Duke Nukem: Planet of the Babes Preview

If it seems like ages since Duke blasted his way around a virtual world on Sony's PlayStation, a reprieve is coming. Duke is returning to everyone's favorite gray gaming box next month. Hard at work for several months but quieter about it than a late spring snowfall, n-Space is finally putting the finishing touches on its Planet of the Babes title. The game is set in Earth's far future, and a hideous race of alien scum has decided that human women would be perfect for a hybridization program. (Fans of Duke Nukem 3D will doubtless remember finding cyberbabes mired in gooey pods that spawned further aliens). Naturally, the men of planet Earth aren't too willing to give up their girlfriends (mothers-in-law, maybe), so a huge war ensues. But the aliens win and mankind is vanquished. A few surviving renegade women escape and form the UBR: the Unified Babe Resistance. Drawing inspiration from a few James Cameron movies that are collecting dust on the shelves of the local Blockbuster, the chicks of the UBR go back in time to enlist their only hope: Duke Nukem. Arriving in the future, Duke draws his gun and gets to work.

Planet of the Babes takes Duke back to his rampaging roots; though A Time to Kill performed well, many gamers didn't appreciate the crossbreed of Duke with Lara Croft and pined for a return to a genre where sniping and killing took precedent over running and jumping. n-Space has packed a whopping 24 levels onto their disc, including 14 single-player levels, four challenging training areas, and six multiplayer levels. Not surprisingly, the developers have included Infrared goggles, a jetpack, a teleporter, a gas mask, and Duke's high-tech shades operating system. But where would Duke be without scores of weapons to vaporize alien scum? He's not Jackie Chan, after all. Accordingly, n-Space has given Duke a blaster, a flamer, a Rocket Powered Grenade launcher, and a regular grenade launcher, plus a new official weapon - the Golden Desert Eagle. Each weapon also includes an auto-aiming option for gamers who are easily distracted by the gratuitous women. New enemies include mutant gorillas, chimpanzees and orangutans, hunter-killer babes, and hoglodytes, plus perennial favorites such as pig cops and octabrains. The action in this version will revolve around mission-based points and 25 real-time cinematics, including Duke "bloopers," the first of their kind. n-Space has promised improved controls, simplified interaction with the new environment, and three different ways of viewing the action in the multiplayer split-screen mode.