Hail to the king baby.... The Duke is back.
For those of you who have never owned a PC Duke Nukem TTK is actually the fourth in the series. The first two aren't worth mentioning but the third installment elevated Duke to cult status in the videogaming world. He is a muscle-bound, politically incorrect, foul mouthed mutha with more guns than Arnie and an attitude like a gangta rapper. Now he's back and he's mad 'cos the aliens are at it again but this time they are doing bad ass alien type things in different time zones. It's up to Duke to do his Marty McFly impression and head off back to the future......
The main difference that you'll find if you've played Duke 3D is that Time to Kill uses 3rd person persective as opposed to 1st person. If you've played Tomb Raider then you will have no problem getting the hang of the controls. In fact you sometimes get the impression that GT are mocking the folks at Core such are the similarities, even down to the bit where Duke finds a Lara outfit hanging in a wardrobe and comes out with one of his choice phrases. His auto-aiming isn't as precise as Laras which makes for a little more in the skill department although there is a nice feature whereby pressing one of the shoulder buttons zooms the camera into almost first person mode with a red dot for those hard to target shots. The game starts in L.A. where Duke has to find three crystals to operate the time machine so he can go back and forth through the centuries and exterminate these dastardly aliens. Levels include Wild West, Futuristic L.A. and Roman scenarios and Duke comes dressed accordingly. Imagine that, Duke Nukem in a fetching Toga. Are you going to tell him he looks like a wuss? Weapons also change according to the time zone. It's the same basic concept as Duke 3D, basically find keys to open doors and kill everything that moves. Well apart from the dancing girls who are still shaking it.....baby. Duke still retains his inimitable sense of humour from the previous game and the fact that you can shoot and blow up almost anything makes for good entertainment. The main enemies are the usual suspects. Lizards and Pig Cops sporting appropriate attire too. If you get bored of trailing round the huge levels you could always take a breather and call in a mate to challenge with the Deathmatch option. Basically the screen is split and you each choose a Duke and a location and then run round the place like madmen picking up as many weapons as you can and shooting seven bells out of each other. Great fun especially after a few beers.
Although very similar to Tomb Raider visually I reckon it is on-par with Tomb Raider I but no better. The graphics aren't ground-breaking but as it is very gameplay orientated this can be over-looked. Duke doesn't seem to flow quite as smoothly as the more agile Lara does (in saying that Duke's a big guy and not a gymnast).
The main nucleus of the sound is dedicated to earth shattering explosions and gunfire. The rest is made up of a ever present time changing soundtrack in the background and the Duke with his witty phrases as he pumps them full of lead. Good enough for me.
Since gaining mega stardom on the PC the conversion of Duke 3D on to Playstation didn't seem to go down very well. I played it briefly and found the many controls that are easily accessed with a keyboard at hand had to be accessed with a wide range of tricky combinations on a standard joypad. So the change of persective and the Tomb Raider-like controls were a refreshing change for me. There is plenty of value for money in this game as the levels are huge (sometimes too big) and the deathmatch option is great fun. If you just want to go around shooting things with minimal brain taxation the TTK is the game for you.
