by Dr. Proton and his evil plans. It’s Duke Nukems task to stop Dr. Protons evil robot army. Duke is the one and only to stop Dr. Protons plans and save the earth.
Duke Nukem (also known as Duke Nukum) was released in 3 episodes, of which the first was free as shareware. It was one of the first 2D-platformers from Apogee and was released in 1991. Sixteen colours and a PC-speaker were sexy as never before. The first episode is set in Los Angeles, in the second episode you travel to Dr. Proton’s secret moonbase and in the last episode you travel in time, because the evil Dr. Proton had a trump card in mind for Duke. Let’s have a look at this classic platformer!
Most of the platform games from this era are quite monotone and the same. But that isn’t the case with Duke Nukem. There are loads of items to collect, from floppy’s to balloons, to gain points. There are some hidden dynamites set to explode when you find them and some more obstacles to make your life a bit more miserable and do you damage. By drinking a can of coke or by eating fresh chicken you can fill up your lifebar, Duke ain’t a vegan. To get to the exit of a level you sometimes need to find a keycard that is hidden in a power-up crate. This makes you explore a level inside out. Also there are letters hidden that spells out D-U-K-E in some of the levels, when you collect these in the right order you’ll gain some bonus points. There are more ‘secret’ bonusses that you can earn each level (like one for destroying all of the security cameras), this will cost you some time if you want to set a awesome highscore.
The levels in Duke Nukem are large and vary a lot. Thanks to the power-ups that you will find later on in the game – like fastfire, rail hanging or a jumpboost (which is awesome because you can make a badass backflip) the game keeps interesting and fun to play. There is a nice handfull of tilesets used in the tree episodes which gives every level a completely different feel. The levels are cleverly designed and one by one fun to walk through. Although this game only uses sixteen different colours, everything looks good! There are some nice details in the game like reflections on the floor. The designers have made quite a lot of decoration. There are different backgrounds that make the ambience unforgettable. So there’s enough eyecandy, while you kick some alien ass and save earth from doom.
The animations are very simple and the characters excist of very few frames, though the graphics are effective and attractive to watch. Ofcourse this game is more than two decades old so it isn’t graphicly that impressive any more, but personally I find it awesome to fill out the rest with my own fantasy. And damn son, I was the best back then.
This game used to be, and still is, a great favourite of mine. I still remember my mom helping me get through this game when I was a three-year-old. This was quite special because my mother didn’t like videogames. Even better: a few years ago I showed her a gameplay video of this game and she couldn’t even remember it. I was loving Duke Nukem, I was an instant addict. I became total Duke Nukem fan in 1994, after playing the shareware episode of Duke Nukem II. The second Duke Nukem is the same game, but better at every aspect, a fantastic follow-up. What really rocked my world was the cameo appearance of Commander Keen in Duke Nukem and the appearance of Duke Nukem in The Adventures of Cosmo.
The three episodes of the first Duke Nukem are still for sale, like on Steam. Do you want to watch a playthrough of Duke Nukem then check out this playlist of all three episodes on my Youtube Channel.
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