Reviewing Every Duke Nukem Game - GmanLives

[Music] that the years there's been characters in the gaming industry that have just risen above the rest and etch their way into the halls of video game legends characters like Mario and Link Solid Snake Ryu and Ken from Street Fighter and case in point the king himself duke nukem it's time to kick ass and chew bubblegum one of the first games I ever played was the first episode of Duke Nukem 1 on my dad's Commodore 286 way back in the day and it's a character that I've got a lot of love for so I thought I'd go back and take a look at the entire series right from the beginning back before Duke was quoting Lions from army of darkness or torturing us with delayed release dates so get ready to chew bubblegum and kick asses like go back and review every single Duke Nukem down time to kick some ass let's rock so in the early 90s it seemed like Apogee software could do no wrong when it came to side-scrolling platformers on the PC and some of my absolute favorite games from that time period were published by these guys like Commander Keen Kosmos cosmic adventure and of course the first student you can game released in 1991 the story line in this one is it you've got to stop the evil doctor proton who's trying to take over the world with these robots robots that are really ineffective but was somehow just able to wipe out most of humanity it's all kind of similar to Skynet in the Terminator films even down to the way that the backdrop to a lot of the levels of these ruined buildings and city streets anyway the game is broken up into three episodes the first one in shrapnel city the second one in doctor protons moon base and the third back on earth but taking place in the present and the future as Duke has to time travel to chase dr. proton down in these episodes are actually pretty similar to what they did into Nukem 3d with the first and the third episode being set on earth and the second episode being set in space also shrapnel city is the location and title for Duke Nukem 3d third episode gameplay wise Duke Nukem is a fairly competent side-scrolling platformer so you jump by pressing control you fire by pressing alt and you press up to interact with doors or control panels you either kill or avoid enemies you search for keys to unlock doors and collect footballs radios and joysticks for points crates throughout the levels of color-coded to let you know what might be inside them blue crates always have points items red crates always have healing items in the gray crates either have crucial items like key cards or upgrades or dynamite that explodes after a second or so you drink soda and eat turkey legs for health points and as you get further into each episode you collect gear that adds new abilities like a grappling hook a Robo hand and a pair of sneakers that lets Duke jump higher and also do this totally radical look and flip yeah look at it it's awesome Duke's pistol can also be upgraded a total of three times to give it extra firepower which means you can fire off a lot quicker which helps to kill off some of the tougher enemy types now there's no save points in the game so if you die you start from the beginning of the level but it's not really that much of an issue because the game's not too challenging and you've got infinite lives anyway about the only thing that makes this game a bit of a pain in the ass to play through is that some of the levels are complete mazes and meant to be as confusing as possible like one level in the first episode is literally called the maze of death it was a technique used a lot in games from the 1990s we're just saying they made levels as Lavrentiy and as possible to extend the amount of time you got out of playing it which was fine for the time but nowadays it comes across as being a bit tedious still there's not all that much to hate with his first entry in this series like it's still a pretty fun game for the most part and there's a lot of charm with the visuals and the wonky PC sound effects you can also see the way they were starting to introduce Dukes macho character a bit which is something that would become pretty prominent in later games but as good as I thought Duke Nukem 1 was Duke Nukem 2 blew it out of the water right from the opening title screen when you hear that Apogee theme kicking in you know that [ __ ] was about to get real and it did and for like a seven-year-old kid this was the coolest thing I'd ever seen in a video game I am back don't you come to really blew my mind at the time was sound blaster sound effects actual music composed by Bobby Prince and even more ass-kicking attitude from Duke himself released in 1993 during you come to takes place sometime after the events of the first game as dukes become something of a hero after feeding dr. proton however it's a new day and an alien race called the wriggle art ins has invaded earth in kidnap Duke planning the cookies brain up to some kind of supercomputer to help them win a war and conquer the planet of course Duke ain't having a bar of that and he breaks out a prison to stop them literally the first level in this game just has you blasting your way out of a prison cell as Bobby Prince's music kicks in like it's just amazing from a game playing a technical standpoint I think Duke Nukem 2 is just objectively better than the first game pretty much across the board for starters it looks considerably better with much more detail in the environments and the enemy sprites not to mention the animations in the sheer amount of particles and effects when firing weapons and blowing [ __ ] up Duke Nukem 1 had ten or so enemies Duke Nukem 2 has 20 and the enemy types are a lot more varied than just walking left or right and shooting at you there's an attack ship that flies past and drops bombs there's a ball of toxic slime that can move along either the ground or the ceiling and then there's spiders that can grab onto you among a whole bunch of others movements had a bit of an overhaul too so now you can climb up ladders or chains you can duck and fire or you can aim up and fly straight up above your head at one point you can even hop into this hover craft II kind of thing and fly around you can also use a few different weapons now as well the sight from his default blaster including a laser gun a rocket launcher and a flamethrower that doubles as a jetpack if you aim down and shoot while jumping then there's a rapid-fire powerup which is handy regardless of the weapon type you're using instead of three episodes there's now four with each episode having eight levels each and these are vastly different to each other unlike the first game though where death meant a complete level restart do you come to ads in a mid-level checkpoint about the only thing I bring up that it's lacking is that they've removed the jumping boots the grappling hook and the Robo hand from the first game which seems a little bit odd instead of these you can now grapple on to change with your bare hands without a grappling hook and Duke still does a flip when he jumps every now and then just without needing to find the boots first but the amount of stuff they've added it in a little if this makes up for having this taken out and I think the fact that the levels are much easier to navigate now makes this way more enjoyable to play them Duke Nukem 1 as a kid I just really love this game and I can still remember loading it up for the first time with my dad and both of us playing through those first few levels together it was just such an awesome improvement over Duke Nukem 1 and when you look at them side-by-side it's easy to see a huge difference amazingly two was even ported to the Game Boy Color in 1999 but the next game in the Duke Nukem series though was where it all took off and where Duke finally got solidified as one of the greatest characters in the history of the gaming industry and you know what I'm talking about Duke Nukem 3d what can be said about Duke Nukem 3d that everyone doesn't already know it's one of the best first-person shooters ever made but also I think just one of the best games ever made period released in 1996 at a time when the first-person shooter was already making leaps and strides this thing came along with the brand spanking new build engine and still managed to kick things up another notch and the music might go up the music it might be some of Lee Jackson's best work and I think most people know grab-bag and stalker which has some of the best tracks ever composed for any FPS game not to mention John [ __ ] Saint John as the voice of Duke Nukem himself a voice that's been etched into the brains of gamers around the world and a voice that can spontaneously impregnate women and I'm coming to get the rest of you aliens bears dude no longer did the hero of the game simply grunt and moan in pain now he was fully voiced letting off cheesy one-liners during combat to give him much more of a personality and you really felt like this might show roided-up ass-kicker going around saving the earth from an alien invasion even to this day as an impressively high amount of environmental interaction and it still plays really well as a shooter the destructible elements in certain levels like how you can literally blow chunks out of the map just still looks cool not to mention pixelated TNA mean I'm still pretty confident that this was the first time I ever saw boobs in a video game shakin baby on that note - it was a pretty damn mature game in fact it even got censored in Australia removing most of the adult content and a lot of the violence though of course any sunny gym with basic knowledge of ms-dos could easily get past that and I did the story should be pretty well known by this point but the gist is that the fate of the world again rests in Dukes hands and he has to save the planet from another alien invasion to make it worse they stole our chicks and like Duke says no one steals our chicks and lives by this point in the series Duke is a full-blown woman loving ass-kicking action movie cliche his physique at this point would get him into the mr. Olympia competition and his persona and attitude makes him seem like an absolute Chad he's the kind of guy you want to go drinking with and have in your corner during a street fight it to turn to aboard your whole friggin species and you bring the fight to the aliens across three chapters or four if you're playing the atomic addition each with around eight levels ending in a boss fight like Duke Nukem won the first and the third episode take place on earth with the second chapter lunar apocalypse taking place in space for its time and even by today's standards the weapons of varied and fun to use there's the pistol the shotgun the Ripper cannon the RPG and then more creative ones like the freeze thrower the shrink ray and the Devastator it also introduced an inventory system where you could hold on to a med kit night vision goggles a jet pack and of course steroids it's rare to see a game that adds in so many new mechanics and features but also do it so seamlessly and it's really a testament to how groundbreaking duke3d was at the time but also how well it stood that test of time even the enemies are also unique and different to one another with different behavior and attack styles that you can instantly assess what kind of threat they pose within moments of seeing them to be honest I really struggled to find things to complain about with this game and along with games like doom and blood it's just something I come back to multiple times a year just to play through again for shits and giggles and it never gets old the only thing that has consistently pissed me off in duke3d throughout the years of those annoying [ __ ] century drums whose entire strategy consists of making annoying noises and beelining towards the player before blowing up they encapsulate what I hate most about the second episode along with the abundance of the protozoa Slimers and battle lords centuries that you have to find they just take way too many hits before dying considering their numbers and the damage they do and they're the most annoying enemy types in the entire game I'd even argue the entire series exploding suicide type enemies are the bane of FPS games and these things are a perfect example of that but it's nitpicking what's otherwise I really saw the title there's just so many ways to play this game - like it's almost been ported to every single platform it's been obviously on PC and Mac but also the Sega Saturn and there's duke nukem total meltdown for the PlayStation 1 do you come 64 for Nintendo 64 and then a recent port for the Xbox 360 then there were a whole bunch of mobile phone ports and that even got ported to the Sega Genesis which is amazing in and of itself not to mention all of the various remasters and reat packages like the Duke Nukem Megaton Edition which was developed for the PC the ps3 and the PS Vita and then later on the world tour Edition for PC ps4 and the Xbox one which also included a brand-new fifth episode now the Megaton Edition and the world tour Edition are pretty much entirely the same as the original game they're just different kind of remasters or repackages that let the game be played in a higher resolution the Megaton Edition comes with all the expansion packs as well as all original four episodes most importantly episode 4 which was released alongside the atomic Edition the world tour Edition was released in 2016 published by Gearbox Software who held the rights at the time and it's a pretty good-looking remaster with some gorgeous new lighting effects it also includes a brand new fifth episode created by some of the original 3d realms dev team though oddly it doesn't include any of the expansions serious Sam with the console versions the Sega's sat in the PlayStation version are mostly just poor to the PC version with not all that much changed aside from the Saturn version running on a different engine but it's Duke Nukem 64 though that's probably the most unique so for starters every single weapon sprite has been updated if not completely replaced you still use the pistol shotgun and the pipe on but the Ripper cannon is now replaced by dual submachine guns the RPG is now more standard looking missile launcher replacing the Devastator and there's a grenade launcher as well the shrinker and expander have been combined into one weapon and instead of the fries thrower there's now a plasma cannon that can be fired rapidly or charged up the adult content has been cut almost entirely in red light district for instance the porno store is now a gun store how American and the strip club towards the end of this level is now a parking lot at the back of a Duke burger there is still babes in the game but they're all fully clothed and the semi-nude ones you'd see in the alien cocoons are now fully covered and can be interacted with to rescue them on top of that the steroids are now called vitamin X so overall this is a much more kid-friendly version probably keeping in line with Nintendo's code of practice for content in their video games [Applause] otherwise though it still plays mostly the same aside from a few level changes here and there and the fact that you have to play all 30 levels back-to-back you can't simply start from episode 2 or 3 about the other thing I really dislike about this version though is the music because there isn't a yeah nothing aside from a remix the grab bag at the main menu there's no soundtrack at all and that's a pretty huge blunder you can't really expect it to be a perfect port considering it's running on a Nintendo 64 but I think overall they did a pretty good job of carrying it over and if you didn't play this on the PC and this was your first foray into the series it's not as bad as it could have been but there's just no reason to play this anymore and everything it does the PC version does better the controls the performance save files you name it it's even more redundant now because it's even being ported entirely to PC in a mod that runs in the Egypt source port this way you can appreciate all of the new content and the changes without suffering through single-digit frame rates and what's quite honestly you're handicapped control scheme at this point you can even choose which episode to start from at this point do Nukem Forever was about 15 years off being released even though it was originally supposed to be at around the early 2000s so what happened at this point is that the series moved to the consoles for a bit with a few different games those being Duke Nukem time-to-kill and landed the babes on the PlayStation 1 and Duke Nukem 0 our on the Nintendo 64 all third-person shooters with similar themes involving time travel time to kill was the first one to command it was developed by n-space and released in 1998 for the PlayStation 1 its story is kind of like a mix of time splitters and daikatana even though it proceeded both games by few years in the game's opening cinematic with a song that's 1998 version of let the bodies hit the floor duke is attacked by pit cops in the lamest looking strip club I've ever seen and then he has to chase a time-traveling alien race and stop them from messing around with his timeline this takes him from present day to the Wild West medieval Europe and then ancient Rome and it's actually a pretty cool concept and Dukes outfit even changes to reflect each time period which is pretty funny thing is the level design is needlessly complex a lot of the time pretty much every single level requires you to find three of something to progress like three time crystals three scraps of paper three jewels and it's just a bit of a maze hunt to find all this stuff for not a particularly enjoyable maze honey though the list it still keeps things pretty close to what makes Duke 40 years there's heaps of low polygonal semi-nude women for Duke to ogle and he's got plenty of one-liners - who's your daddy and some of these are really funny - in kind of original which is good friends Romans countrymen lend me your chicks and I'll puff and I'll kick your ass in there's the return of weapons like the pipe bomb in the RPG but it also adds in new weapons like a flamethrower and a Gatling gun which can even be upgraded to be turned into a Gatling laser time to kill single biggest problem though is the controls which are just are a [ __ ] I mean the shooting side of things ain't that bad and the game has a liberal Auto lame system which is almost essential but the platform controls are just horrible it's got that early Prince of Persia Tomb Raider vibe but you have to have almost frame perfect precision when trying to jump and grab onto a Ledge but even then half the time the game just seems to ignore your inputs and not jump at all it's just incredibly frustrating this was actually one of the reasons why I never finished this game as a kid and I just ended up using cheats to get to all the levels playing it now as an adult and trying to slug it out and get through it properly it's even worse than I remember it there's platforming sections in this game that are just downright sadistic over pools of lava or bottomless pits forcing a checkpoint restart it is far from being bad but it's really a product of its time and it plays and feels like exactly what it is which is a janky third-person shooter released for the PlayStation 1 overall not a terrible game but not really amazing either hello McFly Duke Nukem zero hour was released on the Nintendo 64 a year later in 1999 developed by eurocom who also worked on duke nukem 64 and like I said before it's kind of similar to time to kill with a time-traveling component to the storyline it's the same again in the sense of Duke 7 to travel through time and stop aliens but there's pretty huge differences between the two the starters in time to kill Duke is working alone without any assistance but in zero hour he's working alongside the US government which basically serves the same purpose as the ADF what did these guys guard against my ride in time to kill you visit for different time periods but in this one it's only three there's a future version of Los Angeles where the aliens have taken over then the Wild West again and finally Victorian era London which almost has a horror field to it with the streets being foggy in eerie and zombies skulking around zero hour is most reminiscent of time to kill during the Wild West levels obviously because of the theme but they again take place in similar locations like frontier towns canyons and mines a lot of the weapons are the same so there's the pipe bomb the fries fur and the shotgun but there's also a few new additions if I had to pick a favorite out of the two I'd have to say that it would be zero hour simply because of just how much better the shooting and controls are like this one is pretty much just a third-person platformer you don't need frame precise timing to perform something as basic as a jump run up to a Ledge press the jump button and Duke is going to jump every single time and this is a huge improvement there might not be the option to grapple onto ledges and all that kind of stuff but it's not an entirely bad omission considering it MX the game played a lot more fast paced moving around and firing with weapons is smooth and easy and it still plays really well even by today's standards like you'll see the framerate drop here and there but the shooting mechanics are still solid with a liberal auto aim system to help you out along the way levels are complex without being too confusing either packing in lots of secret areas and babes for Duke to rescue the whole thing is just chock-full of charm - and it never takes itself too seriously well look the babes you rescue have different accents depending on the time period Rim so in Whitechapel they're all talking with British accents because they're all proper British birds in it during the Whitechapel levels you even get to take on Jack the Ripper as a boss fight so I guess we can close the case on that one too because we now know that Jack the Ripper was never caught because Duke Nukem killed him guy like the rest then god damnit I love his outfit in this level with that white shirt and suspenders I love it I also get a bit of a tour up to vibe from this game too from some of the enemy types the environments in the later levels and also the gore which is just really good real good again baby you can actually shoot a hole in an enemy's chest or blow their entire head off which is awesome and something about low polygonal violence is just always appealing to me I don't know why that is but it's just something good about it Duke's also a lot more vocal in this game than a lot of the other ones too like it seems you can't pick up a single item in the game without in busting out some kind of one-liner the only thing that I really dislike about this game is the checkpoints or the lack thereof yes this comes from that time when developers had no consideration for the player's time and instead of integrating mid-level checkpoints they just threw your right back to the start of a level when you died this isn't an issue most of the time but there are certain eras later on that are just packed with cheap deaths where you often can't possibly see something coming unless you know about it beforehand one of the last levels in particular is just downright sadistic and if you manage to beat this on the Nintendo 64 as a kid well then my hats off to you because it just requires a tremendous amount of patience I don't know why they didn't add this stuff in I mean time-to-kill came out a year prior and it had at least one checkpoint per level which ever and then that was a huge benefit it's about the only problem I had with this game that and the opto brains who can just [ __ ] right off overall though zero-hour is still a pretty good game considering the time it came out and it's actually relatively cheap to so long as you don't want to buy it in its original box it also emulates really well and it's probably one of the few of these older games that I'd recommend people check out sadly though this was followed up with Duke Nukem landed the babes again developed by n-space and released in 2000 but this one I would not recommend whereas the stories in the last couple of games felt really fun and enjoyable time travelling here and there and keeping things somewhat light-hearted the story and land of the babes is just downright depressing it's the same plot again about the aliens killing off all of the male population using women for breeding but something about it this time around just seems really mean-spirited despite all of the women dressing like daisy dukes from the opening level cinematic you see women getting gunned down by pig cops or carried off unconscious to God knows where to be sewed there's nothing tongue-in-cheek or fun about it it's a morbid [ __ ] depressing vision of a future where only women survived and basically got turned into sex toys for humanoid pigs and gorillas luckily they were able to time travel and get Duke to help them ain't due thank goodness you received our message for the most part this game controls exactly like time to kill except now there's a helpful lock-on system and firing weapons where you can target an enemy and track their movement automatically the other thing is that there's no more health points instead it's the first introduction of the ego system which got used again in duke nukem Manhattan Project and Duke Nukem Forever and the way this thing works is it outside of getting a go points through pickups you can also earn them slightly every time you kill an enemy or rescue a babe lastly and most noticeably from the get-go is at this way more of an emphasis on the story this time around with frequent cinematics a supporting character named Jane that Duke works alongside and an antagonist named silverback who is a silverback gorilla yeah appropriate name I'm glad to be irritating you Silverberg but I'd rather be kicking your ass whereas part of this game though is not the one not two not three but the four underwater levels it has all up there's only 14 levels in the game and for these take place underwater and not the good kind of underwater levels either if such a thing exists I really hope whoever designed these levels has bad luck for the rest of their miserable life like I hope they make bad investments they buy a car that turns out to be a lemon their favorite pants and t-shirts shrink in the washing machine that sort of thing one underwater level in a game is fine but for no go screw yourself that sucks it's also definitely a shorter game than time to kill it taking me around six hours to get through but that's more of a mercy than anything else at least they kept some of the iconic weapons though so you still got the shrink ray the freeze fellow in the RPG along with a few new guns as well and the shooting and the controls are slightly improved over time to kill but not enough platforming still seems to drop your inputs for no apparent reason and precise shooting can still be tricky yeah I have to talk about the ending cinematic for this thing which is just insane every for Duke Nukem game right so after heading to the alien base and destroying the final boss Duke then begins operation repopulation which basically involves him dressing up like Hugh Hefner and then having sex with every woman left alive in an effort to repopulate earth now look this is insane for a couple of key reasons right if he knocks up every single woman in the world that would mean that every child born is gonna be brother and sister so it's just ensured that the future of mankind is going to be made up of deformed incestuous babies that probably end up looking like a mission on top of that I mean does this guy just have bowling ball-sized testicles or something i mean god damn son that's a huge sperm reserve am i overthinking it yeah I'm overthinking overall this game's subpar quality was reflected in its reviews at the time IGN gave it a 4 out of 10 GameSpot gave it 6 and it was the last Duke Nukem gained these developers ever worked on and rightfully so it's kind of a shame too because time-to-kill was decent enough it's just a shame that couldn't fully improve upon the foundations but I've done what I really expected from a game called land of the babes to begin with that'll teach those alien mech it's not to mess with my planet no it's time for some serious R&R next we jump ahead to 2002 at this point during you can forever is already a year late and after showing off that amazing 2001 trailer it was all that a lot of Duke fans wanted to get their hands on for the time being we instead god Duke Nukem Manhattan Project and I remember that we got to copy this when my dad bought a new graphics card at the time this one however wasn't a first-person shooter or even a third-person shooter instead along the same lines as the original games it's a platformer a 2.5 D platformer oddly enough to the developers Sun storm interactive we're also responsible for a couple of the do Nukem 3d expansion packs like Duke it out in DC and arguably the best expansion pack life's the beach they also worked on expansions for blood and Shadow Warrior so if anybody could have a good crack this thing it'll be these guys funny thing is those that dude you can forever was originally supposed to be a platformer so in a way this might kind of be the Duke Nukem Forever we were meant to play and you know what Manhattan Project was pretty good and it still kind of is from the moment you start playing it everything feels smooth and tired the controls are responsive you can double jump grab onto ledges it's just incredibly precise and under all of that is a pretty challenging game the story in this one is that Dukes in New York cuz it's being attacked by a douchebag named morphix who looks a lot like dr. proton and this guy's going around using toxic goo to turn things into horrible monsters alligators cockroaches rats and of course pigs in our boy Duke Nukem is not gonna let that slide so he goes off to stop him pigs will fly before morphix rules the world on my watch the whole thing's broken down into eight chapters with three levels each third level always culminating in a boss fight to finish the levels you need to rescue a babe who's strapped to some kind of bomb and also find an access card to turn off the barrier that's blocking the exit those things the right edge that will there's ten nukes to find and if you can find all of these it upgrades your max ammo and max health points weapons include a pistol shotgun the RPG and the pipe bomb but instead of the Ripper Canon Duke now uses a machine gun newer guns include the glop ray which turns enemies back to their normal size and the plasma cannon which returns from doom 64 and to simplify everything ammunition is shared across multiple weapons now that might sound kind of odd but it's actually a purposefully refined system meaning you don't have seven different ammo counts to worry about and it actually works pretty well it also helps that shooting things in this game is really fun going ham with the RPG R for instance is awesome and the game is super gory explosions look and sound really impactful and like do you come 3d before it you can also blow up certain walls and structures like land of the babes there's a similar ego system where ego functions the same as health and is refilled whenever you kill enemies or rescue bathe which is a good way of integrating Duke's personality into the gameplay it also does a pretty good job of mixing up the environments so you start off on the new york rooftops jumping from building to building but for a boss fight against a chopper the next chapter you're in Chinatown moving along the streets for a bit dodging cars before heading inside a nightclub in Chapter three you now inside the subway which has been taken over by mutated cockroaches and rats during this chapter there's an awesome level where you're on top of a subway carriage dodging poles and fighting a giant cockroach boss per tab before you even deeper underground in a series of sewers and disused subway stations the boss fight for this chapter is on top of a train carriage against the mutated cockroach queen then there's a factory a tanker and oil rig before the final chapter set on a space station it's just constantly changing things up and no two areas ever feel the same I'm an equal-opportunity ass [ __ ] the only negative thing is that Manhattan Project often becomes less of a platformer at times and more of the challenge comes from dealing with the enemies more than it does whatever hazards the environment throws at you as a result it's often more trial and error to a point knowing where certain enemy types are gonna be because you often can't see that far ahead another thing is that sometimes for no reason jumping and double jumping just does not work like a double jump won't execute at all or Duke simply won't jump to begin with even though you press the jump button and in a platforming game this is a pretty big issue you'll also get stuck on certain areas or take unnecessary damage at times because of how huge Duke's hit boxes are but still this is a pretty fun game and I think you might have one of my favorite Duke quotes of all time long space the final frontier these are the voyages of Duke Nukem my continuing mission to explore strange new babes does he go new aliens and kick their asses that see we also got Duke Nukem advanced develop for the Game Boy Advance by tourists games and it's unique because it's one of the few times where Duke Nukem game has been made for a handheld gaming platform now I could rip this games head off and [ __ ] down its neck you could tear it apart for how it looks and how it plays but to be honest I'm just kind of amazed they managed to get it running on a Game Boy at all I think I'm too impressed to put on my nitpicking [ __ ] hat and criticize it I mean it's a first-person shooter on a Game Boy so you need to expect that when you go in to play it it's actually got its own story too so in this one Duke is working for the EDF taking orders from general graves who first showed up in Episode four of dude 3d and also has a more prominent role in doing Nukem Forever which we'll get to soon graves are sending in to investigate area 51 where it turns out those damn dirty aliens are back trying to wake up a bunch of their kind that are in hibernation in Egypt after blowing them all up Duke then heads to Sydney Australia yet Duke goes down under to destroy a doomsday device you even go inside the Opera House you can see the Harbour Bridge at one point amazing then for the ending Duke makes his way to the alien mothership and blows them all to kingdom come you've got Duke shotgun the RPG in the pipe bomb which all use sprites from do Nukem 3d with the Ripper cannon again being replaced with an mp5 because it seems a lot of these developers really hate the Ripper cannon for some reason oh yeah and the pistol is now a desert Eve there's even a four-barrel version of the shotgun which is amazing in concept alone enemies are mostly just reused from duke3d with the assault trooper the pig cop enforcer and the octo brain being the most common level designer simplistic I guess because it kinda has to be and the only real challenge comes from dealing with the frame rate and the sluggish controls but the whole thing can be finished in about two hours and really just serves as more of a novelty than anything else like seeing someone use old hard drives to play the doom theme or getting Skyrim running on their fridge still it is kind of hard to hate on this thing I mean it's just so damn charming making fun of this thing would be like going to a kids athletics carnival and insulting them because they don't run as fast as Usain Bolt but don't worry there's one law doing you can game I can make fun of and you knew this one was coming right yep the last on the list is Duke Nukem Forever [Music] what can be said about doing you can forever that hasn't already been said a billion times already it's probably one of the most infamous games of all time notorious for its lengthy development cycle and then the issues it faced between 3d realms and gearbox software which saw 3d realms lose the reins on it completely it's kind of hard to believe it was originally supposed to come out in the late 90s but didn't see a proper release date until 2011 I went from being a sexually frustrated high school student to a sexually frustrated adult before it finally saw the light of day taking place sometime after the events of Duke Nukem 3d Duke has become a hero and capitalized on his popularity becoming an international celebrity Wow Thank You mr. Newcomb at the beginning of the game though the aliens return hovering above Earth apparently in peace Duke's told by the president that he's not to engage them and that we need to give them a fair chance even though if history repeats itself they've shown they can't be trusted I'm sure there's some kind of current political climate joke to be made here about this but I'll leave that up to the people in the comment section anyway point is though Duke can see through their [ __ ] and he's right because before too long they attack stealing our chicks yet again what follows is a NATO cell hour long campaign that plays around with a bunch of different ideas and mechanics early on in the game you shrunk down and driving through a casino on a remote-control car then you're taking on aliens in the Vegas Strip before driving through the Nevada desert in a monster truck to the finale and Hoover Dam the environments show off a high level of interactivity is something that do Nukem 3d was well known for there's plenty of sequences involving semi nude women one entire chapter takes place inside a strip club where your main objective is to find a dildo a condom and a bag of popcorn not even kidding then there's the return of all Dukes classic weaponry they even included the Ripper cannon finally I also like how they brought back the ego system for health again even if it is a way of just hiding regenerating health if you break the whole thing down and you improve this by doing things like lifting weights or taking a piss [Music] but the issue is that by the time this thing finally came out do it was just a bit of a relic and he just wasn't relevant anymore the constant sex jokes and innuendos just started to feel a bit lame more so if you consider now that at this point dude would have to be pushing these 50s and there's nothing cool about a 50 year old dude hanging out at strip clubs it'll be like watching the Fonz come here at a retirement and still going back and hitting on 20-year olds it also feels like a game that had a bunch of people working on it which is exactly what it is it's like watching a movie that's had multiple directors the tone and feeling is just really uneven and constantly changing it's like a tug of war and Duke Nukem Forever suffers from that it's lacking a more focused and refine campaign as a result so from that though it just didn't really do anything all that impressive anymore we'd seen all of this stuff before a larger environment we could drive around in freely well yeah half-life 2 did that back in 2004 the saddest part though is that if it had have come out when it was supposed to back in the early 2000s it would have been a masterpiece by this point though it was just too little too late still as averages the whole thing is it definitely wasn't as bad as a lot of people made it out to be was it disappointing yeah it was I was even one of those [ __ ] that ordered the special edition of the game that came with a bunch of useless crap so imagine how I felt but I think it was still far removed from being the worst this game ever made as some people claimed at the time wasn't even the worst FPS of 2011 I think that award goes to Call of Juarez the shark tell probably didn't help people's impressions though that one of the first things you could do in the game was pick up a giant turd and start throwing it around what a sad way to in Dukes career that with an unfulfilled game like Duke Nukem Forever it still hurts me to this day right in the jewels now there was another game that came out around the same time for the Nintendo DS called Duke Nukem critical mass and this one's like a really shitty clone of Duke Nukem Manhattan Project it's just it's kind of lacking everything that made that game so much fun now the less said about this one the better and there's few reasons that few people know about it and that's because it's just complete rubbish in fact the only reason I'm really wasting my time talking about it is because I know if I don't there's gonna be someone in the comments section who has a go at me for not covering it even compared to other Nintendo DS games not even holding it to the same standards it's something on the PC this one is still just really crappy it combines the platforming controls and perspective of Manhattan Project but with the clunky and unresponsive controls of something like time to kill honestly there's 16-bit games that are better and more enjoyable to play than this is [Music] picking the best entry out of the series though is kind of impossible because it is such a subjective thing I think a lot of it has to do with the first or the earliest game people played which is what they end up siding with us their personal favorite for me it's Duke Nukem 3d I mean I played Duke Nukem 1 first but I spent the most time playing Duke 3d more than any of the others I was just starting in high school when it first came out and a violent shooter with pixelated boobs was about the most amazing thing I'd ever seen at the time and then I've spoken to some people who say that Manhattan Project is their favorite and then others who amazingly say that it's landed the babes and I think that's what makes this series and Duke as a character so important is that regardless of what format he's played in or what genre he appears he's always resonated with gamers don't you come forever might have [ __ ] all that up but if he played a lot of these older titles when they first came out he would have definitely left a lasting impression on you I mean he doesn't say hail to the king for nothing you dig me they're gonna blow the whole damn planet that look I don't think it's the last wheel save him there's just too much potential with the character and the boomer culture is at an all-time high right now so it's only a matter of time before we seen return besides who else is going to chill this bubblegum and kick all this alien ass if not Duke [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: GmanLives

Views: 1,342,559

Rating: 4.8930097 out of 5

Keywords: duke nukem review, duke nukem 3d, duke nukem forever, land of the babes, time to kill, duke nukem series review, reviewing every duke nukem game, gmanlives, 3d realms, nspace, gearbox software, randy pitchford, build engine, dos games, bobby prince, first person shooter, fps games, duke nukem e3, e3 2001, borderlands 3, duke nukem trailer, hail to the king, manhattan project, critical mass, atomic edition, duke nukem 3d theme, duke 3d speedrun, playstation 1, xbox

Id: CqkTcloaPBg

Length: 39min 18sec (2358 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 29 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/fargalol]

whats the best way to play duke 3d on my modern PC? I can't buy it on GOG and I don't wanna play the 20th anniversary version.

[u/Kajiic]

I played the crap out of DN and DN2, as someone who grew up on Commander Keen, then Duke came out and I was floored. Still the 2D action I loved so much.

When Duke Nukem 3D came out we had already been playing the absolute shit out of Doom (my father and I) with a ton of WADs and even my dad making some. We were still floored at the improvements DN3D did and I got the book and CD that taught you how to use the level editor. I made so many maps, and my dad would play them all and give me tips.

[u/Frigmannaia]

Duke Nukem 3D, the first videogame i've ever played, on my old Sega Saturn.

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So many good memories