Graphics / Sound Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Game Controls Rating: 3.15 out of 5 stars
Gameplay Rating: 4.25 out of 5 stars
Re-use / Replay Value Rating: 4.25 out of 5 stars
Overall Rating: 4.04 out of 5 stars
You youngsters who are not quite brushed up on your video game history may only know Duke Nukem by name; a legend who once ruled the video game industry with his slick 3d graphics and sassy catchphrases. More experienced gamers have much more fond memories of Mr. Nukem as the baddest dude around. I remember giving my lunch away for a week for a copy of Duke Nukem on PC because my mom wouldn’t buy it for me. That’s how awesome Duke Nukem was back in his heyday. He made children forsake their mothers for a few hours of bloody fun. He saved the world from alien invasions AND got a ton of tail in the process… like Bruce Willis in Die Hard, except way cooler… and with hair.
Duke Nukem 3D is MachineWorks Northwest LLC’s nearly flawless port of Duke’s first PC outing brought to you by 3D Realms. All of the little things are there, including the right of passage for every child to discover the little Easter egg in the original Duke Nukem where you could hand dollars to a stripper for an amazing pixelated show, and now you get to live this all over again.
Why this game kicks serious tail
It’s Duke Nukem just as you remember him. Graphically, this game is just as you remember it in its’ PC days, if not better. The game plays great. On my 3GS the game runs oh so smoothly, and from talking to a couple of homies operating on the 3G, it plays just as nicely. MachineWorks definitely did a good job in bringing over the original look and feel of the original Duke Nukem. The sound is just as good as well. Most, if not all of Duke’s original catchphrases are there and the quirky little interactions with the environments that made the game so funny back in the day are also still there.
The controls are a plus and a minus for me. MachineWorks made a great effort at making DN3D as easy to control as possible. There are two different control schemes for you to take advantage of and I can’t truly say which one is better, because they both have their advantages and disadvantages. The classic analog controls give you two virtual joysticks which work well once you get used to them, but are still a little buggy. The digital controls are a little odd at first as well but if you take the time to learn them they may be a little bit more convenient to use than the analog controls. Like I said before, different gamers will find different value in each of these control schemes.
The firing system was well thought out for this game, and like your control system there are two options to choose from, but you’re only going to use one. There is the lesser crosshair system in which Duke will fire where the crosshair is aimed, but this one is a little bit difficult to use. While the controls may work well enough, they aren’t refined enough to be able to accurately aim with them. The alternative touch to shoot system works really well in this game, and does exactly what it says. You touch where you want to shoot and Duke shoots there. This system works really well in situations where you will encounter a ton of enemies and I found the system accurate enough to use to fire at enemies who were only small blips on the screen.
Not much needs to be said about the gameplay besides this. You know what you’re getting with Duke Nukem… pure shooter with tons of bad guys, blood, and boobies. If you were a fan of the original Duke Nukem, then you will like this iteration. Besides the controls, it’s exactly the same game as it was before. Duke Nukem 3D was one of the most popular games of its’ generation because of its’ great gameplay and this definitely carries over.
Why this game falls flat on its’ face.
It doesn’t, but honestly it comes really really close…
The controls are just good enough for this game to be passable. That’s really one of the only bad things I can say about this game. It’s a bit tough to shoot and strafe out of the way of incoming fire at the same time but it can defintely be done after a bit of practice. One of the nice things that MachineWorks did was make the placement of the controls 100% customizeable. This is one of the saving graces of Duke Nukem 3D. The analog control scheme, as I stated before, still seems really buggy. You can’t drag your finger around the joysticks, you kind of have to lift your finger off before you can change directions, which is annoying, and for anybody who plays any console games whatsoever, it’s a completely unnatural motion to make.
This being said, there aren’t really any more negatives I can come up with… Sooooo… I guess this is where we chew the bubblegum since I’m all out of ass kickings to give out.
The final verdict
Duke Nukem 3D is definitely the port classic fans of the game were looking for. The controls are little bit shoddy but I would guess that fans of the original game wouldn’t mind this for a chance to play one of the greatest PC games of all time, on the go. For newcomers to the series, if you can pick up a game with great gameplay but lacking controls and get around it then it will absolutely be worth your 3 bucks (which is a bargain for a big name franchise like this.) If dealing with frustrating controls could ruin your gaming experience then you may want to think twice about this purchase, but I would highly reccomend that you give it a chance.
Duke Nukem 3D helped raise me into the fine young gentleman that I am, and hopefully it can do the same for preteens and young adults wielding iPhones in this generation.
That was a lie, don’t buy this game for your kids. It’ll mess them up.
Sure, Apple is dead to Jason Calacanis but we think the old rainbow fruit might still have a little life left in her — therefore, here’s the latest iPhone app store news.
Duke Nukem 3D
Duke Nukem 3D is awesome and disappointing. Today, Richard takes a look at Duke Nukem 3D. He’s a lot more generous with the app than I think I would have been. Such is the way with reviews. While it’s amazingly cool to see Duke on the iPhone screen, that excitement was greatly diminished once I started to play it. The controls are just awful. To me they just show a complete lack of understanding of the platform. Something you’d expect to see of an amateur developer but not from a developer with this much experience. They must have just had to rush it out for some reason. Also, seems as though they aren’t limiting the speed properly. On a 3GS, the movements are extremely fast. Oh well, it’s still cool to see. Let’s hope the controls get fixed up soon. For nostalgia’s sake I’d love to actually be able to play it rather than just show it off.
Category: Games / Action Released: 2009-08-03 Price: $2.99
Galcon Looking Great!
Galcon 1 year anniversary brings a facelift. We’ve heard from Galcon creator Phil Hessey that he has submitted an update that gives it “shiny real-game feel instead of a made in some guy’s basement feel.” While we think the original looks fantastic, take a look at this sample image to see what awesomeness is to come. The update marks the 1 year anniversary of Galcon being in the app store.
If you’re not familiar with Galcon, it’s a great single / multiplayer real time strategy game. It’s a fantastic game if you like a little strategy with your arcade, check it out. The update has been submitted and is a free upgrade to anyone who has bought the app. It should be available soon.
Category: Games / Arcade Released: 2009-04-23 Price: $2.99
SlingPlayer Mobile 1.1 to work over 3G — outside the US. So if AT&T has no say in what apps get approved, why is AT&T the only carrier who’s customers will not be seeing an update to Slingplayer to allow streaming of content over 3G? Viewing content over 3G is just one of the features planned in this rumored release recently submitted to Apple. Other purported features in this update include 16:9 viewing and an updated user interface for Dish Network users. Via TUAW.
eTextbooks may finally be here.CourseSmart have released an iPhone application that interfaces with their online textbook rental service. According to their site the usual rental is for 180 days and is about 50% the normal cost of the book. The downside is of course that there is no trade in value. So in the end it’s about the same as buying and then selling a textbook yet considerably more convenient. The app is free and requires an account from their site to use.
USAA bank brings virtual check deposits to the iPhone. USAA have updated their mobile banking app and included a new feature they call Deposit@Mobile. The feature allows their customers with iPhones to take a picture of the front and back of a check to deposit it. Once that’s done and it’s verified at the bank, the check will appear in your account just like you deposited it at an ATM. It’s a pretty big advancement and one that’s sure to see some scrutiny from security experts. But, it’s a step in the right direction.
If you’re as lazy and disorganized as I am you’ve probably got duplicates all over the place in your iPhone contacts. Fix It’s job is to make it easy to remove the duplicates and it also lets you rearrange a few labels within your contacts which I don’t really see a need for but the feature’s there so yay, I guess.
As far as cleaning up the contacts goes, Fix It does make it pretty easy in most respects. It will find contacts that are duplicated and group them together so that you can choose which ones to get rid of or, if it’s one of those mysterious names that makes you go “who the hell is that??”, you can delete the contact and all duplicates with just two quick taps.
The thing about Fix It that kind of vexes me is that it wouldn’t remove some of my duplicates for whatever reason. After zapping all the dupes it gave me a “thumbs up” screen that said I’d gotten all of them. I exited the app, then started it again, and suddenly some of the duplicates came back from the dead! I deleted them again. Exit. Restart. Once again they’re back.
I guess it’s a bug that WildFone needs to work out… for me, there were only five un-killable duplicates that kept on resurrecting themselves (deleting manually in Contacts did the trick), but I only have about 300 contacts, half of which are liquor stores and burrito joints. If you’re one of the popular kids and have thousands of contacts, this bug could be much more of an annoyance.
Something to keep in mind as you’re going around trashing stuff from your contact list is that you can un-delete things from the trash and, in a major emergency, you can un-delete everything if there’s a contact you really wish you hadn’t kicked to the curb. I haven’t tried the full restore because I really don’t feel like going through my duplicates again, but the option is there if you need it. When you’re looking at the duplicates screen, just shake your iPhone to get the warning message for restoring everything to its original state. This is a nice feature that almost makes you want to use Fix It for all contact deletions, just in case.
The label-fixer allows you to switch only three labels: First, Last, and Company. In case you accidentally screwed up and put in Bob Vance as Vance Bob, you’re an idiot but that mistake is easily fixable with this part of the app. Hopefully you at least put Vance Refrigeration in the Company field instead of first or last name.
I can see how fixing labels might be useful, but having only three fields to fix makes this feature pretty limited. I think it’s a lot more likely that I’d mix up someone’s work and cell phone, or work address vs. personal address, but those fields aren’t included here.
Overall I like how Fix It goes about presenting duplicate contacts because it gives me the opportunity to look at them before deciding which one to delete, but the mysterious un-deletable contact bug and the limited label fuctionality are both areas that I hope get addressed in a future update. If your contacts are completely messed up and you’re just too scared to take on the daunting task of doing the cleanup manually, Fix It is a pretty good hand-holding app that will make the job seem a little less painful.
The title of this app kind of says it all: mimic syncs profile photos from your Facebook friends to your contacts. Cool concept! But does it work?
mimic’s “design”, if you can call it that, is an exercise in minimalism. It’s simply a blue screen with a brief description of what the app’s about to do plus a “Connect” button, and once you provide your login info it goes right to work. I have 169 Facebook friends but I wasn’t really expecting to get 169 photos since some of my contacts on my iPhone aren’t named exactly the same way as they are on Facebook. I was, however, expecting more than 16 photos to get synced which was my grand total after mimic did its thing.
Why only 16 photos? It took a while but I finally figured out that mimic hates duplicates and apparently won’t sync photos if a duplicate contact exists. After dumping most of my dupes with Fix It my Facebook headcount rose to 25 which seems a little more realistic… I was actually expecting even more than this, but like I said not all of my contacts have exactly the same name as they do on Facebook.
mimic’s process couldn’t be simpler and I really like what it does, and I even like the simplicity of it even though a post-sync summary of whose pics got added would be a nice touch. Also welcome would be more social networks to sync with, but something tells me that’s an API issue and might require separate apps.
Hey, speaking of API, you know what would be really cool? If mimic would update the contact info from Facebook, too. After all, the profile contact info on Facebook is maintained by the contacts themselves so why not sync that up as well? Dare to dream.
$2.99 feels just a little steep for this app but if you live on Facebook and really want those pics on your contacts, this is a great way to do it. Just make sure you kill the duplicate contacts before you get started.
You know those console fighting games like Tekken and Soul Caliber where you’re just madly pressing buttons without knowing what will really happen but it seems to work so you keep on doing it? iNinja’s gameplay is just a tiny bit like that except instead of pressing buttons you’re frantically swiping your fingers this way and that and, somehow, you manage to knock out the ninjas who are flying all over the screen.
iNinja arms you with throwing stars and nunchuks for beating down wave after wave of flying ninjas and, depending on the game mode, UFOs. The controls are simple enough… swipe upward with one finger to throw a star, hold down a bit to gain power and then swipe to really fling that star as hard as you can, and use two fingers to swing the chuks like an out-of-control moron.
There are four game modes: normal, survival, time attack, and super time attack. I know there’s something different about each one but, to be perfectly honest, all I do in this game is fling stars and swing the chuks blindly and it doesn’t really matter what mode I’m playing! One thing that does matter, however, is what kind of obstacles there are between you and the ninjas you’re trying to take down. There may be big green boulders that can drift around and kill stuff for you if you hit them the right way, there may be smaller red balls that stay somewhat in place like bumpers on a pinball machine, and there may be a combination of the two.
Depending on what you’re dealing with, there are different strategies that can work for you or against you… sometimes flinging star after star after star will do the trick, other times you’ll need the nunchaku, and if you really want to get fancy you can tap several times to get a little mass of stars going and then fling another star at the group to send them everywhere. Again, the gameplay in iNinja is pretty frantic so I guess the best thing to do is just go with whatever works.
One feature I haven’t had the chance to test out is the Fight mode which allows you to play head-to-head with another iPhone ninja. If you and another player both have your iPhones on the same wifi network, you can duke it out in a two-player battle but naturally I have no friends so I’m afraid you’ll just have to try it out for yourself to see how it works.
Like all games I wish Geppetto Inc. would let iNinja play iPod music during the game but it doesn’t, and it has a local scoreboard but not a global one which would be a nice addition in a future update. The overall production quality of iNinja is pretty good so if you’re a fan of gameplay that’s more action than skill this might be worth the $2 download.
