Duke Nukem: Total Meltdown for the PSX/PS1"It's time to kick ass and chew bubblegum, but I'm all out of gum."
Duke Nukem: Total Meltdown for the Playstation 1 is a port of
Duke Nukem 3D on the PC. This port debuted in 1997, 1 year after the PC version's initial release. To my surprise, this game
did not support the brown townog sticks. Using the D-Pad for this kind of game just isn't grand. It's just not.
Like the original game, you're shooting up mutated pigs and lizards that all look the same, you're getting steroids to run uber fast while running into walls, and watching pixelated strippers in pixelated strip bars around the game. I'd rather shoot them to tick off the mutations personally.
I played the game on the ePSXe v1.7.0 emulator, but I own the original PC port and it's expansion pack. I've beaten it several times, so yeah.
STORY
There is little story in the game except for a brief text prelude located under "Help" in the Main Menu, and a few cutscenes after the completion of an episode. The introduction establishes that the game picks up right after the events of Duke Nukem II, with Duke returning to Earth in his space cruiser. As Duke descends on Los Angeles in hopes for a vacation, a blast rips through from unknown hostiles and critically damages Duke's ship. While sending a distress signal, Duke learns that aliens are attacking Los Angeles and have mutated the LAPD. With his plans now ruined, Duke hits the "eject" button, and vows to do whatever it takes to stop the alien invasion.
It is true, there really isn't much of a story to the game. Unless you just want to say "Oh, he's just doing this for the 'chicks', not the world."
To be honest, I don't really think the 'chicks' would care, really.
STORY: 6/10GRAPHICS
Be warned, it's pixelated goodness.
Sorry, ePSXe isn't liking this game too much.The graphics are what you would expect from a PSX game; they're really not all great with today's standards, but I think they were actually really good for it's time. Some of the sprites were edited a bit, like the Lizard Trooper's corpse sprite (pictured above, top-right), and the Pig Cop's sprites were improved some.
Some animated elements of the game were a tad glitchy, and I don't think it was ePSXe's fault. For example, the fire in the dumpster in the beginning of level 1 in L.A. Meltdown will not start animating until you get close to it.
GRAPHICS: 9/10CONTROLS
Oh don't get me started. The controls aren't good.
Turning around is a little hard to get use to. Sometimes it's too slow; sometimes it's too fast. To look up and down, you have to use L1 and L2 (buttons 5 and 7 on my controller, but the layout is just like a PS1 controller, so...) which I find to be difficult to use.
To move around, you press either up or down on the D-Pad. You
cannot strafe left or right in this port, sadly. You move about the same speed as if you had steroids in the original PC game, which I think is a
little too fast.
- L1 - Look up
- L2 - Look down
- R1 - Jump
- R2 - Crouch
- D-Pad Up/Down - Move forward/backward
- D-Pad Left/Right - Turn left/right; holding it down will cause you to turn a bit faster.
- Select - Toggle map of the map
- Start - Pauses game/brings up a menu
- Triangle [B1] - Open doors, activate switches, etc.
- Square [B4] - I honestly do not think this has anything bound to it. Nothing happened when I pressed it throughout the game.
- X [B3] - Fires weapon
- Circle [B2] - Switches to next weapon in inventory.
- brown townog sticks do nothing in this game.
Thankfully, it does help you aim in the game with an autoaim. Not very helpful, but is a bit helpful.
CONTROLS: 4/10 - This really could've been done a bit better.
SOUND/MUSIC
The music was actually top-notch for it's time. I especially enjoyed the 2 remixes of the 'Stalker' theme (one can be heard on level 1 of L.A. Meltdown, and the other on level 2 of L.A. Meltdown.)
The game features ~30 music tracks, some are remixes of the original .mid files from the PC game, and some are original music. Imagine the genres of Trance and Rock combined in the year 1997, and this is what they would sound like. They do not loop once they finish, which is a little disappointing there.
The sounds are alright. Some come from the original game, and some are slightly different. The pistol sound, for example, actually sounds
better in this game. The shotgun remained the same though.
SOUND/MUSIC: 8/10The game is OK. The controls are hard to get use to, but the graphics and music make up for it. Did I also mention there are 4 episodes you can choose from?
STORY: 6/10GRAPHICS: 9/10CONTROLS: 4/10SOUND/MUSIC: 8/10OVERALL: 7/10
I've never done this before, so any feedback/suggestions would be appreciated.
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