Let all cannons loose when aliens invade the earth – save the babes, waste the aliens.
Duke Nukem 3D Atomic Edition is what Duke Nukem 3D becomes when you install the official expansion pack called "Plutonium pak". It adds eleven new levels with some interesting locations, a few new monsters and a new weapon. The gameplay is not changed but instead keeps on building on the winning formula that the original set so well.
If you played Duke Nukem 3D, you will see that Atomic Edition adds an entirely new episode to the original story. Regardless if you played the original or not, you can start playing the new episode right away – however if you want to experience the story chronologically you might want to play the episodes in order.
Duke Nukem 3D is a truly action-packed first-person shoot 'em up. The gameplay is straightforward – you search for keys, and kill everything that comes in your way with what ever weapon you happen to find. The only type of puzzle this game has is basically locked doors. But where Duke Nukem 3D really stands out is the variation in the environments that the levels take place in – you will play in both huge cities (Los Angeles), space stations, canyons and cave systems, underground facilities, a huge shopping mall etc. There is a lot of cool level design to explore here (especially the flooded city in episode three comes to mind!), and killing monsters is always entertaining!
The monsters come in various shapes and sizes. The most common monsters are the "assault troopers". These are aliens armed with laser rifles and jetpacks. They will roam the airspace and shoot you at sight, and their grunting noises can really make your heart race!
Other common monsters are the Pig cops, which are mutated Earth police forces. They are extremely aggressive and never hesitate to use their shotguns to pump you full with lead.
All in all there are about eleven different types of monsters you will encounter – each use their own weapons against you. On top of that there are also the bosses and middle bosses.
Luckily Duke has a wide know-how when it comes to using different weapons. There are ten weapons you can find and use in this game. The ones that stand out are the shrinker, the microwave expander and the freezer. The shrinker will shrink its target into very very small size which you then can trample and instantly kill. The expander works in the opposite way – it will expand your target until the point that it bursts, causing quite a mess! The freezer is, I assume the opposite of a flame thrower. It shoots frost crystals that can bounce off of walls and when those hit a target it will freeze into a stiff statue of frozen meat. You can then approach it and give it a well placed kick making it scatter into a thousand pieces.
The more standard weapons are the pistol, the shotgun, the ripper (also known as the chain-gun) and the rocket propelled grenades. As you can tell, there are some formidable weapons to choose from. Apart from weapons there are some items such as jetpacks, portable medkit, armor, night vision goggles, scuba gear etc. that you will use throughout the game.
With the Atomic Edition installed you have thirty nine levels to explore, and there are four difficulty levels to play. What's more, you can play co-op with up to eight players, and Duke matches (deathmatches) too. To play these on TCP/IP you'd use some of the third party add-ons that can be downloaded from the Internet. Playing this game on the hardest difficulty level in co-op mode is an instant hit – monsters keep spawning, so you'll never really out-gun the aliens even if you have gathered a bunch to play with!
To play the singleplayer campaign is very entertaining and can be quite a challenge. To survive all the levels and bosses will take a few days of active playing the first time through, which is a feat in itself. The game also offers you the tools to build your own levels which opens up a huge community of level designers, which is a very cool and fun aspect of the game. It's easy to learn how to build levels and if you get into it, you could easily spend hundreds of hours building levels, or even your own campaigns and then play them in co-op! This really gives Duke Nukem 3D a close-to-infinite replay value.
The graphics are outdated by todays standards as the engine this game uses does not support full 3D, or even 3D lights. You can't play on greater resolutions than 800*600. The textures are low resolution stuff, but the atmosphere that this game delivers is timeless to say the least. And seeing a 200 kilos monster explode into tiny bits after being hit with a RPG rocket will always look awesome.
Speaking of atmosphere – the sound really brings you very close to the game by very simple means. The background music is moody, dark, and even unsettling. To hear the monsters moan, groan and growl will keep you at the edge of your seat at all times. Not only is Duke armed with weapons, but he also has an arsenal of killer one-liners never to forget like "It's time to kick ass and chew bubblegum – and I'm all out of gum". Even after hearing these lines a hundred times they'll still make you smile.
Duke Nukem 3D with the Plutonium Pak installed is a timeless classic in many ways. It's extremely fun to play and has many cool and unforgettable moments. The Duke Nukem universe is very epic – not only is there a huge single player campaign to play through, but also a level editor to play with and a host of user generated levels that you can download from various sites.
The concept is easy and yet so brilliant – this is mindless action at its best!