Duke Nukem 64

One of the most popular first-person shooters for the PC is slowly making its way to the home systems. The latest version, for the N64, is perhaps the best so far. Duke Nukem 64 goes beyond a simple straight-to-console port. The designers are adding enough new features and changing enough old ones to make gamers want to take a closer look.

For those of you who are not familiar with the Duke, here's an abbreviated history: Aliens invade Earth, Duke kills aliens. OK. no big deal there, but Duke's winning formula on the PC wasn't a result of the story line. Duke Nukem 3D became a big hit because of the wonderfully designed stages, unique weaponry and killer personality.

Duke Nukem is the first major first-person shooter to take place in present day and futuristic environments. You must explore many earthly locales like movie theaters, book stores, hotels, subway stations. office buildings, pool halls and much more. In the second episode. Duke visits space stations. alien bases and other sci-fi levels. Each level is crafted with special attention paid to every detail, from the graffiti on the walls to the pay phones in the night clubs.

The weapons also make for an interesting game playing experience. In the Nintendo 64 version, you can wield shotguns with high-explosive rounds, twin submachine guns, grenade launchers, heat-seeking missiles, shrink rays, plasma cannons, laser trip mines and pipe bombs (unfortunately, the freeze ray from the original game has been taken out). So not only can you blast an enemy apart, you can set traps and shrink them (then squish 'em).

Duke 64 will support two to four multiplayer action. What if you don't have three other friends to play Duke with? Well don't fret, because Duke 64 has a new feature called the Al Bot, ported from Duke Nukem: Atomic Edition on the PC. You can simulate multiplayer DukeMatches with computer-controlled opponents.

Duke 64 also has 32 large levels that will feed any Duke fan's appetite for destruction. Three of these are N64 exclusive Duke-Match levels, and the other 29 are modified levels taken from the PC's Duke Nukem: Atomic Edition. Each of these has been redesigned from the ground up. The secrets have been moved around, and the level layouts have been changed. Upon first playing Duke 64 you may see much resemblance to the previous versions, but you'll realize that things have been changed significantly.

GT Interactive is certainly making an effort to make this Duke stand out over the others. The changes may give this version just what it needs to beat out the multitude of other "Doom clones" on the market. Besides, what other console version is going to let you play a four-player match of one of the best first-person shooters around?

SOFTWARE COMPANIES CAN BE a weird lot at times. F'instance, GT Interactive all but thrust a copy of Duke Nukem 64 down our throats for review. Just one small proviso – the demo cartridge had to go back to their offices the same day it arrived. Do what?

The reason for this bungee-reviewing was that GT only had a few flash ROM cartridges (oversized rewritable carts costing about £150 a pop) and other people wanted to see it as well. Chah! We had to wait bloody weeks for Goldeneye to reach the office because some munter liked it so much they wouldn't take it out of their N64. Let someone else suffer for a change!

Still, 64 Magazine's reputation for reliability was on the line, so one day I sat down to review Duke Nukem 64 as it was. Luckily, I'd already played the PC and Mac versions quite a lot, so finding my way around wasn't going to be too much of a problem. Other questions still had to be answered, though. How does the N64 version compare with the computer-based original? Have Nintendo's puritan policies watered down the game? How does it compare to Goldeneye? Can a game really be reviewed fairly in one day? How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? 64 Magazine is proud to present...

Walkthrough & Play Diary

• 9.20: Arrive in the office early. A jiffy bag with my name on it is waiting on reception. Ho yus!

• 9.27: Apple Mac is booted up, N64 plugged in, flash ROM banged into slot. Power on! Duke Nukem 64 has three modes of play. The most obvious is the one-player game, where Duke legs it around the levels killing everything in sight and blowing stuff up. Can't argue with that. The second mode is the two-player co-operative mode, where a pair of Dukes leg it around the levels killing everything in sight and blowing stuff up, but watching each others' backs in the process. The last mode is Dukematch, about which more later.

• 9.28: Start playing. The first level, ‘Hollywood Holocaust’, appears, and apart from a few minor graphical differences and the change of Duke's line “Those bastards blew up my ride!” to something less ‘offensive’, it looks the same. Duke Nukem 64, like Hexen, employs the N64's anti-aliasing talents to smooth (or ‘blur’, if you want to be picky) 2-D sprites as they get closer, so that they don't look like the Amazing Lego Man. Although Duke's enemies do get somewhat fuzzy in close-up, the effect is still much better used than in Hexen. After Goldeneye's 3-D villains, though, it's hard to avoid the feeling that this is all a little old hat.

• 9.29: Shoot out a fan and drop to the road, where an alien geek is waiting on the roof of a crashed car. The default controls for Duke are similar to Turok, where the C buttons control movement and the analogue stick is used to turn and look up and down. After getting used to Goldeneye's analogue movement, it takes a while to get to grips with this, but Turok veterans should have no problems. The alien is quickly blown away with the default weapon, Duke's pistol, and a quick check behind the car reveals a medikit. Woo-hoo!

• 9.30: The first of Nintendo's bits of censorship appears – the cinema marquee on the street corner no longer has anything even vaguely dubious on it. Hmm. Anyway, onwards and upwards.

• 9.33: The first extra weapon, the shotgun, is discovered in a room behind a counter that used to be lined with booze, and is now lined with, er, ice cream. The first of the harder enemies, a pig cop, also appears. Briefly. A couple of shotgun blasts later and all that's left is a pile of blurry guts. The gore is still in there, but since it was ridiculously over the top to begin with it seems pretty much unchanged. As Doom 64 was much gorier anyway, this doesn't come as a surprise.

• 9.36: The soft porn movie on show in the cinema has been replaced by a nuclear explosion. Not that blasting the screen with the newly-found rocket launcher in order to reach a secret passage leaves much to view...

• 9.44: The first level is completed when Duke smashes the destruct button at the end. So, how do things look so far?

• 9.45: Onto the next level. As mentioned last issue, the porn bookshop is now a gun shop, which is the first of the major changes, but the layout is the same as on the PC. However, bigger things are afoot – it's quite a surprise to discover a Duke Burger franchise where the old bar used to stand, and the TV showing OJ's low-speed chase in his Ford Bronco has gone as well. It's good to see that although the change was obviously forced on the programmers by Nintendo (apparently bloody violence is fine, but alcoholic drinks are now a no-no), they took the time to create a new area that fits in with the style of the game instead of just slapping new graphics onto the same walls. Duke can now commit carnage among the deep-fat fryers and answer any queries about milkshakes with a hail of automatic weapons fire!

• 9.47: Blown away by a pig cop. Start the level again, and discover that there's already a saved game on my memory card from the last time we had the Duke demo in the office. Doh!

• 9.58: The other big change is the removal of the nightclub from the level. Although the layout is more or less identical, there are certainly no more strippers jiggling about. Chah!

• 10.03: Another change crops up on the third level, where the PC game used to have a chapel. Alcohol and religious references are now on Nintendo's D-list. No wonder Square went to the PlayStation! However, the replacement shows that the programmers have a sense of humour – at the end of a row of cells is a glass-walled enclosure, containing a well-known fictional serial killer with a taste for fava beans and nice chianti!

• 10.16: A tunnel hidden behind a poster leads to a submarine and the end of the level. I just thought I'd mention it to save people the hours of frustration I had the first time I played the game on a PC...

• 10.18: Killed by a new enemy, an octobrain. Bugger!

The saves in Duke Nukem are a little annoying, as they only let you save at the end of a level. If you're killed just inches from the destruct button, then it's tough luck – you've got to do the whole thing again. You do get a lot of different saves, though, so you can return to any level you feel like – and it's better than Hexen, which used practically a whole Controller Pak for just one save...

• 10.29: Start of a new level, ‘Toxic Dump’. Lovely. I'm not that familiar with this level, so I die.

• 10.36: Die again.

• 10.41: And again.

• 10.47: Aaaargh! Duke Nukem 64 isn't all just non-stop destruction (although that's a fair bit of it) – there are plenty of puzzles to solve, and this level is where they start. Most puzzles involve switch-flipping, but some – like one on this level – require some lateral thinking. If you don't have a jetpack, some rooms on Toxic Dump appear to be inaccessible. The clues are right there in front of you, though – barrels of toxic waste (and the corpses of your enemies, if they happen to land in the right place) are shunted around part of the level by a series of conveyor belts and mechanical grabbers. Just stand in the right place, and let the grabber do all the work for you!

• 11.02: There's a semi-naked woman trapped in a pod of alien slime. On the PC, you ‘released’ her by putting her out of her misery. Nintendo owners have to be much more humanitarian – a quick tap of the B button will save that babe!

• 11.16: Some levels require Duke to spend as much time underwater and in the air as on the ground. This is one of them, and Duke's air supply and jetpack fuel are both in short supply!

• 11.43: Where the bloody hell am I supposed to go now? Everything is dead, every switch has been thrown, and if I go through those big cogs I'll be crushed, if my experiences on the last level are anything to go by.

• 12.02: Still stuck.

• 12.11: Ah hah hah! Now that's fiendish! You still have to go through the cogs, it's just a matter of being observant... Since Duke Nukem 64 is more or less identical to its PC ancestor, it also retains the same playability. Obstacles might hold you up for a while, but any frustration they cause is usually your own fault for not spotting the way past to begin with. For example, there is one section where you have to navigate a dark passage. A very dark passage. Since you can't actually see anything and keep bumping into walls until you eventually muddle back to where you started, this can get very annoying... until with a mighty slap of the forehead, you suddenly remember that pair of night vision goggles you picked up ages ago which have been sitting around in your pocket ever since! A sign of good basic game design is when the only thing holding you up is your own lack of ability rather than the programmers being capricious and unfair, and Duke Nukem 64, while occasionally rubbing your nose in it on particularly tough sections, never actually stoops to cheating.

• 12.42: Another new level, ‘Launch Facility’. Giant rockets to blow up and loads more aliens to kill. Excellent! Nothing can stop the bloodlust now!

• 1.00: Break for lunch.

• 1.16: Tuck into a Blimpie.

• 1.37: Back to the game in progress.

• 1.56: Next level, please!

• 2.06: This level, ‘Abyss’, is one of the tougher early stages, as it requires a lot of going back and forth and with no map (a quite horrific omission – if there is a map in the game, we couldn't find any way to access it) it's easy to get lost. However, it also shows off the ‘Build’ engine used to create Duke's landscapes – large parts of this level change even as you watch, with a huge fault line giving way and sending vast areas plunging downwards into boiling lava. It makes Doom and Hexen's moving platforms and shifting floors seem rather feeble. A lot of jumps from ledge to ledge are needed, but Duke is fairly forgiving with its collision detection.

• 2.47: After repeated deaths, Duke finally makes his way to the end of the level. Next up, the first boss!

• 2.48: Duke checks out, permanently.

• 2.49: Another grisly demise for Mr Nukem.

• 2.50: No flowers, by request.

• 2.51–3.16: You get the idea...

• 3.17: Finally! The boss is toast. Although one of the later bosses is created from polygons a la GoldenEye 007 or Quake, this chap is an old-fashioned sprite. The explosion effects as you let fly with everything in your arsenal are very impressive, though.

• 3.18: Pity the between-stages cutscene is just a static shot with text overlaid on it. After such a draining battle, it would have been nice to have had something a bit more impressive!

• 3.19: The aliens are shipping Earth's women back to their home planet for their own nefarious purposes, and Duke heads back into space in pursuit. The spaceport, the first level of ‘Lunar Apocalypse’, sees the arrival of several new enemies, including the minigun-wielding Enforcers (larger, stronger versions of the regular geeks), nasty facehugger-style protoplasmic blobs and robotic gunpods that roar down at you kamikaze-fashion before exploding.

• 3.42: Another new level, where things start getting very ‘H R Gigeresque’ and the scantily-clad women quotient hits a new high, but time is getting short. Time to try out the Dukematch.

• 3.45: People are gathered together for some killing. Dukematch offers similar options to Goldeneye – a timed battle where the winner is the Duke with the most kills when the clock stops, or a first-to-whatever slugfest. Although the multi-player game struggles manfully (well, you'd expect it to!), we've been spoiled by Goldeneye – the inevitable reduction in detail and resolution of the split screens makes things rather blurry, and things jerk occasionally when the action heats up. However, the basic playability of Duke Nukem's PC game is still there, thankfully, and the weirder range of weapons adds some twists you don't find in Goldeneye. Bond could never shrink his opponents and step on them in Mars Attacks! fashion, or pump them up until they explode! Because the Dukematch arenas are set in the normal one-player levels, it's also a handy way to get advance warning of what you can expect to find later on in the game.

• 4.22: The last post is only a few minutes away from sounding, so Duke Nukem 64 is reluctantly removed from the N64, dropped into a jiffy bag and sent back to GT. So long, fella, it was nice knowing you.

THE FINAL VERDICT

If Duke Nukem 64 had been an original game for the N64, it would have been all but impossible to give it a fair review in just one day. However, since it's practically identical to the familiar PC game, I'm pleased to report that Duke on the Nintendo is every bit as good as anywhere else. It's still an addictive cocktail of puzzles, skill and ceaseless carnage!

The lack of a map is a major pain (and if anyone writes in to tell us that ‘It says in the manual that you've got to...’ the letter goes straight in the bin, because we didn't have any instructions!), and the Nintendo-mandated cuts have taken out some of the more amusingly puerile touches. None of this detracts from the definitive action game for hardcore gun fetishists – it's second only to Goldeneye in the first-person adventure stakes, and a close second at that!

It has blood, guts, big guns and strippers. Or maybe not. The N64 incarnation of Duke Nukem 3D-although it will surely be the best-looking of the console ports--will lack some of the PC blockbuster's more R-rated elements. Namely, the game's infamous stripper bystanders will wear T-shirts instead of their usual G-storm bikinis. But Nintendo has made up for its tinkering by upping the game's violence level and adding a few. N64-specific missions (there are more than 30 levels, and yes. they're still set in strip clubs and other seedy locales).

The N64 will also offer the most trouble-free multiplayer mode, arguably the game's coolest feature. Instead of fiddling with modem add-ons or link cables, players will only have to plug in four controllers to engage in some deathmatch mayhem.

The gravel-larynxed hero of the PC sticks his Docs onto the N64, with creditable effect. Although Duke Nukem 64 looks rougher around the edges than Goldeneye, it boasts more levels and a refreshingly lax attitude to collateral damage. Despite it being an 18 certificate, Nintendo have nevertheless insisted on cuts (no more booze or nekkid babes), but it's still entertaining.

Rattling good fun with the quip-spewing antihero. Straightforward Doom-style gameplay, done with imagination and humour.

A commendably violent and vastly enjoyable conversion. Gorgeous new explosions and a brilliant multiplayer game.

Although the information on Duke is sketchier than Newt Gingrich's bank accounts, there's one important tact--Duke N64 will feature levels specifically designed for the Nintendo 64 that are not available in any other version of Duke (not even the PlayStation and Saturn versions).

There will also be a four-player split-screen deathmatch for those gamers who get their kicks from inflicting great bodily harm on other individuals...which means all Duke fans! You can also battle it out in a two-player mode.

Otherwise, the song remains the same: Duke is stuck in post-apocalyptic Los Angeles, battling mutant guards and assorted miscreants in movie theaters, rest rooms, and more. How will Duke N64 get past the sticky Mature rating of its PC counterpart? Apparently, the bikini-clad dancers will now be wearing T-shirts, and you won't be able to shoot them. Otherwise, the gore factor should be pretty high.

Hail to the king, baby! Duke Nukem hauls his wisecracking, butt-kicking exploits to the Nintendo 64, complete with new levels, extra weapons, and a four-player DukeMatch to the death!

Terror Terrain

Twenty-nine of Duke 64's levels are from Duke Nukem 3D and its Plutonium Pack add-on. So PC veterans won't be bored, many of the missions have been redesigned or altered. The remaining three levels are all new, including a pirate level, a silo, and a haunted castle ("Scooby Duke, Where Are You!?"). Other goodies include new weapons like dual machine guns and heatseeking missiles, Rumble Pak support, and computer-controlled DukeBots in death matches. In the alpha version we played, the controls were customizable but confusing, so hopefully GT will simplify them before release.

Naughty Bits

Fans of the violent and sexist PC game will find some of the game's more infamous elements have been toned down for the console release. Captured women no longer moan "Kill me..." because, well, you can't-- but you can get points for safely teleporting them out of harm's way. Power-boosting steroids are now called "Vitamin X," too. But fear not, DN purists--there are still plenty of grisly elements, plus Duke's familiar mutterings (including new phrases like "Aw...does it hurt?" and "I'm gonna get you, suckas!"). Some things never change.