Duke Nukem, for the Gameboy Color. A game that I own for a long time now. It's currenty Game of the Week in the Retro Game Room, so I decided to play it on there for some reason and finally beat it. You should definitely take a look at it. If you're a fan of action side-scrollers, it's a pretty fun way to pass the time.
The Graphics
The graphics are, on a first glance, nothing special, aside from the creative boss designs. Duke Nukem, even though he looks recognizable, doesn't look very impressive, same as most of the regular enemy sprites. The stage designing, however, is much more impressive. The levels are big, and there are all kinds of details to be found in true Duke Nukem style which made me chuckle a little. What's more, most of the levels are pretty diverse, you'll be breaking out of a prison block in one level, making your way through an alien military base in the other one, etc. The atmosphere is done well, the recognizable objects and different enemies to accompany a certain location make each level stand apart from each other.
The Sound
The sound is probably my favourite thing about the game. When you start the game, you'll hear a well done MIDI-version of the classic Duke Nukem theme. The sound effects are of high quality, even in the menus. In-game, the gunshot sounds are nice, and the explosion sounds you hear when you kill aliens are pretty neat. There's a wide arrange of background music present, some are okay, and some are really catchy. But none of them are downright bad. To sum up the game's audio, I would say it's the best thing about an already really good game. I guess it's only con is that the background music speeds up when you pick up an invincibility power-up. It sounds like this was done intentional, to simulate the “YEAH!! I'm invincible!!” feeling, but the result is just messy. But this is really only a slight blemish. Not many action games for the Gameboy had this wide range in background music, let alone it being actually good, so I have to give this game points for that. It hasn't got Duke Nukem's quality one-liners, but, hey, it's a Gameboy game. Let's cut t some slack, shall we?
The Addictiveness
I loved it from beginning to end. It's quite a long game with lots of levels, but it never felt like it was getting a drag, due to every level being completely different from the last one, with a different setting and different bad guys to shoot. The action feels great too, with the explosion sounds combined with the splatter effect you get when you kill the aliens. Anyway, I really liked playing through this game, and even though I got stuck a couple of times, and had to use a walkthrough, I never really got frustrated to the point as to where I would stop playing. Duke Nukem fans, and action game fans in general will love this little Gameboy Color game.
The Depth
There's a surprising amount to Duke Nukem for the Gameboy Color. There are 21 levels (!!), and almost each level introduces a new bad guy who require you to deal with them in a different way than the others, there is decent variety of weapons to play with (albeit most of them just shoot straight ahead, and are only an upgrade in power), the dialogue is good, and like I mentioned in the Graphics paragraph, the levels are often full of little details that improve the environment and may make for a few laughs. Each level has the letters “N-U-K-E-M” for you to find. After finding all letters in a level, you'll be rewarded with an Extra Life when you finish that level, where your score is calculated. Or you could just look for instant Extra Life pickups in the form of golden Duke Nukem heads. The weapon you start with, the shotgun, has unlimited ammo, but the weapons you find on the way can run out of ammo, so you'll need to find ammo pickups on the way in order to keep using them. The shotgun remains a reliable weapon to take down enemies with, though, so when you run out of ammo for the weapons you've picked up, you can still take down the aliens with relative ease.
The Story
The story is a little bit of a Duke Nukem clich?. Not that story matters much in a Duke game, but still. Anyway, here's my synopsis. Duke Nukem is a guest on a TV talk show, after having saved the world a few years ago, and having done many more awesome deeds since. During the TV talk show, however, a beam of light out of nowhere shoots from the sky, teleporting Duke to an interrogation room on another planet. Duke has been abducted by an evil alien race called the Zorgonites. The Zorgonites want to steal Duke's brains in order to power up their war machine. After Duke escapes from his cell, he takes a shotgun from a wall safe, and from there, you take control, as you have to escape the alien planet.
The Difficulty
It isn't the easiest of games, but on the Easy setting, Duke Nukem for the Gameboy Color is still very doable. The controls are easy to master, most enemies go down in two hits, and the letters you need for an Extra Life are easy to find. However, the levels are quite long and the maps are big, and often a maze. You need to go really out of your way to get the keycard necessary to advance, and to get the points and weapon pickups, and that could end up in you getting lost in the levels. I know, because it happened to me multiple times. The question is; do you really want to collect those weapons and extra ammo, and risk getting lost or losing precious health? When you beat a level, you lose everything you've collected in the last level when you start the next one, so what's the point? It's not like the shotgun is exactly a weak weapon. I noticed the enemies respawn pretty quickly, too. But, as the enemies respawn, so do the ammo and health pickups, so that more or less compensates for it. By the way, you can run and gun, which is a great strategy to get rid of enemies with the shotgun, since that weapon has unlimited ammo.
Duke Nukem for the Gameboy Color is one that shouldn't miss in any Gameboy library. It's got really good action for a Gameboy Color game, some nice catchy sound, and good level design. You're bound to have a great time with it, as I did.
pros:
The simple controls are easy to learn
Awesome boss designs
Riddled with funny details
Diverse levels, with quite a variety of cool background music
cons: