If you're sitting on the toilet with your Gameboy Advance, you better be playing Duke Nukem...
First of all, the basic plot for nearly ever Dukem Nukem game has the same premise: Aliens abduct earth's women, Duke gets mad, Duke kicks alien ass, Duke gets women back. Mr. Nukem may be an egotistical, violent, perverted, man-whore, dick hole, but one thing he is not is a lady-killer.
Because of the raunchiness of Duke's reputation, I usually stay clear of his name; however, after seeing that Duke Nukem Advance was actually a T-rated game (how it managed that I still don't know) and being bombarded with the hype of the new Duke Nukem Forever game being released… today actually. I decided to give it a go. The only time I ever played a first-person shooter (FPS) on a Gameboy Advance was an emulated copy of Doom for my computer. I was not impressed with Doom (both the original PC and the GBA versions), especially since your gun looks like nothing more than a gray and black egg sitting at the center-bottom of your screen, but to my pleasant surprise Duke Nukem Advance actually looked really good.
Normally graphics are never an issue with me when it comes to games, but with first-person shooter I make an exception. Mostly, because all FPS consist of the same formula: You run from room to room shooting anything that moves before it shoots you. While there are variations to this formula (such as puzzle solving, open world, online co-op, etc.) its very foundation is still very much the same as it has always been. Sure, Fallout 3 includes making friends instead of shooting every single person you come into contact with, but that is why Fallout is called "A Post Apocalyptic Role Playing Game." So since the formula has never change for FPS the only thing that really matters is the aesthetics and environments.
Graphically, Duke Nukem Advance falls into the spectrum of a greater than your average DOS shooter (like Doom), but doesn't quite reach the N64's Golden Eye 007 look. It's a pretty MS-DOS looking game that occasionally surpasses the DOS in performance. Some environments, like the Burger restaurant, just look outstanding for a 16-bit pseudo-3D game. And even more importantly, the guns look awesome! The order in which you acquire them is the cliché "pistol, shotgun, assault rifle/SMG" order, but it was very exciting to discover a new weapon that actually looked like a gun in your hand. Even the later arsenal was just far-out radical! The shrink gun allows you to shrink the alien bastards to a size perfect for crunching underneath your boot. Freezing guns allows you to shatter your victims into icicle splinters. I was especially impressed that the melee kick with Duke's boot was still incorporated into the GBA version, though at times a little too inconvenient to execute.
Despite the awesome array of arsenal at Mr. Nukem's disposal, it's too bad the sound didn't accompany its graphical quality. Most notably was the assault rifle, which sounded more like a toy Power Ranger weapon your mom bought for you when you were three, rather than a chamber shattering weapon of lethal destruction. Sure this is the Gameboy Advance we are talking about here, so I should cut 3D Realms and Torus Co. some slack, right? Well I would if it wasn't for the fact that Duke Nukem's voice acting in the game sounds downright awesome! Surprised? So was I!
Other than maybe the opening menu of Super Street Fighter II Turbo Revival or the occasional racing games that appeared for the system, I can't recall any GBA games that actually contained recorded voice work. Yet not only is Duke Nukem's voice near-perfectly recaptured, but so is his persona. Sure you can probably count his repertoire of one-liners on one hand, but it never loses its amusement. I've never laughed out loud while playing a Gameboy game, but I had so much fun sitting in the bathroom stall at the mall playing Duke Nukem on the toilet. Whenever Duke made a grunt or a sigh, as if he had just finished taking a dump, people next to me were trying to figure out who was making that sound. Alongside he's sighs and grunts comes his "classic" one-liners such as "Hail to the King, Baby!" and "Come get some!" to name a few. My personal favorite was after he had just finished murdering a horde of aliens with a rocket launcher, he mutters, "Holy Cow!" I actually don't know if that's what he said in Duke Nukem 3D, or it was edited for the kid-based Gameboy Advance, but I thought it was hilarious.
Other elements were clearly edited (for better or worse depending on your character) for this game to maintain a T-rating. All the raunchy/topless strippers have been replaced with Lara Croft look-a-like sprites composed of short shorts and blue tank tops. Nudity is something I try to avoid in gaming, so this wasn't a disappointment for me. What was a disappointment though was the inability to pee in urinals or poop in toilets. Even in my faintest memories as a kid, I remember being able to do that. Instead, Duke unleashes his macho-ism through smashing every bathroom accessory with his boot creating a cabaret of water.
Probably the biggest problem I have with the game is after setting your control "type" to a designated button map in the Options menu, every time you turn your GBA off you must reset the buttons again. Type A control scheme is default. But I preferred Type C, which allows you to strafe left or right with the A/B buttons, and pull the trigger with the R shoulder button. Moving Duke with the digital pad and strafing with A and B was the closest I could get to a dual-analog control scheme, and it worked pretty dang well. However, with Type C controls, "Jump" is assigned to the "Select" button, which works just fine with a Gameboy Advance SP, but could pose was a problem for original GBA and Nintendo DS owners. This still shouldn't scare DS owners away since it actually works best to jump up first before pressing forward.
Normally, I don't review a game that I haven't finished unless:
1. It sucked
2. It is has great "replay value" (such as fighting games, Atari games, or LittleBigPlanet)
3.My right shoulder button broke on my GBA
…which in this case it was the right shoulder button from playing Duke Nukem and Street Fighter II too much. On top of all that, this is a ridiculously hard first-person shooter… bravo! Mostly because some of the hit detections from enemy projectiles are occasionally whacked, but for the most part, this is a decently tactical shooting game. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that this is not a "run-and-gun" FPS. Instead, you're actually rewarded for being careful and using walls for cover. Some players may be repulsed by the challenge, but it was this difficulty that helped Duke Nukem earn my respect as an exceptional FPS. And as we all know, "exceptional" is not a word typically used to describe first-person shooters!