It is the near future of 1998. Duke Nukem is doing an interview about your new autobiography Why I'm So Great. The evil humanoid space-suit wearing alien species the Rigelatins plan to enslave Earth, and they kidnap him. Their leader is no Dr. Proton – with him gone, we're want for a villain with distinct face, personality and continuous presence. They're going to use his brain to plot the attack for their armies. It'll hurt. They'd kill him, but their religion specifically prohibits preventing pain. Look, he does know a lot, OK? He's super-pumped *all* of his muscles. He breaks free to save the world, again. You are thus no longer in the decimated cities, rather, you're soaring the sky - from one type of cool sci-fi to another. I base this on the PC version, not Game Boy Color version, that I understand is completely different from this and that I have not tried. I am going to be comparing this to the original throughout.
This remains colorful and seriously addictive. There's always a card that you need to collect to access past the force fields and/or a key that must be obtained to get past locked doors. A cloaking device makes him temporarily invincible and disables the super force fields. Nope, dunno why a cloaking field would do that. You can save after any area, with F2 and then Enter. You can even give name them! There are 8 slots. It heals you back to full at the end of one. Why change how to do it? A Help feature. This adds Restart Beacons, instead of going back to the start. Can't store to them, they're only for on this playthrough. And it may keep how much life you have, and go back to that when you die! So don't suicide to get full if you didn't have it! This is looser, more fun and less stiff. There are simple jumping puzzles, climbing ladders, operating elevators(hold down for how far you want to go), using teleporters, hovering over blowing fans and climbing hand-over-hand across pipes or girders that allow for creative level design, which they take great advantage of. You'll need to do some memorization - you can often always go anywhere, points of no return are banned. This doesn't mean that you're in mazes... well, not all the time. They increase in challenge gradually and it's all about timing, speed, reflexes and eye-to-hand-coordination. This has 3 difficulty settings, and is challenging on easiest, which is what I beat it on, in 6 hours. You can cheat, but it'll set your points to zero... it says, I didn't do so. There is no fall damage unless you land in something that hurts you. You're never stunned. There is some insta-death, don't touch it if it looks dangerous. Sometimes this is the "ground", so careful if you can't see where you'll land.
This hardly ever cheaply throws things at you to make you do things over, instead relying on your skill, and your ability to roll with sudden occurrences. Say, is something falling out of the sky? Has it recently? No to both? Then it for sure will soon. Unless your location is inside. What will it be? Wait and see, and be ready for it! Of course, a lot of things, the first time you see 'em, you're not sure whether to touch and/or use, kill and/or avoid, or something you'll just pass through. Rarely do a lot of these show up at once, they're introduced over time. You open boxes for their contents. Note that the red ones may have dynamite! Hey, you get about half a second to get away, and their reach is relatively short! And they don't only damage you... or even things you're there for. They go boom outwards, meaning that their creamy nougat center is safe. They do get to be ridiculously common, worse as it goes on. It's really the only harmful element in this where they go to the well too many times. There are irritating white flashes from especially big explosions, those are too common. Some may contain the letters of your name, which don't only serve to teaching basic spelling: it will give you 10.000 points, which... oh well it is better than nothing. Near the very end, this does get obnoxious. Not everything in your way can be killed or the like, some of these things, you can merely avoid. Occasionally you'll get to use a jet-powered flying board, like that of Jazz Jackrabbit but way more badass! You fly it at your own pace including incredibly fast, any direction, and it has an unlimited swift, destructive raygun. You can even leave it temporarily, for, say, climbing.
You can now pick up weapons along the way. There are four types of such: His regular default gun which is the only to not have limited ammo, the flamethrower (which can go through walls and launch him in the air), the laser (which can go through anything, whether you want it to or not, and doesn't kill just anyone with a single shot) and the powerful rocket launcher(with incredibly small blast radius. What it fires are red, white and blue. How do they blow stuff up? America). He can also get a rapid fire powerup, for any of aforementioned. Look/shoot upwards, down if hanging by hands crouch then fire. The controls are smooth, responsive, and them changing from the situation is intuitive: you never fail to press the right thing. SFX are better. Before, there being no music gets to be deafeningly silent. In this, you've got midi: quite good, catchy. If you buy this on GOG.com, which I did and you should, you can listen to it separately, and it also comes with a hint sheet and the manual.
There is a lot of mild violence in this. I recommend this to any fan of run and gun platform games, especially from this era. 8/10
This remains colorful and seriously addictive. There's always a card that you need to collect to access past the force fields and/or a key that must be obtained to get past locked doors. A cloaking device makes him temporarily invincible and disables the super force fields. Nope, dunno why a cloaking field would do that. You can save after any area, with F2 and then Enter. You can even give name them! There are 8 slots. It heals you back to full at the end of one. Why change how to do it? A Help feature. This adds Restart Beacons, instead of going back to the start. Can't store to them, they're only for on this playthrough. And it may keep how much life you have, and go back to that when you die! So don't suicide to get full if you didn't have it! This is looser, more fun and less stiff. There are simple jumping puzzles, climbing ladders, operating elevators(hold down for how far you want to go), using teleporters, hovering over blowing fans and climbing hand-over-hand across pipes or girders that allow for creative level design, which they take great advantage of. You'll need to do some memorization - you can often always go anywhere, points of no return are banned. This doesn't mean that you're in mazes... well, not all the time. They increase in challenge gradually and it's all about timing, speed, reflexes and eye-to-hand-coordination. This has 3 difficulty settings, and is challenging on easiest, which is what I beat it on, in 6 hours. You can cheat, but it'll set your points to zero... it says, I didn't do so. There is no fall damage unless you land in something that hurts you. You're never stunned. There is some insta-death, don't touch it if it looks dangerous. Sometimes this is the "ground", so careful if you can't see where you'll land.
This hardly ever cheaply throws things at you to make you do things over, instead relying on your skill, and your ability to roll with sudden occurrences. Say, is something falling out of the sky? Has it recently? No to both? Then it for sure will soon. Unless your location is inside. What will it be? Wait and see, and be ready for it! Of course, a lot of things, the first time you see 'em, you're not sure whether to touch and/or use, kill and/or avoid, or something you'll just pass through. Rarely do a lot of these show up at once, they're introduced over time. You open boxes for their contents. Note that the red ones may have dynamite! Hey, you get about half a second to get away, and their reach is relatively short! And they don't only damage you... or even things you're there for. They go boom outwards, meaning that their creamy nougat center is safe. They do get to be ridiculously common, worse as it goes on. It's really the only harmful element in this where they go to the well too many times. There are irritating white flashes from especially big explosions, those are too common. Some may contain the letters of your name, which don't only serve to teaching basic spelling: it will give you 10.000 points, which... oh well it is better than nothing. Near the very end, this does get obnoxious. Not everything in your way can be killed or the like, some of these things, you can merely avoid. Occasionally you'll get to use a jet-powered flying board, like that of Jazz Jackrabbit but way more badass! You fly it at your own pace including incredibly fast, any direction, and it has an unlimited swift, destructive raygun. You can even leave it temporarily, for, say, climbing.
You can now pick up weapons along the way. There are four types of such: His regular default gun which is the only to not have limited ammo, the flamethrower (which can go through walls and launch him in the air), the laser (which can go through anything, whether you want it to or not, and doesn't kill just anyone with a single shot) and the powerful rocket launcher(with incredibly small blast radius. What it fires are red, white and blue. How do they blow stuff up? America). He can also get a rapid fire powerup, for any of aforementioned. Look/shoot upwards, down if hanging by hands crouch then fire. The controls are smooth, responsive, and them changing from the situation is intuitive: you never fail to press the right thing. SFX are better. Before, there being no music gets to be deafeningly silent. In this, you've got midi: quite good, catchy. If you buy this on GOG.com, which I did and you should, you can listen to it separately, and it also comes with a hint sheet and the manual.
There is a lot of mild violence in this. I recommend this to any fan of run and gun platform games, especially from this era. 8/10
