The visuals, like most of the package, are identical to what was released in '96. Multiplayer clips can also be saved, shared and viewed, but you obviously can't hop back in and start playing as you can with solo play. What's more, you can hop back in while viewing any of your clips and begin playing from that spot. In single-player, every time you die you can comb through the footage of your previous life (from the beginning of the level up until your death, no matter how long) and respawn from any point.Īt the end of each level a clip is prepared and saved to a list of 50 (oldest get deleted first), where you can then share it with your friends or download theirs. There is one final innovation in Duke Nukem 3D that wasn't available in the original: In a nod to those who might be frustrated by the difficulty of the enemies or who want to show off their skills to their friends, 3D Realms has included a replay editor for their creative talents. It didn't create a whole lot of strategic moments, but that doesn't mean that it wasn't fun either. Most of my time was spent sprinting in a zigzag pattern to try and avoid enemy fire, all the while keeping my head on a swivel to locate a target. Adversarial multiplayer is even more of a madhouse than co-op, but when you're gunning for human players that feels more natural. There's nothing stopping one Duke from running off and doing a speed run while everyone else takes their time playing through the level. But if you're with a bunch of twelve year olds, chances are everyone will just be running around doing their own thing, which is a bummer. If you're lucky enough to join up with a group of friends who can work together, then you'll likely have a great time. The co-op experience, like so many multiplayer games, is determined by who you're playing with. Up to eight players can link up in a decently well-designed lobby and either storm through the entire campaign together or duke it out (get it?) on any of the 39 maps that are in the game (3D Realms picked a smaller, "preferred" group for ranked matches). Sadly, split-screen has been omitted for whatever reason. But it's when you toss in the multiplayer feature set that the package really comes into its own.ĭuke on XBLA comes complete with both adversarial and co-op modes that run across Xbox Live or system link. You'll get all four episodes for your 800 Microsoft Points, which is not a bad deal in its own right. Item and weapon locations are the same, the secrets are the same and the enemies are even placed in the same spots (that goes for the captured earth girls as well). Duke is still battling through a futuristic Los Angeles (at least for the first episode) in an attempt to thwart the attempts of evil aliens who are trying to steal all of earth's women. The single-player campaign on Xbox 360 is exactly the same as you remember. Some might be annoyed by it, but I appreciated the nostalgia and the feeling of reward when I did complete a stage. It was up to the player to navigate their way through the level, no matter if that meant looking for a crack under a swimsuit calendar or noticing cracks in a destructible wall. The level design is very convoluted, and sometimes players might feel overly frustrated with their lack of progression, but that's simply the way games were back then. Or at least that's the way it seems on some of the levels in DN3D.Ĭlick here to watch the video review. It's from a time when developers were less concerned with ushering players through their game and instead created ways to stop them from progressing. For those who didn't play the original release, Duke Nukem 3D comes from a different time in gaming. Now, the game from 3D Realms is landing on Xbox Live Arcade, complete with new multiplayer features and that same great single-player campaign that everyone remembers so fondly. Still, Duke Nukem 3D was home to plenty of solid, innovative gameplay mechanics that include being the first FPS game to deliver a jetpack and the ability to swim. Now that sort of activity is commonplace in a world of videogames where you can have sex with prostitutes and then ruthlessly slaughter them.
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