Morbidly impressive that 3D Realms managed to fit just about every yellowface trope of the last 100 years into a single package! I'm not the biggest fan of those "this [film/show/song] is a product of its times and does not reflect the views of..." disclaimers, but this is a game that honestly deserves to have each level end with a video of Randy Pitchford doing a formal apology for all his game's crimes against good taste. If we can't get that, the game should have at least include the option to turn off most of the offensive dialogue barks like in Duke 3D. ("yikes bro!!" aside: there's a level name in this that Steam's anti-slur filter bleeps out!)
It really is a shame that the set-dressing around this sucks so bad, because mechanically it feels superior to Duke in just about every way I can think of. Wang moves fast as fuck, strafejumps like a coked-up Fatal1ty, and has one of my favourite FPS arsenals ever. Aside from the railgun (which only feels weak because I'm not long since playing Quake 2, I guess), every weapon feels like it has a time and place to be used, and switching between them in the heat of battle feels GASP better than it does in DOOM?! Heresy!!! There are very few FPS gamefeels better than instagibbing those little suicide bomber guys with a deflected grenade launcher shot.
The level design is about a straightforward as it possibly could be, and mostly just serves as an excuse to get you from kill-to-kill as quickly as possible. I'm certainly no John Romero myself, but it's patently obviously that every corridor and room was designed one after another without much thought given to how the space would exist as a whole - while there are some cool underwater tunnels and buildings to blow up, there is a lot of Wolf3D-ass shit in here. "Get key, go to door, get key, go to door" makes up about 90% of the lateral thinking in the game, and when the final chapter introduced the concept of both keys AND keycards in some levels, I simply had to laugh, folks! Maybe this game is funny after all!
The environments are pretty much exactly what you'd expect from a dev team whose only points of cultural reference were probably Big Trouble In Little China, Temple of Doom and Kung Fu - but hey! The trademark 3D Realms submarine is here to play too! Why are 3D Realms so obsessed with submarines, I wonder...
Anyway, you can get the DOS version for free on Steam and the widescreen/all-mod-cons port with all the expansion packs is only a couple of quid - it's a pretty sweet deal if you're willing to overlook deeply offensive 90s racism in search of some good gun gameplay! Why not turn the voice lines down and put on some of your favourite music instead?
It really is a shame that the set-dressing around this sucks so bad, because mechanically it feels superior to Duke in just about every way I can think of. Wang moves fast as fuck, strafejumps like a coked-up Fatal1ty, and has one of my favourite FPS arsenals ever. Aside from the railgun (which only feels weak because I'm not long since playing Quake 2, I guess), every weapon feels like it has a time and place to be used, and switching between them in the heat of battle feels GASP better than it does in DOOM?! Heresy!!! There are very few FPS gamefeels better than instagibbing those little suicide bomber guys with a deflected grenade launcher shot.
The level design is about a straightforward as it possibly could be, and mostly just serves as an excuse to get you from kill-to-kill as quickly as possible. I'm certainly no John Romero myself, but it's patently obviously that every corridor and room was designed one after another without much thought given to how the space would exist as a whole - while there are some cool underwater tunnels and buildings to blow up, there is a lot of Wolf3D-ass shit in here. "Get key, go to door, get key, go to door" makes up about 90% of the lateral thinking in the game, and when the final chapter introduced the concept of both keys AND keycards in some levels, I simply had to laugh, folks! Maybe this game is funny after all!
The environments are pretty much exactly what you'd expect from a dev team whose only points of cultural reference were probably Big Trouble In Little China, Temple of Doom and Kung Fu - but hey! The trademark 3D Realms submarine is here to play too! Why are 3D Realms so obsessed with submarines, I wonder...
Anyway, you can get the DOS version for free on Steam and the widescreen/all-mod-cons port with all the expansion packs is only a couple of quid - it's a pretty sweet deal if you're willing to overlook deeply offensive 90s racism in search of some good gun gameplay! Why not turn the voice lines down and put on some of your favourite music instead?