Duke Nukem 3D XBLA Review
“Damn! I’m looking good”
by DarkArmada
© 2008 Lee Edgerton
I could just begin this review with quote after quote from this classic 3D FPS, as it seems the “in” thing to do with this title, or I could reference all manner of working ladies, extraterrestrial beings and high explosives… ahhh stuff it!
“Shake it baby”, “Those alien bastards are gonna pay for shooting up my ride!” and of course “It’s time to kick ass and chew bubble gum. And I’m all out of gum.”
Now that I’ve got that out of my system, we get to look into how well 3D Realms’ Duke Nukem 3D has translated to the Xbox 360 and more importantly, Xbox LIVE.
It’s with excitement that I rushed home to hit up the Marketplace for some Duke action and throw myself at the mercy of one of the all time classic FPS’s. As with all these classic remakes, they are never how you remember them. But somehow revisiting Hollywood Holocaust was exactly as I’d remembered it, albeit with that HD sheen we are so used to in this generation of gaming.
Being such a cult hit and a game played by the majority of gamers even before hitting XBLA, I wouldn’t be giving the game the respect it deserves if I were to sit here explaining the ins and outs of it. Just know it’s a raw, sexy and cynical take on FPS’s and movies in general with a whole bunch of catchy one-liners, a vast array of weapons, and plenty of enemies to kill with them.
Bottom line here is that game play is smooth, controls translate well from the keyboard – (I don’t know about anyone else, but I’ve never used kick so much in my life!) – and the added respawn rewind feature is an excellent touch from the usual “Oh noes, you’re dead and you didn’t save…” type of frustration.
This funky rewind feature allows you to FF and RW your previous game play upon your death and respawn at almost any point you wish, giving you an almost limitless control over your game play experience and avoiding those annoying spawn camping moments just after a save. Not only that, the saved game play features allows all previous game play saved as clips that you can playback and share with your friends online.
Multiplayer wise, there have been some amazing additions thrown into the mix with 8-player co-operative gameplay as well as the typical “DukeMatch” ranked and player matchmaking. First reports have marked all online play as riddled with lag and poor latency which is surprising considering the very small amount of data needed to play this title online. However, this was as expected just the same way that Doom suffered from the same flaws. Update: Wow, headed online this morning and with a shaped connection, played through some DukeMatch games as well as online co-op and not a drop of lag. Thumbs up 3D Realms!
Visually there isn’t much to report. The port to XBLA has granted no extra resolution, just the addition of a fast motion blur and digital smoothing effects, both of which I disabled at start-up. Strangely you cannot reshape your screen, only enlarge or shrink meaning you’re stuck with a 4:3 viewing even on your widescreen display (before you say it, I don’t mind if it’s skewed after reshaping). Unlike some of my earlier PC’s, there is no noticeable slowdown on screen with this port.
Thankfully, all the original audio has been kept, bar the music which has been delightfully refreshed with a higher quality MIDI sample. Other than that, all the classic quotes and deep insights that Duke has shared in the past are all ready to fill your room with their quaint profanity.
At a meager 800mp, this flashback to the origins of FPS should be a no-brainer to anyone who has even heard of the name Duke Nukem. The 200gs the game has to offer is all achievable and with the added multiplayer features, this is one XBLA that should be at least tried, even for the sake of hearing that classic line…
“I’m Duke Nukem. And I’m coming to get the rest of you alien bastards!” 
“8.5/10
© 2008 Lee Edgerton:
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