Duke Nukem 3D

The Good
Duke Nukem 3D is the game I regard as Doom's spiritual descendant. It has all of Doom's good elements (atmosphere, design, and of course mindless fun) while adding something that was totally lacking from the original: style! At first glance it appears to be a rather unassuming FPS that is little more than a 3D rendition of the Duke Nukem platform games that preceded it, but as you step on dog crap and hear Duke say "shit happens," or walk into a topless joint filled with women who will happily strip for cash, you realise this game is something unusual.

Duke 3D became (in?)famous in part because of all the mature content it features. But that's not all it has going for it. Step away from the boobs and profanity for a second and you'll find one of the most fun and inventive shooters ever to come down the pike, and one that is still a blast to play today. Lots of games since have tried to recapture the Duke Nukem 3D spirit (i.e. Serious Sam) but none have ever made the splash the original did.

Game design is a pretty simple equation. It comes down to what a developer/publisher is most prepared to dedicate his time and effort to. At the same time id Software was making a technological wonder with generic gameplay, Quake, 3D Realms was making a game that emphasized content over everything else. And believe me, it paid off. Duke 3D is a blast from beginning to end. At no point does it become generic or annoying. This is partly due to great level design, and also how damned original the game feels. I don't mean "original" in that it turns every FPS game play convention upside down, but that it has millions of small touches that makes Duke 3D an almost unique experience.

Notice the pool table in the first level? You can roll balls around. See the Duff Beer Blimp in the background of the last boss fight? Try shooting it with a rocket. Lights can be turned on and off with switches, and can even be destroyed by gunfire. Toilet won't flush? Pipe-bomb the sucker. Small gimmicks and tricks, you might say. But the stuff I listed above is only the tip of the iceberg, the entire game is full of small personal touches that transform it from a generic shooter to an immersive, original experience that contains the first truly interactive environment found in a 3D video game. Just about everything in the game (toilets, mirrors, fences) can be interacted with in some way. This is part of what makes Duke 3D so special, it's one of the most detailed games around.

Obviously, that kind of stuff isn't enough to make a game on its own. But Duke 3D takes the rabid addictiveness of games like Doom and builds upon it with several new gameplay conventions that are still in use today. The game is non-linear, there are often quite a few ways to get to the exit (such as crawling through an air vent to avoid a tough group of enemies, or blowing a hole in a wall) and lots of different paths you can explore to find goodies and secrets. You also have an inventory, and unlike Heretic's it actually doesn't suck. You have a varied arsenal of weapons (including the classic pistol/shotgun/machinegun combo, as well as weirder stuff like a shrink-ray and freezer) that is perfectly balanced and well-rounded, even in the later stages of the game you'll still be falling back on your pistol occasionally. As you'd expect the enemies in Duke 3D are downright insane, I burst out laughing when I saw a pig cop riding a spin-deck.

Add to this a collection of great levels that actually make you want to play them again, a solid multiplayer mode that remained popular years after the game had become obsolete, and enough pop culture references to expand the trivia section threefold if someone went and documented them all, and you have one of the best old-school shooters around.

In short: this game gives weight to John Romero's famous statement "design is law." Contrary to what industry pundits think, we gamers aren't mindless sheep who play whatever game has the prettiest graphics. If a game has what it takes to rise above the pack, and combine new elements with well-grounded traditional ones, we reward it.

(This isn't related to the game itself as such, but I feel the need to commend Ken Silverman for designing the Build engine. It's incredible that a teenager who was just out of high school and was failing half his classes at university was able to produce such a dynamic, powerful and flexible piece of software with practically no outside help. Build also comes with what must be the easiest editor ever made for a 3D game. Finally you didn't have to be a theoretical mathematician or UNIX operator to design your own levels for an FPS. Ken Silverman became the god of virgin geeks everywhere for allowing them to plague the internet with their billions of crappy custom levels and mods. Oh well...)

The Bad
Most of the problems Duke 3D has some with the genre. If you disliked Doom and hate key-hunt puzzles don't expect Duke 3D to be much different. Duke 3D is simply a nice package of old-school FPS action with some extra huevos thrown in. It's got lots of original touches, but it isn't like it's trying to revolutionize the genre.

And of course there are a few small nits and nats (too much ammo, boss fights are boring, puzzles are dependent on trial and error) but let's not focus on what Duke 3D did wrong but on what it didn't do wrong. Face it, with a game like this a million things could have ruined it, and it's a testament to the designers' work that the game is as good as it is.

The Bottom Line
Some excellent games get released during the wrong time and thus are ignored (Grim Fandango won multiple awards but failed to attract gamers because of the FPS phenomenon), and other mediocre games sell quite substantially if there's a multimillion dollar hype campaign backing them...just look at some of the recent Star Wars games. But Duke 3D is neither over-rated nor under-rated. It deserves every gram of success it received. Duke 3D is a classic and one of the greatest FPS games ever released, no buts ifs or maybes allowed.