Story: Alien invasion. Kill the monsters, save the babes, rinse, and repeat. Trust me, you’re not here for the story. It’s Duke Nukem minus the main character having a personality. The weapons in the game seriously come from VENDING MACHINES for goodness sake. The intro cut scene doesn’t even make any effort to explain who Harry is, where he came from, or why the vaguely-authoritative looking lady on the space station is sending him into a hostage situation in enemy territory all alone.
Graphics: The graphics are about as good as you can do with the very static sprites of the day. Enemy zombies burn up into skeletons, alien creatures explode messily, and Harry’s jetpack actually produces smoke that trails dynamically. Levels are punctuated with cut scenes complete with animated talking faces.
My only major gripe with the graphics is that certain screens, such as the splash screen and main menu, scroll in from the top, then fade out and back in, a process taking about 5 seconds for no real reason. It’s possible this was an effect Dos Box wasn’t emulating properly but even so it’s needlessly time consuming and irritating.
Sound: The music is catchy if a bit unmemorable. It fits the tone and gets the job done, and is complicated
enough to keep you interested while not being distracting from the action. The sound effects are adequate, though there isn’t a whooshing noise for the flame thrower. The only really distracting thing is the strange clicking noise zombies make when you roast them alive.
Game-play: On the whole it’s a fairly average gun-heavy platform game. Kill the bad guys, take their money, buy weapons to kill more bad guys, kill more bad guys to buy more weapons, etc. You also rescue damsels which are tangled up in green tendrils, and of course find switches to clear the way forward.
The only game mechanic that really throws in anything interesting is the jet pack. Unlike most games that feature one, you have your jet pack right from the start, which makes the levels feel a bit less linear since you can explore vertically at will. Jetpack fuel is limited, making you budget and think before accessing a high area.
This mechanic is kind of irritating as well though, because the jetpack shares its fuel reservoir with your flame thrower, which is your bread and butter weapon and definitely the most fun to use. This is compounded by the fact that Harry will not jump AT ALL. He seriously couldn’t make it to the top of a kitchen chair without a boost. You can still boost for short hops once the fuel is gone, but that doesn’t really help in most situations. Although the fuel/ammo is fairly plentiful and cheap, it still forces me to be more conservative than I’d like to be in a game that’s all about burning up alien zombies.
The controls are mostly remap-able but the switch weapon key is stuck on space bar, which is irritating and counter intuitive. The rest of the controls are fairly tight, with the only slow response coming from slowly lifting off with a jet pack when we’re all so used to jumping.
Bottom Line: All in all, a good if fairly average apogee game and a decent successor to Duke Nukem, Bio Menace, and Monster Bash. It’s very much worth a try, but doesn’t really stand out as much as its brothers.
