Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating: 9.5 out of 10

Duke Nukem 3D: Megaton Edition is a first-person shooter game available for download from the PlayStation Store for the PS3 and PS Vita.Thegame is an enhanced version of the collection including the retro classic Duke Nukem 3D which was originally released on January 29th 1996. Subsequent add on packs having been brought to the PS3 and PS Vita by Abstraction Games and Devolver Digital with the game and add on packs originally developed by the legendary 3D Realms who have been developing, publishing, producing and licensing videogames as early as 1986 under their original company name Apogee Software with the first appearance of the character being in the side scrolling platformer Duke Nukem which was released on July 1st 1991 for the P.C.

The story revolves around Duke Nukem saving the Earth from an alien invasion only in comic fashion for them to invade again as soon as he attempts to get some rest as they blast a sizable tear through the hull of his cruiser causing him to eject and take the fight to the alien race in Los Angeles in an attempt to save the entire planet and the population of the human race for what Duke Nukem hopes to be the final battle.

Duke Nukem 3D: Megaton Edition is a compilation of Duke Nukem 3D content including the 4 officially released episodes from the Atomic Edition called L.A. Meltdown, Lunar Apocalypse, Shrapnel City and The Birth with The Birth having never been released on PS1, while also featuring 3 further episodes that released on P.C. which never made it to the PS1 in the form of Duke Caribbean: Life’s a Beach, Duke It Out in D.C. and Duke: Nuclear Winter which takes the adventure to a variety of new locations with the total amount of content over the 7 episodes comprising 70 levels including secret levels.

There are a vast range of weapons including Duke Nukem’s mighty foot which is perfect for when players have run out of ammo; a pistol is technically the weapon of Duke Nukem’s choice as it is the one that he starts out with; a shotgun which is perfect for close range attacks; a ripper is a rapid fire chaingun and an RPG (rocket propelled grenade) which is capable of causing a lot of damage from close or long range distances with a single shot. Pipe bombs are ideal to aim close to a group of enemies followed by remote detonation to kill as many as possible without even being within their field of vision to shoot back. The devastator is the most powerful weapon as it rapidly fires rockets, while tripbombs can be attached to any flat service which will explode if the laser beam it produces is ever tripped and can be used to provide a trap for enemies within darkly lit areas. A freezer shoots orbs of ice which temporarily freezes an enemy until they have thawed out, although for the period of time that an enemy is frozen it is no longer a threat and can be dealt with easily; a shrinker is alien weaponry purpose built to temporarily shrink an enemy to 2 inches in size in order for them to be stepped on like a bug or to access new areas and a microwave expander which uses the same weapon as the shrinker but with a different set of ammo as instead of shrinking enemies the microwave expander makes an enemy inflate outwards until they explode which also causes damage to anyone standing within a close vicinity.

There is also a range of gadgets including a portable medkit for emergencies when Duke Nukem is running low on health; a jetpack which allows exploration of areas that are of an increased elevation, while simultaneously providing an aerial advantage to the player and a disadvantage to enemies as it becomes harder for them to shoot accurately. He also has a pair of night vision goggles to see clearly in darkly lit areas; steroids to provide an immediate speed boost and to return shrunken players to their normal size; protective boots to protect the player from certain hazardous materials; holoduke projects a hologrammatic image of Duke Nukem, although it is best used in online competitive multiplayer to fool human opponents as the A.I. of enemies is of such a level in which they will immediately detect and attack the real Duke Nukem; scuba gear to provide a limited amount of air for underwater exploration and more besides.

The character design is excellent as Duke Nukem is the ultimate muscle bound world saving hero, while the enemies have a wide variation and complexity that players do not see in even some modern games such as the assault troopers being the most common enemy who are reliably armed with laser blasters and a jetpack to provide an aerial advantage while simultaneously making them all the more difficult to shoot. Assault captains have the same characteristics but lead the assault troopers into battle and can only be distinguished by their red armour. The range of enemies continues with pig cops who have mutated from L.A.P.D. officers as they still wear their uniforms and armour as well as being armed with shotguns and cunning tactics as they tend to drop to the ground on occasions as they shoot in order to reduce the chances of the player shooting them; assault enforcers are the space equivalent of pig cops and they are just as deadly with their ripper and venomous spit whilst resembling  an appearance closer to dinosaurs instead of pigs, although it does have a distraction that it has to take care of on occasion that proves to be its major flaw. The appropriately named octabrain is half brain, half octopus with menacing eyes and teeth that will attempt to surprise from the shadows on land and particularly underwater, while sharks are the only enemies that will attack Duke Nukem because they want to attack as predators despite not being part of the alien invasion, alongside a further range of enemies.

The environment design consists of many different settings throughout the game including the streets of Los Angeles; a cinema; apartments; sewers; a prison and a spaceport which includes amazing views of the Earth, Moon and Sun. Whilst players should be on the look out for the auto destruct level exit symbol they may find that they may want to keep on exploring as there are secret passages and on some levels there is an alternative auto destruct symbol that provides access to a secret level.

 

Levels tend to consist of keycard access panels in which players will have to find a certain colour of keycard in a particular location of the level and then match that up with the corresponding colour of keycard access panel in order to open the door. There are a variety of designs for switches consisting of a single switch throughout various areas of a level and combo switches are a set of three switches that require the appropriate combination to open the door or trigger a reaction elsewhere in the level such as an environmental change in which the height of water increases or decreases to allow access to a new area. Firing an RPG or detonating a pipe bomb next to cracked walls will always reveal a new path or a secret path and there are some explosive objects such as toxic barrels that may produce a new area. Grills can be shot off in order for to enter air ducts to find a new area or a quick passage from one explored area to another which can come in handy when looking to find a keycard access panel after having found the required keycard; standing on teleportation devices in order to access a new area and even accessing monitors to see different areas of a level that remains ahead.

There is an interesting replay feature called user clips which can be utilised when respawning as players can rewind to any specific period of time from within the duration that has been played on that particular level for in order to resume from a time when there was a greater preferred amount of ammo and health which is yet another great design choice as it provides a more user friendly and unique take on saving progress regularly. However, the user clips feature also extends further beyond respawning as they will be saved providing an opportunity for the player to view a replay through the duration of a level and actually resume playing from that specific point from any given moment throughout the duration of the user clip. Another amazing aspect of the user clips feature is the ability for players to share clips with the online world in order to allow players that have not unlocked a level yet to actually still be able to play it due to appropriate community interaction to help each player along in their game progression.

The statistics comprise of 3 separate areas including a set of statistics after each level has been completed. These list your level completion time, par level completion time, 3D Realms level completion time, the amount of enemies killed, the amount of enemies left, the amount of secrets found, the amount of secrets missed and the player’s metascore, while the level stats include if each of the levels have been completed in single player, co-operative multiplayer, how many secrets have been found and the metascore for the level. The trophy stats feature provides a description of the requirement for each trophy such as “Duke’s Mighty Foot” requiring players to step on 40 enemies after using the Shrinker on them, “Looks Like Cleanup on Aisle 4” requires to step in a pile of excrement or “Domph. Uugh. Where is it?” requiring players to find 70 secret areas. The multiple sets of statistics is a great design choice as it provides the player with such important information regarding the amount of secrets they are yet to find, the amount of enemies that have evaded the player, a simple reminder of which levels have been completed in single player or multiplayer, their best score for each level and how close they are towards a particular trophy.

The concept art gallery includes 22 drawings with every piece of concept art including captions telling the story of the thought process behind each drawing which are unlocked as the player completes any 22 levels and provides excellent fan service to everyone who has ever enjoyed the Duke Nukem series.

There is a varying degree of humour ranging from funny to adult with a reference on the iconic front cover of Duke Nukem 3D which sees the main character in a similar pose to Ash from Evil Dead, while there are such phrases as, “It’s time to kick ass and chew bubblegum…And I’m all outta bubblegum!”, “Come get some!”, “Let’s rock”, and “Where is it?” when unsuccessfully searching for a secret passage or room. There is even a Mission Impossible themed level with a cassette player that should be interacted with and will play a recording of a man saying, “This tape will self-destruct…in 1 second!” which it does so in spectacular fashion.

Duke Nukem 3D: Megaton Edition supports cross-buy and cross-save between the PS3 and Vita. Cross-buy presents a superb amount of value as it means that players will be purchasing the PS3 and Vita versions of the game with just a single purchase. The cross-save functionality allows players to sync the progression of the saved file from the Vita to the PS3 and vice versa.

The controls handle more along the lines of a modern first-person shooter as the Vita has dual analogue sticks and a touch screen, whereas the original PS1 controller only had the d-pad to provide movement for the character. The Vita control scheme consists of pressing R to fire; pressing L to kick; pressing X to jump; pressing square to use or interact with an object; pressing triangle to crouch; pressing O to use an inventory item; pressing down on the d-pad to run; pressing right or left on the d-pad to cycle through to the next or the previous inventory item respectively; pressing up on the d-pad to display the scoreboard; changing the direction of the left analogue stick to move; changing the direction of the right analogue stick to aim; pressing select to toggle map on or off; and pressing start to display the pause menu, while the Vita’s touch screen is utilised superbly as tapping on the right or left of the touch screen cycles through to the next or previous weapon selection respectively. The PS3 control scheme is not too different from the Vita control with only small changes such as L2 and R2 taking the place of the left and right of the touch screen and running being mapped to L3, while the DualShock 3 controller vibrates for the duration of when Duke Nukem uses his jetpack or when he is shot by an enemy or is killed. The Vita and PS3 control schemes are both fully customisable, while there are also the options for look sensitivity, inverting aim and swapping the analogue sticks in regards to moving and aiming which is collectively a great design choice as it allows the player to tailor each individual control input to their absolute preference.

Graphically, Megaton Edition provides carefully remastered and smoothed graphics to improve upon the original graphics, while retaining the charming retro style which unquestionably established Duke Nukem 3D alongside its gameplay as the cult classic hit it became.

The presentation of the game is solid with a great user interface across various menus such as the main menu, single player, multiplayer, online leaderboards, help and options menu, user clips menu and gameplay menus with support for navigation via the left analogue stick, directional pad and face buttons, although it does not include support for navigation via the right analogue stick and rear touch pad. The background of the menu screens consists of seamless gameplay footage from a variety of levels with a full compliment of audio from the levels that are showcased.

The voice-over cast stars Jon St. John as the voice of Duke Nukem in a performance that provides many fun one-liners. Jon St. John has also voiced the character in every Duke Nukem game since Duke Nukem 3D originally released in 1996 as well as various characters including Big the Cat, Chaos Gamma and E-123 Omega in many Sonic games and the lead character John Rochard in Rochard.. The sound effects include Duke Nukem firing his guns at enemies and enemies firing back, explosions, reloading weapons, grunts from alien pigs and screams from aliens that are killed as well as key card activations, pushing switches, opening doors, flowing water and collecting medikits, weapons and more besides, while the music includes the iconic Duke Nukem metal theme called Grabbag which was written by Lee Jackson.

However, the emphasis was not just placed on the main theme as there is also a rather large soundtrack beyond the theme which is progressively established with an original piece of music for each level throughout the entire game. The title theme went on to become so popular that it even inspired an entire album including 12 tracks titled Duke Nukem: Music To Score By which was released on August 24th 1999 via Red Ink Records. The soundtrack album included a cover of Grabbag by Megadeth and featured heavy metal songs from Coal Chamber, Corrosion of Conformity as well as rock music from Stabbing Westward and Zebrahead, alongside hip hop music from The Beatnuts and Xzibit. Duke Nukem: Music to Score By was a major breakthrough for videogame soundtracks as it also features 175MB worth of Duke Nukem themed promotional materials such as an interactive strategy guide, shareware, audio samples from Duke Nukem: Time to Kill on PS1, Duke Nukem: Zero Hour on Nintendo 64 and even audio from the unreleased original P.C. version of Duke Nukem Forever and much more besides, therefore appealing to both the gamer with interactive materials and the music lover with a strong soundtrack spanning 3 genres.

The trophy list includes 15 trophies with 13 bronze, 1 silver and 1 gold trophy. The majority of the trophy list can be earned by completing the 7 episodes on any difficulty level or via online co-operative multiplayer and the Alien Maggots are Gonna Pay bronze trophy for completing the Hollywood Holocaust level in under 3 minutes, alongside a total of 3 online multiplayer trophies including the Gonna Rip ‘Em A New One, See You in Hell and Hail to the King, Baby bronze trophies for getting 100, 250 and 500 total kills in ranked Dukematch online matches. It is estimated that depending upon skill and a good trophy guide to provide some helpful tips that it would take between 15 to 20 hours to 100% the trophy list.

There are four difficulty levels including piece of cake, let’s rock, come get some and damn I’m good with the major differences between each difficulty level being gradually more aware and active enemies with some of them using their jetpacks to gain an aerial advantage when looking for the character’s location, while they receive less damage for every shot fired at them, although they do inflict more damage for every shot they fire, therefore layers will have to be far more careful and more tactical when approaching any given enemy.

 

There is no split-screen competitive which is disappointing considering that the censored port of Duke Nukem 3D on Nintendo 64 contained 4 player split-screen competitive multiplayer. However, the online competitive multiplayer offers up a frantic deathmatch for 2 to 8 players between PS3 and Vita via cross-play multiplayer in both ranked match and player match versions with the player match being the warm up before going into battle to improve world ranking. The deathmatch is called a duke match and allows players to battle it out in a total of 70 arenas spanning 7 episodes worth of single player levels until a player has reached the set frag limit of 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 50 or unlimited kills in which it would be based upon the highest amount of kills within the 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 or 45 minutes time limit, although there is also an unlimited time limit for a set amount of kills with the ability of having monsters roaming around the levels during the match on any of the 4 difficulty levels or to not have any monsters.

There is also online co-operative multiplayer for 2 to 8 players spanning 7 episodes worth of single player levels across 65 levels with a friendly fire option to increase the amount of fun, although there are noticeably more enemies in comparison to the single player campaign which is an appropriate design choice as it pairs up the difficulty level by matching the amount of enemies to the amount of players playing the level co-operatively.

The online leaderboards are focused on friends rankings, my score rankings and overall rankings with each leaderboard containing each player’s rank; name (PSN ID); skill level; the amount of kills; the percentage of secrets found; how quickly the level was completed; and the overall score for every level in the single player leaderboards; the skill level and how quickly the level was completed for every level in the time trial leaderboards; and the amount of kills and deaths per player on an overall and weekly basis in the duke match leaderboards making for a total of 133 online leaderboards for the single player, time trial and duke match leaderboards even before including the 3 filters.

The replayability is certainly not just limited to retro nostalgia, although it is a big part of the release, while there are 4 episodes that never released on PS1, so if players have never played those episodes on P.C., then they are most likely yet to play the majority of the content included in Megaton Edition, alongside online competitive and co-operative multiplayer, competitive online leaderboards, unlockable concept art and more besides collectively bringing you back for more.

Overall, Duke Nukem 3D: Megaton Edition provides retro nostalgia in the form of the best version of Duke Nukem 3D on any PlayStation console to date with a mixture of episodes from the original release, additional episodes and brand new features to provide Duke Nukem fans with an exceptional amount of content including up to four episodes that may have never played before even if you have completed the original PS1 version, therefore, especially when players factor in the amount of content and all of the enhancements, this is an absolute must for all Duke Nukem fans.

Jason Bonnar

Analysis

• Title: Duke Nukem 3D: Megaton Edition
• Developer: Abstraction Games
• Publisher: Devolver Digital
• System: PS3/PS Vita
• Format: PSN Download
• Cross-Buy: Yes (PS3/PS Vita)
• Cross-Play: Yes (Cross-Play Multiplayer/Cross-Save)
• Players: 1 (Offline)/2-8 (Online Competitive and Co-operative Multiplayer)
• PS Vita Memory Card Space Required: 486MB
• PS3 Hard Drive Space Required: 751MB