Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project

"A new Duke game to tide us over"

Duke Nukem Forever has been stuck in development limbo for a decade (as of 2007), and 3D Realms and the now defunct ARUSH games released Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project to tide us over until DNF arrives.

STORY:
Duke Nukem's favourite city, New York, has been overrun by mutant creatures under the control of his nemesis Mech Morphix and his radioactive sludge known as GLOPP. It's pure balderdash and nonsense, but it never gets in the way of the game itself.

Score: 5/10

GRAPHICS:
DN:MP feature some pretty nice 3D graphics with environments and models that have plenty of graphical detail. Duke and all of the enemies animate nicely, but the babes look a bit too blocky and chest-heavy, if you know what I mean. There's not much to be said, though. There are no frame-rate problems present, which is good.

Score: 7/10

SOUND:
There's the voice acting in the form of Duke-isms and a few music tracks for the different levels. The most prominent is the remixed version of the Duke Nukem theme. The sound effects are pretty bland. A few of the enemies do talk, such as the Pig Cops and Mech Morphix himself.

Score: 6/10

GAMEPLAY:
DN:MP is best described as a fixed-camera 3rd person action/adventure. It's not exactly a 2D-sidescroller, which is what some people have described it as, since it's not 2D at all, and 2D sidescrollers have not been done at some angles that this game's camera is a fixed at. A few times, the camera will pan to a different direction, etc. There are a ton of secrets to find and more than a fair share of jumping puzzles and keycard hunts, but the game mostly revolves around shooting the crap out of mutant creatures and rescuing babes.

Pretty much every level will have one buxom lady hidden somewhere with a bomb strapped to her, and it's up to Duke to find her and rescue her. Along the way will be a few sectioned-off areas protected by electric fields, a few hidden secrets and squads of mutants. There are a wide variety of mutants, ranging from Pig Cops (from Duke Nukem 3D) and mutant sewer rats to flying cameras armed with weapons and mechanized Fem-Bots. There are plenty of ways to dish out death to them, ranging from your kicking ability to shotguns, rocket launchers and a GLOPP ray gun that can de-mutate (is that a word?) enemies to their original form. However, de-mutated enemies will re-mutate (I don't think that's a word either) back when they come in contact with environmental GLOPP, which is quite common in many levels.

As mentioned above, there are plenty of jumping puzzles in this game. These range from jumping across window washers to jumping across crates floating in electrified water to just jumping a series of gaps. A few puzzles involve finding keycards and others involve using your Jetpack or having to climb across a length of pipe or some other structure.

The game is split into about 8 episodes, each of which contains 3 levels. A few levels are inspired, such as the oil rig and the subway train and one street level that's clearly a homage to Frogger, but the rest of them are pretty boring. Each of these episodes also feature Nuke symbols, which are secret symbols hidden around levels. Finding all 10 in each episode will grant you a little ammo capacity boost. At the end of each episode is a lengthy boss fight. Unforunately, most of these boss fights feature souped-up versions of regular enemies. The only interesting boss fights in the whole game are the very first and very last boss fights; the rest are pretty dull.

This game also features a different health system in the form of Ego. Each time you kill an enemy or pick up Ego boosts you'll gain Ego. Each time you get hit by an enemy, you lose Ego. Killing an enemy by kicking them to death gives you twice the Ego boost you would normally get. Get a really high amount of Ego grants you a double damage powerup, which you would normally have to find.

One thing I dislike is the game's saving ability. You can only quicksave once, and if you screw up and save you're screwed permanently - gotta restart the level.

There's no real incentive to beat the game more than once. Nothing really changes apart from the damage dealt by enemies and ammunition density. You do unlock extra stuff (such as a new T-Shirt and even a new weapon) by beating the game on harder difficulties and finding all the Nuke symbols, but it's not enough to make you want to replay the whole campaign. The game includes a level editor, but that's pretty standard these days.

Score: 7/10

OVERALL:
Pros:
+ Fusion of adventure/sidescrolling elements with bad-ass Duke
+ A few inspired levels
+ A simple but fun game
Cons:
- Incredibly repetitive
- Most of the levels are boring
- Most boss fights contain no hint of creativity
- No real incentive to replay the game

FINAL SCORE: 7/10

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 05/29/07