Game Reviews

Duke Nukem Mobile 3D

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Duke Nukem Mobile 3D
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| Duke Nukem 3D

It's always tough when an old gaming favourite gets ported to mobile. Will they survive the transition intact? Will they look as good on a small phone display as they do in your rose-tinted memories? And crucially, will they be any good?

These questions are particularly pressing in the case of first-person shooters (FPS). Epitomised by Doom, these games generally involve running round 3D environments, with a first-person viewpoint, shooting people, monsters and scenery with gay abandon.

On PC they rely on players having a decent mastery of a keyboard and mouse, while on console they make full use of the controllers. And it took a while to get the latter right, too, as you'll know if you played some of the early console FPS games.

Anyway, the point is this: a decent FPS requires 3D graphics, fast and smooth movement, and complex controls, none of which have historically been the mobile phone's forte, to say the least. And even though the graphical performance of handsets is improving, it's still tough to make a mobile FPS that's genuinely fun to play, rather than simply something to admire as a technical achievement against all the odds (before then firing up Tower Bloxx or Turbo Camels instead, for the umpteenth time).

Last year, EA Mobile tackled the FPS problem cleverly with Doom by turning it into a role-playing game, less reliant on the movement aspect. And now Doom's great rival, Duke Nukem, has turned up on phones.

So how does it perform? Weeeeell...

It's okay. The basic elements that has made Duke Nukem a success on other gaming platforms are still there – the shooting, the monsters, and the occasional stripper – but the way it's been cut down for mobile leaves it packing less of a punch.

The controls are simple. You can move forwards and back, turn left or right, and 'strafe' – that is, move sideways while facing in the same direction. Strafing is important in FPS games, and its inclusion here is a handy feature, given the fiddliness of turning at speed using a keypad.

While playing, weapons, ammo and first-aid packs appear, which you can collect by running over them. You can then switch between weapons by pressing the '0' key. It works well, and you don't find yourself dying because you've got your thumbs in a tangle, which is the important thing.

But the big problem with Duke Nukem on mobile is that each level is too self-contained. You're effectively stuck in a single room, with enemies teleporting in at regular intervals, to be shot.

There's no feeling of exploration, or the kind of simple puzzle-solving that alleviates the shootyness of most good FPS games on other platforms. Too often, levels here are just a case of finding a good spot and then letting fly at anything which appears, until you're finished.

This isn't a bad game, by any stretch of the imagination. It looks good, and the 3D graphics aren't slow and jerky. And if you're a big Duke Nukem fan, it has enough of the spirit of the original to keep your attention. But judged purely as a mobile game, it's far too repetitive and constricted to be the blastfest we were hoping for.

Duke Nukem Mobile 3D

Duke might be good looking, but he's repetitive and shallow. Men, eh? Tsk.
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Stuart Dredge
Stuart Dredge
Stuart is a freelance journalist and blogger who's been getting paid to write stuff since 1998. In that time, he's focused on topics ranging from Sega's Dreamcast console to robots. That's what you call versatility. (Or a short attention span.)