Duke Nukem: Critical Mass (Nintendo DS) - Review by Andrew

Introduction

A quick look through the interweb shows that some sites were previewing this game well over two years ago and for a while it didn't look like this latest outing for Duke Nukem would ever see the light of day. It's been over a decade since the release of the original game and the last time we saw Duke on a Nintendo handheld was with the Torus developed Duke Nukem Advance for the GBA. This was reasonably well received but the Gameboy Advance had severe limitations, when it came to 3D visuals, and while it was fun at the time a new audience deserved a new chapter for the cigar-chomping hero.

Gameplay

While we wont divulge the finer plot points of the ridiculous storyline, let's just say that there are pigs (lots of pigs), but what did you expect? We'll begin with where you'll spend most of the time: a multi-plane platformer which is not only frustrating to control but also feels somewhat unfair due to the fact that the enemies can see you before you even catch a glimpse of them. This means that you'll often die through no fault of your own forcing you to continuously fire blindly in the direction you are moving in. Sadly, this still isn't enough to keep you safe with some enemies appearing behind you and (you guessed it) also shooting at you even though they are off screen. While these levels are linear in design this still won't stop you getting lost and when this occurs you'll be forced to hang around random locations until a moving platform appears to take you to another level.

The stronger gameplay points are interspersed between this platforming mess and the best of these are the 'sniper' sections. These allows you to get behind a powerful riffle and pick off enemies before they see you giving these levels a real sense of excitement. In addition to this, and because you travel from one location to another with a jetpack, there's also a vertically scrolling shoot 'em up, which takes place over both screens. Again, this is much more enjoyable that the main platforming sections and you'll be treated to a handful of these throughout the game. The 'end of level bosses' move to a more ambitions 'third person perspective', but all of these are incredibly easy to overcome and not one of them presented any real challenge.

Controls

It will take you a while to get to grips with Duke mainly due to the fact that he doesn't always do what you want him too. This is because the main section of the game is set on a variety of horizontal planes and while you'd always assume that you can walk down a back ally or even a staircase, it wont always let you. The same is true when you attempt to adopt the 'cover fire' position (hiding behind objects or the entrance to alleyways) and rather than giving you the intended 'element of surprise' the enemy will instead spot you straight away and empty a few rounds at your general direction. There are also problems with the 'double jump' although you don't always need this to get to a higher platform due to the randomly placed lifts. Much easier to control are the mini-games and the 'top-down' shooter or the 'sniper' sections are a joy to navigate around.

Graphics

Given that Duke spends most of the time cashing in on his looks (with the ladies or just about anyone else he can hit on) this game isn't very pretty at all. You could argue that it should have been released some time ago, and certainly before the launch of the 3DS, but it's still a dull and pixilated and far from what we know the DS is capable of. To make matters worse, the animation is also very weak and Duke moves around the various areas like a wounded Action Man figure with just about everything he does appearing wooden and unrealistic.

Sound

Audio wise, there's enough spoken dialogue here to construct a small radio play. It's all expertly delivered too whilst maintaining the Fast Talking, Pig Hating Duke we've all come to know and love in addition to a cast of pleasing support characters.

Dual screen

Outside of using the touch-screen, for the sniper sections, you'll also need to select your weapons on (what appears to be) an eternally scrolling list of guns on the bottom screen. This is incredibly frustrating and you'd imagine that it would be much simpler to find a weapon you are happy with and use this all the time. That's what we thought too but as soon as you run out of ammo your selection will quickly default to the next on the list. This means that you could go from a rocket launcher to a handgun. Not recommended for Boss Fights we can assure you.

Final comments

While Critical Mass shows so much potential the resulting game can be enjoyable one minute and incredibly frustrating the next. On the plus side there's a fairly good selection of gameplay types although the side scrolling platformer (which you'll spend most of the time with) is somewhat flawed in its overall design. It's also not the best looking game we've encountered, given how much time it's been in development and it's release in the DS's life cycle. Oddly, it does sound good and Duke's wisecracks are as entertaining now as they've always been. Can we recommend it? If you happen to be a fan of the Duke Numkem games and you have to complete your collection then yes but, if not, there's much better action games available and plenty of them.

Pro: Enjoyable Sniper Sections, Loads of Spoken Dialogue.
Con: Problematic Controls, Poor Animation
Final score: 5.5

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