Duke Nukem Advance

"The Best First Person Shooter on the GBA"

Duke Nukem Advance very simply put is the best FPS on the GBA!

GAMEPLAY (9/10)
DNA (duke nukem advance) is a game that needs lots of concentration, especially on the harder difficulties. You can play on Piece of Cake, Let's Rock, Come get some or Damn I'm good. These are basically just Easy, Medium, Hard and Very Hard. On Easy and Medium, the game is pretty much more about having fun fragging your way to completeing various missions, whereas the Hard and Very Hard difficulties require you to really think about what you do, and not just to run around the game clocking up kills.
The bosses are pretty hard, but with practice very fun to fight.
The controls are very well laid out. There are 4 control setups to pick from, with the default control setting being the following: (A = Jump) (B = Fire) (L = Strafe Left) (R = Strafe Right) (SELECT = Hold to pick weapon with L and R) (START = Pause/Map) (HOLD L and R = Manual Aim). These controls are very good for a portable FPS, except for changing weapons and manual aiming call for you to let go of all other buttons to pull it off. But after about 10 minutes of practice you'll not hear yourself complaining anymore. You'll just go very quiet as you venture deeper into all 4 worlds. 9each with lots of levels and missions).

STORY (9/10)
This is one of the very reasons that DNA is the best FPS on portable. All the other games in it's class like Doom 1 and 2, Backtrack, Ecks vs Sever, Dark Arena and Wolfenstien 3D, don't really have a good story mode like DNA. Basically without spoliing the game for you, Duke starts off in Area 51 when all of a sudden an experiment gone wrong means that aliens have infiltrated the base and (of course) only the Duke can save the day. There are 4 massive levels to go through, each with many, many stages and missions. At the beginning and end there are also nice comic book style intros and outros. And even after you defeat the last boss your adventure is not over...

AUDIO/VIDEO (9/10)
Well, I've said it before and I'll say it again. DNA has the best 3D graphis to offer on the GBA. The only game to come close to this is Nightfire, and that is still not as good as this. The graphics are very smooth, and altogether it is pulled off very well.
The sound is very well thought out. In-game has no music, just SFX, to add to the suspence, like Resident Evil. But the title screen and pause screens have some very good aggressive duke numken syle music, to get you in the mood.

REPLAYABILITY (8/10)
Well, the game is interesting enough to make you want to play through all 4 difficulty modes, but seen as how by the time you're on your 3rd time through, you'll probably be breezing through it, the only thing left to do is the multiplayer. The multiplayer is very good and don't foget if it's FPSs your after on GBA Multiplayer, this is the one for you
So put simply, this game'll last you a lot longer if your mate has the game too.

TO RENT OR TO BUY?
Well, if you're the sort of person who just has to go out and rent a game before he buys it, my advice is that you're wasting your money. If you like FPS then you can't possibly hate DNA, so if you rent it, it must be because you don't really like FPS, and in that case, you'll not like the game and will have wasted your money.
So to conclude, if you're after a FPS for your GBA/SP, go get yourself a copy of DNA!!!

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OVERALL (9/10)
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Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 04/23/03, Updated 04/23/03