I know I am going to get flamed for my following statement. Duke Nukem is
the Best 3D game to come out. While it is a Doom clone, it is the first
game that improves on all of Dooms flaws and the flaws of most other 3D
games. DN3D may not stay top dog for long with Quake and Shadows around the
corner but every dog has its day.---10 things I liked about DN3D---->>
1. SVGA. and smooth SVGA at that. My system: 486dx4 120 with 16 megs of
ram, vlb video, win 95. I was a bit worried since Tekwars was horribly slow
in SVGA that DN3D would be too. But not so. At 640x480 its smooth as silk.
In fact its probably smoother than Hexen which is only vga.
2. The world is close to real. Just about every room, building and hall is
believable. One thing that I hate about most 3D games and Doom & ROTT
especially is the "ratt in a maze" felling. In other games walls and
platforms have no logic. However everything is also interesting. Take
Operation Body Count, yes the levels were logical too but how much variety
does the standard office have??? None.
3. Furniture - There are bars, beds, pool tables, arcade machines, toilets,
and many other things that really exist. Plus they aren't just one angle
cut outs either.
4. The humor. I almost though I was playing a Lucus Arts game from all the
in jokes.
5. The theme. I can't pin point what I like about it but I was rather sick
of the seriousness other games had.
6. You can adjust any and all keys. Unlike games like descent which reserve
some for no reason.
7. ok, I'm man enough to admit it. I enjoy the half naked women that appear.
8. Puzzles. While nothing hard, they do break the constant kill - kill,
hunt for key of the game
9. Angled shoots. I hate having a hand glued to my chest.
10. Works under Win 95 with no problem.
---10 things I didn't like about DN3D-->
1. The difficulty from level one to level two jumps to far. Even on the
easiest setting, level two is a bear to get through.
2. 800x600 svga is only letter boxed. Doesn't add more detail.
3. Low detail looks horrible and is unplayable. Not that I care but I have
a friend beating his head over low detail 320x200 on his 486 33. Its smooth
but the blockness is too much.
4. Supports only Vesa 2.0. I have to use that stupid Univbe driver to get
SVGA modes and that requires me to exit Win 95 first.
5. The police pigs kill you to quickly. Sometimes they sneak up on you and
if you have less than 50% health, your history.6. No autodetect audio cards.
7. The voice actor for Duke sounds like he garggled razor blades and some
of the things he says aren't clear
8. To be honest, the game needs more shot gun ammo. =)
9. Too, too, too many Doom refs.10. To many keys.
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In case you haven't heard, 3D realms/Apogge just released the beta of
Duke Nuke 3D from Decemeber 1994. Go to www.3drealms.com to downloadit.
First the review, ignoring the bugs, Duke 3D 2 years ago was still
just another Doom clone. In fact, the levels remind me more of Quake
meets ROTT than anything else. Nothing really cool. While it would
have had its day in the sun, it wouldn't recieved the claim that the
final version did. Basically, 3Drealms did the right thing for
delaying it as long as it did.Now for the comments.The good:
The first thing that amazed me was how well it DID run. While I was
downloading, I expected something on the level of BC3kAD buggy.
However it didn't crash once. Things didn't work right (like the
inventory and some switches) and a few times the keys stopped
responding but at no point was I provided with RDA. (rapid dos access)
In fact, on one of my old computers (486 dx 66 with an odd sound card)
the sound works fine in the beta but has never worked with the
released Duke3d. I must say that I would have been ticked off if a
game this buggy was released but it isn't that bad.
The engine was another surprise. Once again, while downloading I
thought I was going to see something close to ROTT but amazingly
enought, most of the game features were there. The moving colord
lights, the rooms over rooms, svga, water, etcThe bad:
The only bad thing is the cool things that didn't make it to the final
game. The character design, with a few exceptions, is surperior to the
released game. Cool robots, troopers, and punks populate the beta's
world. No goofy looking cats or pigs. The octopuse even looked better.
Also they had a cool laser sighting system that didn't make it into
the final game.
Also the game isn't truely playable, but what do you expect for free?The ugly:
The textures were horrorable. Texures are in low res and badly
colored.The level designs are pretty bad too but there are a lot ofthem.