The WingDamage staff spends way too much of their time thinking about and playing video games.

Game Ideas are a series of random articles where members of the WingDamage staff propose their own ideas for a video game. Most of the game ideas featured on the site are for entirely new games with new mechanics. But some ideas are just too awesome to keep to yourself.

Mayor Mike Haggar stars the incomparable Mike Haggar of Final Fight fame at his day job. Besides having a glorious mustache and the ability to lay a whoopin’ on hundreds of thugs, Mike Haggar spends his days mayoring the heck out of his city. This game would let us experience the other side of Mr. Haggar.

The game would play like Sim City meets Final Fight. You are responsible for zoning laws and the cities infrastructure. You will decide tax rates and where to place public parks. You know, all the things that a mayor should be doing.

“Sounds like you are just ripping off Sim City?”, you say in that mocking tone of yours.

Well Mr. Doubter, Mike Haggar is not your typical mayor. Most mayors aren’t going to pile drive your face if you get out of line. When things get heated, his hands on approach separates him from the crowd.

When crime rates get too high in an area, you can increase taxes and hire more police, or you can clean up the streets Final Fight style. In these sections Haggar hits the town and takes out the bad guys in a side scrolling brawler. Punches, kicks, and his patented Pile Driver will send those thugs packing.

“Sounds pretty simple right?”, I ask in a patient and understanding tone.

Well, Internet, things can get even crazier. Giant monsters, barbarian hordes, and pirates will all randomly threaten to destroy your city. It is up to Haggar to take them out.You have a variety of kicks, punches, and wrestling moves at your disposal as you walk to the right beating the crap out of your enemies. If you have ever played Final Fight (or any side scrolling brawler) you get the idea. Everyone in your way needs a beat down, and any meat you find on the ground will heal you.

Haggar uses his bare hands to fight off monsters and barbarian hordes, but when tornadoes strike, he has to use his patented pile driver to “drive” that tornado right out of town. To stop an Earthquake, Haggar will punch the ground so hard the Earth will surrender.

If you fight well enough and can save enough of your constituents, maybe they’ll re-elect you at the end of your term. If they don’t, then it’s Game Over.

I think this game will appeal to people that follow politics, and those who enjoy punching earthquakes in the face.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is one of those titles that I missed the first time around. I think a lot of it had to do with being burned out on Star Wars in general. There has certainly been an over-saturation of the franchise leading up to, and ever since, the prequel movies.

However, I am a long time fan of the original trilogy, as well as many of the “expanded universe” novels. It was always my plan to go back to The Force Unleashed and the Ultimate Sith Edition was the perfect excuse to do so.

The story of The Force Unleashed is exactly the kind of thing that gets my nerd juices flowing. Darth Vader is the evil and unpredictable menace that we all grew up loving. Instead of running around telling everyone how much he hates sand, he has enlisted a secret apprentice whom he found as a child, Starkiller. He is the son of a Jedi Knight and has an extremely strong connection to the force.

Under the leadership of Vader, he has become a formidable Sith warrior, and Vader plans to one day use him to kill the Emperor. This leads to some fun twists and turns in the plot that I will not spoil for you here. What I will say is that it takes you to some very fun and very fitting locales that any Star Wars geek will get a kick out of.

"Silly Stormtroopers and their turrets."

The Force Unleashed is a third person action game where you combine lightsaber combos with force powers to wreak havoc on your enemies. As you progress, you will level up, gaining points that can be spent on increasing your number of force powers, their potency, and unlocking new combos with your lightsaber. You can also use the right trigger to grab and throw objects from the environment as well as enemies.

As you can imagine, a lone Stormtrooper won’t do much against a trained Sith, so the game is good at throwing lots of enemies at you at a time. To make things more interesting, you will also face some of the best armed Stormtroopers in Emperor Palpatine’s army. Some have been given sniper rifles, some jetpacks, others shields that can block force attacks. If the ones in the movies had been this well equipped, the Rebel Alliance wouldn’t have stood a chance. Thank the force for budget cuts.

There are several types of mini-bosses that you will come across during the adventure, from AT-ST’s to Rancors. These are fought mostly with your normal moves, but can be finished off via QTE’s (Quick Time Events) that are used to give the game a cinematic feel. Bad QTE’s can ruin an otherwise good game. Thankfully the ones in Unleashed are fairly forgiving.

Since much of the game revolves around tracking down remnants of the Jedi, you will fight several of them as bosses throughout the story. While some of these battles can be pretty tough, they are a lot of fun. They often require using the environment and a variety of force powers to keep from being knocked on your ass by a well placed Force Push.

The biggest issue I had with the game was the jumping mechanic. While it does allow for a double jump and a dash forward on top of that, it is really hard to tell where you are going to land. It also seems a little too fast, making it feel rushed and awkward. I was very glad that there were no major platforming sections or the bad jumping could have ruined the experience.

A big draw for the completionists out there are all the hidden Jedi and Sith Holocrons, as well as secondary missions. Sith Holocrons give you temporary power-ups, while the ones of the Jedi variety give you bonus points to spend on your levels, new lightsaber colors, and lightsaber power-ups.

The Ultimate Sith Edition comes with all the currently available DLC. This includes a bunch of costumes for your character (including C3P0, which can lead to hilarious results), and three bonus levels.

The first level has Starkiller going to the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, where he is looking for information on his father. This level was included on the Wii and PS2 and PSP versions of the game, but was originally cut from the 360 and PS3 editions. It has some interesting new areas to explore, but is slowed down by a section where you must undergo various Jedi trials. One has you using the force to move a ball along a line, and if you vary too far from that line, you have to start over. That really doesn’t do anything for me. Level design, guys!

Second is Tatooine in which Starkiller, now the Emporer’s right hand in an interesting “What If?” scenario, goes in search of R2D2 and C3p0 to find the missing Death Star plans. You will fight your way through Jaba’s palace, face Boba Fett, and a massively powered-up version of Ben Kenobi. The boss fights alone made this one my favorite of the three bonus stages.

The final bonus stage is the battle of Hoth, because it hasn’t quite been in enough video games. This time you are on the side of evil, trying to hunt down Luke Skywalker rather than flying around in a snow speeder trying to trip up AT-AT’s. Here you end up fighting a lot of Wampas, some automated defense, and most deadly of all, a platforming sequence. The platforming section in this bonus level solidified my opinion that if there had been any of these in the game proper, it would have really dragged down the over-all experience for me. The battle with Luke at the end was fun, though, even though they gave him a “farmboy Luke” level of whininess in his voice.

Star Wars the Force Unleashed: Ultimate Sith Edition is a good little package. The DLC levels and skins are fun, but had they not come packed in, I couldn’t see myself paying for them at their current price. This is coming from a guy that is in no way anti-DLC, as is the popular stance of many gamers. When it is worth it, I am all for it, but $10 a pop for those extra levels would not be worth it to me.

For the Star Wars or action fan in your life, Star Wars The Force Unleashed is an easy recommendation. While it is not without its flaws, it is a lot of fun. The fresh take on familiar set pieces from one of my favorite franchises is hard to beat. But honestly, I hope they do beat it with the upcoming sequel.

This review is based on a the Xbox 360 version of Star Wars The Force Unleashed: Ultimate Sith Edition, purchased by the reviewer.

In addition to writing articles for WingDamage, I sometimes write comic books. This weekend is Seattle’s own ConventoCon GeekStravaganza, Emerald City ComiCon. These two facts have converged to bring me to the people on March 13th and 14th (check out my pics from last year).

The worlds of comic book nerds and gamer geeks has long since crossed over, and this is a great opportunity for all of us to come together to hang out for the weekend. Emerald City ComiCon is a great convention for finding awesome new stuff you’ve never heard of, meeting your favorite creators, or even seeing hot shot geek celebrities in the flesh.

My brother, Jeremy, and I will be in Artist Alley at tables D-11/12 showing off our comic, “Here There Be Robots“.

Here is a map to our table:

"Click to see the uncropped version"

This year’s con will be the best yet. First of all, our pals from Kirby Krackle will be debuting their new album, “E For Everyone”, and playing a free show on Sunday at 2pm. If you are into webcomics, the list of guests this year is ridiculous: Gabe and Tycho, Kris Straub, Scott Kurts, and Jeph Jacques to name just a few. Should I name drop a few of the media guests? How about Wil Wheaton, Stan Lee, and Leonard Nemoy? Does that help get your nerd juices flowing?

Are you more into the indie stuff? Check out the huge Artist’s Alley list at a con that actually cares about the smaller studios instead of cramming them into a dark corner that you can never find. There are also a ton of con exclusives that you should definitely check out.

Last year, we ran out of our trade paperback very quickly. This year, we will have plenty of copies of “Here There Be Robots Volume 1: Marooned” on hand. We will also have whatever stock is left of our individual issues, T-shirts, pins, and some new postcard sized prints of the various issues’ cover art.

If you are at the con, please come by our booth and say hello. Even if you just want to shoot the breeze about the latest hotness in video games and/or the WingDamage site. You can probably even get Jeremy to draw you something cool if you ask really nice.

On a very special fifty-sixth episode of “Barrel Roll! A Video Game Podcast”, Jesse and Adam hijack the show to talk about Mega Man 10. I don’t know what it is, but those two really like that little blue robot.

I was all like, “What about Heavy Rain?” And Adam was all, “More like watching a movie with quick time events. Burn!”

Then I cried a single tear.

As the name of this episode implies, in “What we’ve been playing”, Jesse and Adam have been playing Mega Man 10. Jesse also gives us the low-down on the Monster Hunter Tri demo. Jonah goes in-depth with The Force Unleashed: Ultimate Sith Edition and the XBLA indie game Jump!, while Wes tells us about Final Fantasy on the iPhone, The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom, and the super weird sounding Deadly Premonition.

In the news, we discuss the upcoming Emerald City Comicon and that you can see Jonah there this weekend in Artist’s Alley at table D-11/12. We finally get confirmation that Super Street Fighter IV will be $40, Square’s music team is disbanding, there is lots of Valve news, and much more on the latest “Barrel Roll” podshow!

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Outro Music – “Fortuna (Star Fox)” by The OneUps

The Mega Man Network

InsulinFunk

Capcom and Nintendo have really been pushing Monster Hunter Tri in preparation for its late April release. The latest plan to spark interest for the series in the states comes in the form of a playable demo. While you do have to leave your house and visit a GameStop in order to pick the disc-based demo up, you won’t need a pre-order (though they might try to tell you it’s required, as they did on my visit).

Much like the downloadable demos for the PSP entries, you’ll start off with two selections to make. The first thing you’ll need to choose is which of the demo’s two monsters you want to take down. After that, you’ll pick one of ten characters. Each character is fully decked out with equipment focused on a specific weapon.

Each weapon type feels extremely different. The demo thankfully included a fold-out guide detailing how to use every character class. Without it, I would’ve been pretty lost as there is a lot of controls to remember. It’s basically a giant cheat sheet.

With the Classic Controller Pro bundle on the way, I figured the Wii Remote and Nunchuck scheme would be a joke, sacrificing precise attack timing for waggle. I was incredible wrong. Rather than making you swing to attack, Monster Hunter Tri uses the No More Heroes approach, and actually improves upon it.

The “A” button (and in certain cases, the “-” button for alternate abilities) is used to attack. But it’s much more complex than that. The orientation of your Wii Remote will determine which attack is done. Holding it normally, twisting it to the right, to the left, or even holding it upright can can result in completely different attacks and combos.

"The Qurupeco took quite some time to take down."

An especially clever use of the Wii Remote orientation is incorporated into the longsword. By using my “-” button attack, I could slash and jump backward immediately afterward. But if I had the Wii Remote tilted to the left or right, I would jump in that direction instead.

The Wii Remote’s d-pad can adjust the camera, but thankfully it works much better than in other games with that method. Holding “C” will switch the d-pad from camera control to item selection. Freely moving your character while navigating through your inventory has never felt better.

After the intuitive nature of this setup, I found the classic controller extremely confusing to use by comparison. Inventory, for example, was navigated with the “Y” and “A” buttons while holding another button. I found myself accidentally hitting the wrong button far more often. I will say, though, that the Classic Controller is better at camera adjustment since it is mapped to the right analogue stick.

There are slightly less weapon types in Monster Hunter Tri than in the last entry, but each type has more abilities than before.  The sword and shield type is by far the easiest to pickup, and I was impressed with how many different attacks I could perform with it.

The switch axe is an all new weapon to the series. It has two modes. In it’s default mode, it is a fairly ordinary axe. But with the touch of a button, you can transform it into an elemental sword. The sword mode uses a special gauge that must refill. You can use it to attack normally or even discharge the elemental energy into the enemy. It’s a pretty interesting weapon.

"The Great Jaggi had lots of little buddies to help in the fight."

I fought the Great Jaggi first; a modestly sized, dinosaur-like creature. Although it took some time, it was relatively easy. What made it a little tricky was that the Great Jaggi would call its young to come fight with it. I had to split my time between all the different enemies on screen.

Next up was the Qurupeco; an odd, winged creature with a big neck sack. This one didn’t seem too bad at first, but about halfway through my fight, the Great Jaggi came to visit. That’s right, the earlier boss waddled in to join the fun.  The two giants actually seemed to fight each other a bit, but were both more interested in me.

It took me a long time to take down the Qurupeco. As with other Monster Hunter games, you won’t see any health bar for the monsters. Instead, you have to look closely at their behavior. The more I beat up those behemoths, the more they would trip and fall over. When they were really close to dying, they’d even run away from me and I would have to chase them to other areas of the map.

When I finally took down the Qurupeco, barely within the 20-minute time limit I was given, I felt tremendously satisfied. It’s just a shame I didn’t get to take advantage of the sweet, sweet monster parts it left behind since I was only playing a demo.

With all the marketing they’re doing for the game, I still can’t help but feel that the patience required in these long fights combined with the steep learning curve will keep the appeal in the niche category. But as for me, I can’t wait to get my hands on the full version and hop into the free online.

“Friday Old Games” is a series of articles in which we review a game from the older generations of consoles, share why we picked it, and whether or not it holds up with time.

The Nintendo 64 was not known for the quality of its fighting games and War Gods certainly doesn’t help. This is one of those games that seems like the developers were trying to copy what their eight-year-old nephew told them Mortal Kombat was like, only the eight-year-old speaks a language no one understands and the uncle has a degenerative brain disease.

Sadly, some poor kid got this game for Christmas and now he hates war; all because of this game.

Sometimes when we look back at the old school games, we tend to focus on the classics and forget just how god awful a lot of games really were. War Gods stands as a proud testament to gaming’s mediocre to terrible past. War Gods is a horribly constructed, one-on-one fighting game that reminds us all just how bad things could get. While it is certainly no Rise of the Robots, it is still a terrible game and everyone associated with its construction should be ashamed.

As far as story is concerned, there is some kind of plot about a spaceship and chunks of ore, but if you are taking the time to examine the plot of War Gods you are obviously being punished for something. This is the kind of plot you invented when you were eight and you wanted an excuse for your GI Joes to beat up some Ninja Turtles.

The characters are ripped right out of the “Horrendously Stupid Game Characters Catalog”, but at least the controls are clunky and unresponsive. The game feels like a warm up for Mortal Kombat 4, which is like warming up for a face punch by kicking yourself in the crotch.

I always try to find the good in every game I play. War Gods doesn’t really have any redeeming qualities. The animation is poor, the graphics are terrible, the characters are dumb, and the controls are clunky.

Why did I pick this game?

Every once in a while, you should play a terrible game; if only to make you appreciate good games even more. I remembered War Gods being terrible way back in 1996 and I wanted to see what it felt like today.

Terrible.

How does it hold up with time?

Like the sandwich that was left under your bed back in October, War Gods has not aged well. Even if you could peel back the layer of crud that covers it, you probably don’t want to touch it anyway.

You probably wouldn’t have enjoyed War Gods fourteen years ago, and time has only made things worse. Don’t bother to play this one, unless you just want to laugh at the horrendous characters.

"Because there's always room for more Valkyria Chronicles."

It’s hard to believe it has been almost a full year since the last Valkyria Chronicles DLC was released. By this point, I had almost forgotten that more was on the way. But when it finally came, I was eager as ever to return to my “Game of the Year” of 2008.

The “Challenge of the Edy Detachment” DLC pack will cost five of your earth dollars and contains six new skirmish battles. Unlike the last DLC involving Edy, you will not be locked into using a specific set of characters. Instead, you’re free to select your own characters from your squad, complete with the levels and equipment set you left them at last time.

Each mission focuses on the strengths of a specific job class. Before you start, you’ll be briefed by the character within the Edy Detachment of the corresponding job class. Because this DLC was localized such a long time after the game’s release, you won’t be able to select English voices. But let’s face it, the Japanese voices are better anyway.

Susie’s Challenge: The Wildwood I – Scout Trial

In the scout trial, you’ll need to protect your base while eliminating sneaky enemies. The map is littered with patches of grass and branching paths. This is probably the easiest mission in the pack. The only tricky part is the boss unit in the end. Get near his gun and you’re toast. But take him down and you can earn his weapon: a high powered, short range rifle.

Jann’s Challenge: Naggiar Plains North – Lancer Trial

Being a challenge for lancers, it should come as no surprise that the mission is littered with tanks. But it’ll take more than just lancers to clear the challenge effectively. You must defend your base in the center while eliminating a well placed sniper, hidden shocktroopers and scouts, a ridiculous amount of tanks, and whatever other reinforcements show up before you capture their three bases.

Marina’s Challenge: The Wildwood II – Sniper Trial

This is quite possibly the trickiest challenge in the pack. At the start of the mission, you’ll have only two slots to deploy units. The goal is to prevent enemies from reaching their own base for several turns. If so much as a single unit reaches the base, it’s Game Over. The problem is that your base is isolated on the opposite side of a ravine as the enemy. And since snipers won’t reactively attack on the enemy’s turn, you’ll need to be extra discerning in who you choose to shoot.

Homer’s Challenge: The Warehouse District – Engineer Trial

Ah, my favorite challenge. This is the only challenge that takes place in the city instead of the wilderness. The objective is to get your tank from the south east corner to the north west corner. The problem is that your treads are broken and your engineer (and whoever else you deployed) is already at the north west corner. You have to get an engineer to fix the treads and send the tank back home. Visibility is low thanks to all the tall buildings and danger is waiting around every corner. It’s very well put together.

Edy’s Challenge: The Arboreal Wastes – Shocktrooper Trial

In the shocktrooper trial, Rosie is stuck on the left while your other units are on the right. You’ll each need to eliminate the enemies while making sure none of them get past your line. But if you finished the last DLC like me, you’ll have already unlocked Ruhm, a high power machine gun with near sniper-level range and accuracy, leaving Rosie with little to no problem fending for herself.

Edy Detachment Challenge: Barious Ruins – Tank Trial

Remember the map in the main game where you had to slow down a giant tank by knocking over walls of ancient ruins? Well, now they’re in the way of YOUR tank! You’ll have to blast them away while avoiding enemy fire as you attempt to get your tank to the destination on the opposite side of the map.

Final Thoughts

I found the lack of difficulty settings a bit disappointing, but the motivation to replay the missions is still strong since you’ll want to achieve the highest rank on each one. The addition of several new weapons to acquire from enemy units is a nice, unexpected touch.

While many, if not all of the missions use maps from the main story, the objectives, enemy and base locations, and other special circumstances make them so radically different that they are practically unrecognizable. Since each mission focuses on the strengths of a single class, they all have a very unique flavor giving the battles a great sense of variety. At less than a dollar per mission, I’d highly recommend the “Challenge of the Edy Detachment” pack to anybody hungering for more Valkyria Chronicles content before the sequel drops on our shores.

"If I win this race, they'll make Shenmue 3!"

“Kart Racers” as a genre have a bad rap. Back when Nintendo had success with the original Mario Kart, everyone wanted a piece of that hot, mascot racing action. The sad thing is that nearly every one of these attempts have failed. From Star Wars: Super Bombad Racing to M&M’s Kart Racing, most entries in the genre have been groan inducing.

Because of this, my hopes were pretty low for Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing, but the addition of some very nostalgic Dreamcast characters drew me in. The first time I saw a screen-shot of Ryo Hazuki on his motorcycle, I knew I’d be playing this game one way or the other.

Character balance is a big factor in a Kart Racers. It’s not just about being able to pit Big the Cat against Alex Kidd, they have to bring variety to the table without making any one character over-powered. All-Stars Racing has a pretty decent balance of characters ranging from the low top speed but awesome handling to the high top speed with no handling.

Another important factor is each character’s turbo attribute. Turbo is triggered after you let off the drift button when taking corners. If your character has a low turbo, it will charge quickly, but not give that much of a boost, while a high turbo takes longer to charge, but is a much more substantial boost. The drifting is one of the best I’ve seen in a Kart Racer, since they simplified it to holding down one button while you take a turn. This will lock you into turning sharply in that direction, but it still allows you a little bit of control over your kart.

Core to any racing experience is the track selection. While not every character has a level themed after them, and some of the themes repeat on a couple tracks, each one manages to feel unique and fun. I was very impressed with the variety they managed to put into each level. If they are able to keep up this level of quality, DLC tracks would be highly welcome.

As you race, you collect “Sega Miles” which can be spent at the in-game store to unlock more characters, tracks for multi-player and music. The music is a fun assortment of songs from the various games that the race tracks are themed after. Once you have unlocked more songs under a theme, you can select which one will play during the race.

"Holy Adam West Bat-Mobile, Sonic!"

Any racing game that includes weapons runs the risk of having the weapons diminish the fun of the actual races. While they can make it more frenzied and add to the fun-factor, it is easy for them to overshadow the rest of the game. When an “I Win” item is included, it ruins the game for everybody. Fortunately, Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing did a good job of keeping the weapons subtle. They are there, and they add that element of needed danger from the other racers, but there is no magic “win” button included.

Multi-player is very easy to pick up and play. When playing this for review, I had a few different groups of people over that were able to pick up a controller and instantly be having fun.

Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing does a lot of things right. They took a fun mix of characters, and while the aesthetics of each don’t always mix, it still brings a smile to my face to see characters like Ulala, B. D. Joe and Amigo back on my TV Screen.

This review is based on a copy of Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing for the Xbox 360 provided to us by SEGA.

*UPDATE* - Turns out the audio file had a glitch in it where the last twenty minutes were doubled and off time from each other making it a horrible mess. We at WingDamage would like to apologize to anyone who listened to this episode and promise that the next episode, which will release on Tuesday, is much, much better in both quality and content.

On a very special fifty-fifth episode of “Barrel Roll! A Video Game Podcast”, we have to match up all the different sandwiches if we want to stop the flow of incoming sandwiches. Boshi is there to help. Remember Boshi?

Our regular hosts are joined by Geoffio, as well as WingDamage’s newest writer, Anthony. In what we’ve been playing, Geoffio kicks us off with tales from the aerial combat sim, Wings of Prey. Jonah has just started on The Force Unleashed: Ultimate Sith Edition and Company of Heroes, an RTS he’s actually enjoying. Anthony gives us his thoughts on Resident Evil 5 and Jesse goes in-depth with the new Valkyria Chronicles DLC.

We talk about last week’s entry into “Friday Old Games“, Duke Nukem 64, then in “Let’s Play Together” we give our thoughts on Sonic & SEGA All-Star Racing for the Xbox 360.

In the news, we discuss additional RAM being unlocked for PS3 developers, the next Batman game, our hopes for King of Fighters XIII having modes, Monster Hunter Tri’s announcement of being free to play for North America, and much more.

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Middle Song – “Fly Like a Butterfly” by Hideki Naganuma
(Jet Set Radio Future Original Sound Tracks)

Outro Music – “Fortuna (Star Fox)” by The OneUps

"...something about bubblegum"

“Friday Old Games” is a series of articles in which we review a game from the older generations of consoles, share why we picked it, and whether or not it holds up with time.

Before I get going here, I want to ask a simple question: What happened to friendly, jammin’ aliens like Toejam and Earl? It seems no matter where you look, the gaming industry is cramming ’shoot aliens’ down our throat.

Mass Effect, Gears of War, Halo, Half-Life… all of these franchises highly successful, and all of them based on the same simple formula; Go in. Shoot some aliens. Save the day.

But before anyone confronted Saren, closed an emergence hole, pistol whipped a grunt or decided a crow bar works better as a club, Duke Nukem was the prime offender.

Duke Nukem 64 was the first Duke title released on a console (although it was developed as Duke Nukem 3D for DOS and Mac-OS). The concept behind the game is simple. Evil aliens have come to earth, enslaved and kidnapped countless babes, and it’s up to Duke to stop them.

As you begin the game, you find yourself on a rooftop armed with just your pistol and a can-do attitude. Unfortunately, I can’t recite the plot any clearer than I’ve done already. It simply doesn’t exist within the confines of the cartridge. I’m sure the booklet that originally came with it would cover the story more fully, but I don’t have that, limiting me to what little information I’ve found scattered throughout the levels.

Quite typical of older games, this one is split up into very clear cut levels. You start each level with whatever you carried over from the last one. You end the level once you’ve found the giant bio-hazard button and, presumably, nuked whatever critters you missed along the way.

As I haven’t quite finished the game fully, I can’t tell you the total number of levels, but I can say there are at least 15 or so. Certain levels become so difficult, I found myself questioning whether it would actually be possible to complete this game on the single player mode. Things like the giant machine gun wielding monster at around level 8 really made me start to wonder. I’ve been playing Co-op, which allows you to continue respawning as long as there is one player still alive (Halo style).

The weapon selection is a bit fairer than I originally suspected. Throughout the course of Duke Nukem 64, I’ve found a shotgun, sub-machine guns, a grenade launcher, and pipe bombs, as well as a few more complicated and unique weapons such as the shrink ray and plasma cannon.

Different kinds of ammunition also make an appearance, such as the “dum-dum” rounds for your pistol. These act like normal bullets, but are incredibly powerful. Along with weapons, items play a key role in the functionality of this game. Jetpacks, scuba gear, portable medkits, night vision goggles, and body armor, keep you searching each dark corner in case of hidden goodies.

Which brings me to this games very best feature:

Secrets are EVERYWHERE. I haven’t found every secret place on even one of the levels I’ve played, and I only know that because the level completion screen informs you how many found vs. how many total. I’ve searched for hours trying to clear a level, felt confident, and been crushed to find I missed not just one, but 3 or more. While others may find this frustrating, I thoroughly enjoyed it due to my unyielding love of ’secret spots’.

Why did I pick this game?

Before this, I’d never tried my hand at a Duke Nukem game. Honestly, I avoided the series like some kind of disease. Why? Because I’d heard so many bad things about it. I even found myself making fun of Duke Nukem without trying it. This goes against my personal code, so I needed to give it a shot before I talked anymore trash.

How does it hold up with time?

Better than you’d imagine. Somehow playing this game makes me feel like a kid again. It has a very Doom-like trait to it that I love. Additionally, the controls, once you’ve grown used to them, are much easier to manage than other failed schemes like Goldeneye.

There is a tiny bit of auto-aim, not enough to play the game for you, but just enough to make that missed shot a ‘good enough’ shot. As I mentioned before, I love secrets, and the idea of finding something someone else couldn’t and being rewarded for it really gets my juices flowing. The time I’ve spent searching for secrets so far is enough to make me skip to Duke Nukem’s tune. While its not perfect, this game has changed my view on the franchise quite drastically. Duke Nukem is no longer a “never-was”, and now qualifies as a “has-been”.