September 24, 2008 - When Duke Nukem 3D released in 1996, gaming had yet to be inundated with risqué title after risqué title. Back then, Duke was the only game in town that had mothers ripping cords out of walls at the sight of the game's titular character handing a "professional dancer" a wad of ones to flaunt her "assets" at the camera.

Now that sort of activity is commonplace in a world of videogames where you can have sex with prostitutes and then ruthlessly slaughter them. Still, Duke Nukem 3D was home to plenty of solid, innovative gameplay mechanics that include being the first FPS game to deliver a jetpack and the ability to swim. Now, the game from 3D Realms is landing on Xbox Live Arcade, complete with new multiplayer features and that same great single-player campaign that everyone remembers so fondly.

For those who didn't play the original release, Duke Nukem 3D comes from a different time in gaming. It's from a time when developers were less concerned with ushering players through their game and instead created ways to stop them from progressing. Or at least that's the way it seems on some of the levels in DN3D.


The level design is very convoluted, and sometimes players might feel overly frustrated with their lack of progression, but that's simply the way games were back then. It was up to the player to navigate their way through the level, no matter if that meant looking for a crack under a swimsuit calendar or noticing cracks in a destructible wall. Some might be annoyed by it, but I appreciated the nostalgia and the feeling of reward when I did complete a stage.

The single-player campaign on Xbox 360 is exactly the same as you remember. Duke is still battling through a futuristic Los Angeles (at least for the first episode) in an attempt to thwart the attempts of evil aliens who are trying to steal all of earth's women. Item and weapon locations are the same, the secrets are the same and the enemies are even placed in the same spots (that goes for the captured earth girls as well). You'll get all four episodes for your 800 Microsoft Points, which is not a bad deal in its own right. But it's when you toss in the multiplayer feature set that the package really comes into its own.


Duke on XBLA comes complete with both adversarial and co-op modes that run across Xbox Live or system link. Sadly, split-screen has been omitted for whatever reason. Up to eight players can link up in a decently well-designed lobby and either storm through the entire campaign together or duke it out (get it?) on any of the 39 maps that are in the game (3D Realms picked a smaller, "preferred" group for ranked matches).

The co-op experience, like so many multiplayer games, is determined by who you're playing with. If you're lucky enough to join up with a group of friends who can work together, then you'll likely have a great time. But if you're with a bunch of twelve year olds, chances are everyone will just be running around doing their own thing, which is a bummer. There's nothing stopping one Duke from running off and doing a speed run while everyone else takes their time playing through the level.