- edit
- /
- history
- /
- upload images
Map review of Duke Nukem 3D REMAKE for Half-Life (OLD VERSION - New Version in INFO)
by dunkelschwamm | June 25, 2025 | 4245 characters
My buddy Grandmaster and I played through a bunch of this mapset the other week. We'd played a bit of the Remake the week before, and decided to see what the differences were before reviewing either. Full disclosure: I did not finish the mapset, though I did get quite far.
This mapset offers a spectacle of fun weapon and enemy reskins in a loose (but only kinda loose) recreation of Duke Nukem 3D's first and second episodes. The weapons and enemies are often the best part, with the novelty of DN3D's spaces fading as the mapset goes on.
Early on, the recreation of E1M1 of DN3D is a great rush- the street battle is intense, if a bit of a murder box until you clamor toward the tank and control it to blast away everything in sight. The first map carries an intensity of interactable destructible environments and balls-to-the-wall action that works fantastic for the map, even if the aged build engine school of map navigation is only aggravated by the liberties taken by the map author.
In the E1M2 recreation, the cracks start showing. The map begins with a street battle that crescendos the entire mapset's action early. The rest feels oddly hollow after such an action-packed ordeal, awkwardly navigating the simultaneously watered-down and bloated additions to the map- including a terrible sewer segment that goes on far too long. The DN3D charm of the smut shop and the club, both recreated without major issues in this mapset, make this still a very memorable map.
E1M3 is the last I'd say is terribly memorable. The recreation of a somewhat real location- a prison- lends to what makes DN3D cute and memorable. However, it's around here that this starts feeling more like an old shooter with confusing hallways and the nostalgia of DN3D stopped helping as much. The small changes are felt more and more, and the strange pacing of high-octane fights early on followed by slow trudges through corridors gets draining here.
The recreation of E1M4 is where momentum goes to die. I don't blame the mapset, because this map is terrible in the original DN3D. It's an enormous sewer segment with occasional outdoor toxic waste dump water level segments. Navigation is clunky, the combat always feels like a nuisance for how it's tacked onto an already annoying environmental segment, and everything is ugly to look at. Again, this is a source material issue more than anything.
The recreation of the Abyss also suffers a lot of the original map's issues. Lots of bland, confusing navigation in samey looking textured areas while enemies take potshots at you from god-knows where. Getting deeper into the ruins where the boss battle takes place is confusing to navigate, but when you finally do there's a battle with a giant bullet-sponge Tor inside the alien spaceship.
From there, the maps go into Episode 2. I didn't play further than the first map of this, but it seemed like it very faithfully recreated E2M1.
Again, I think the mapset shines brightest when it's throwing fun weapons and enemies at you in cute environments. Where it suffers the most is when environments start blending together in a maze. In the end, I came to review it without finishing it because I really couldn't justify the time it'd take to keep picking away at it.
That said, I would still recommend the first two maps, and the third if you're still having fun. Once you clear the shareware Duke Maps, though, what follows is a trudge.
Pros:
- Fun weapon and enemy reskins!
- The maps are each, indeed, identifiably recreations of DN3D maps
- Highly interactive environments, especially the destructibles in the first map
- Balls-to-the-wall action most of the time
Cons:
- Navigation can get clunky and tiring, and where it departs from the outdated source material it only gets clunkier
- Downward action curve
- I swear there wasn't this much necessary sewer time in the original DN3D, and when there was it was usually more brief
- After the third level, the maps lack in identity owing largely to the source material
Review originally from *
