Duke Nukem 3D (1996) (VG)

Director:

George Broussard

Genre:

Action | Comedy | Animation | Fantasy | Horror | Sci-Fi

Plot:

Blonde action hero Duke Nukem takes on murderous aliens and mutated Los Angeles police officers that have taken over Los Angeles.

Plot Keywords:

Alien | Earth | Stadium | Monolith | Gun

Awards:

1 nomination

Cast

Lee Jackson	...	Fat Commander (voice)
Lani Minella
Jon St. John	...	Duke Nukem (voice)

Also Known As:

Duke Nukem 3 (USA) (alternative title)

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.20 : 1

Sound Mix:

Stereo

Certification:

New Zealand:R16 | South Korea:18 | Germany:18 | UK:18 | USA:M | Australia:MA

Filming Locations:

Apogee/ 3D Realms Entertainment, Garland, Texas, USA

Company:

3D Realms Entertainment

Trivia:

In one of the levels, a female hostage is found trapped in a alien type gel. When you get close to her, she lets out a faint, "Kill me." This idea was sequenced directly from Aliens (1986). By Killing the girl, an alien appears, just like in the film.

Goofs:

Continuity: When using pipe bombs, Duke has a detonator button wrapped on his finger. When he has other weapon equipped, the detonator button is gone.

Quotes:

Duke Nukem: What are you? Some bottom-feeding, scum sucking algae eater?

Movie Connections:

Spoofs Quake (1996) (VG)

Badass, but kicking and plain awesome.

The first time I played Duke Nukem 3D was at a friends place. It has just been released and he was lucky enough to have a PC that could handle it, and the game itself.

We spent several hours walking through just the first level, there was so much to see! You got your explosive scenery, your secret areas, your generally badass weaponry (which IMO is still unmatched by ANY shooter today) a host of unique enemies and level design that introduces recognizable landmarks (cities, bars, strip clubs, prisons etc.) which, for it's time, was a great stride ahead!

And of course, then there's the interactivity, also unmatched so far. You could play a match of pool, burn your fingers on an electrical outlet, hand money to strippers, or shoot them, blow up most any decorative object in the game, as well as have Duke interact with an object, only to have him give one of his trademark one-liners.

Which brings me to another great aspect of Duke 3D, The one-liners. Although some of them where not exactly 'new' and taken from popular movies from back in the day, each and every one of them where humorous and usually highly appropriate quotes that really set Duke's personality.

It's been a long while since I've seen a game character have that strong of a personality without the overuse of Cinematic cut-scenes and FMV's.

3D Realms have truly shown what shooters should be like: Fast-paced, comical at times and very immersive.

But after all this I left 1 rather important thing out: Multiplayer! Essentially Duke Nukem 3D's multi-player modes are either Deathmatch (dubbed DukeMatch) or Cooperative Play.

In DukeMatch the goal is simple: Kill as many other players as you possibly can. With weapons like the Freezer, the shrinker, the RPG and Tripbombs this could either turn into your frantic killing spree or attempting to lure the enemy into your own traps.

With Cooperative play the goal was to finish the Singleplayer campaign with multiple players. For this purpose 3DRealms had added additional weapons, extra buttons (to evade certain 'lock-up' situations that might occur in single-player) and other useful stuff.

Duke Nukem 3D is a classic and IMO deserves to be PC Game #1 ever. In combination with JonoF's port (a result of the source code release) this game can even be played on Win32 systems.

Hail to the King baby!