Duke Nukem 3D (Atomic Edition)

Duke Nukem's highly interactive environment is one of the best features a game could have. The staff at Lion Entertainment have done a great job, as usual, porting Duke to the Mac, and I consider this game a leader in its class. Although Duke Nukem is fun, full of action, and sometimes amusing, parents should be aware of its contents and decide whether or not to utilize the parental controls in Duke Nukem. Some of the animations at the end of certain episodes are very controversial to some, but overall, Duke Nukem for Mac is currently the brightest of lights in the dark world of Mac gaming.

But controversial stuff aside, Duke Nukem Atomic is a heck of a fun addition to the original episodes. My only real complaint is that the levels are fairly expansive, and you'll feel like you're roaming around a ghost town if you play over the network with fewer than four players. Still, any Duke fan hungry for a little more "unnecessary roughness" will want to shell out for this one.

Yes it's been surpassed by a great many first-person shooters over the years, but the Duke's first 3D outing remains his very best and you're getting a hell of a lot of gameplay in this package for what amounts to around a fiver.

If you haven't bought your copy of Duke Nukem 3D yet, you're missing out on quite a gamer's treat. While long time Marathon fans may be disappointed by the lack of a progressive story line, Duke's witty humor and all-around better game play will more than make up for that. While Quake will be more graphically impressive than Duke, it is more of a display of the capabilities of the 3D graphics engine than a game.

This upgrade should be appealing to those who enjoy using the Build editor because of the new textures and weather effects. Overall, these levels are solid and very tough, though the original levels were, on the whole, decidedly better. Suffice to say, if you're a Duke fan, then you'll probably want to pick up the Plutonium Pack.