Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project

aka: DNMP, Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project - Total Mutant Mayhem, Duke Nukem: Projeto Manhattan - A Ameaça Mutante
Moby ID: 6505
Windows Specs
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Description official descriptions

Duke Nukem returns in a new adventure in a third-person platform game which hearkens back to the days of the original Duke Nukem platformers, but this time with a 3D game engine. The story takes place in New York City, where Duke battles his way across towering skyscraper rooftops and through gritty subway stations on the hunt for power-hungry villain, Mech Morphix. Mutants of every kind are thrown at Duke as he chases down Morphix through eight large stages and avoids the green slime called GLOPP that is causing all the chaos.

There are over 25 different enemies Duke has to face such as Uzi-sporting alligators, ten-foot tall roach beasts, Fem-mechs (Female mutant robots with deadly whips) and the classic Pig Cop - all while spouting off his sarcastic one-liners and saving babes. There are nine weapons to choose from, such as the Golden Desert Eagle Pistol, pipe bombs, a machine gun, a rocket launcher, a pulse cannon, and others.

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Credits (Windows version)

49 People (42 developers, 7 thanks) · View all

Thanks to
  • The 3D Realms Staff
  • The Remedy Crew for additional playtesting
Special Thanks to
Design Consultants
Producer
Lead Programmer
Behavioral Programming
Programming
Prism3D Programming Support
Lead Artist
Artist
Art Support
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 72% (based on 54 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.7 out of 5 (based on 75 ratings with 5 reviews)

Kicks much in the way of ass!

The Good
Ah, finally a CLASSIC Duke Nukem game. No more of that stupid 3D shooter, no more useless comments about one of the most impressive vapourware products in history: a Duke Nukem game in classic platform flavour. Hoozah!

I've been platform-deprived for ages. Not being much of a console gamer, the last two worthy platform game in memory before Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project had been Alice and the astounding MDK. Mind you, these games are years apart! So when Manhattan Project came out I went out on a limb and bought it right away, and hoo boy, I was not disappointed.

Take the Schwarzenegger-parody Duke Nukem attitude, add to it a bottom-line kick ass 3D engine called Prism3D, classic platform controls, mix it with some great graphics and level design, stir and serve cold - DNMP has it all. It's short (at hard difficulty, and with my anal-retentive attention to detail and the desire to find every single secret it took 8 hours net), fun, to the point and has the exact amount of varied locations and enemies to keep you constantly interested. Right down to the end, the game never gets boring. As for frustration - even at the highest difficulty level the game is challenging, but not overly so, and simply does not frustrate. Damn fine work, if you ask me!

A word about the 3D engine: a modern graphics card should be able to run it with antialiasing and anisotropic filtering turned on. The difference can be astounding at times - while the game generally looks very good, with AA it looks smooth and with AF it looks extremely sharp despite some mediocre textures. So bottom line, the graphics are absolutely beautiful, particularly for a "classic" 2D platform! The camera angles and varying motion directions really give that extra punch to what would otherwise be a dying genre.

The sound is true-to-form: not absolutely inspired, but gets the job done VERY well. Duke is as, well, as Duke-ish as ever, with snug remarks and silly machoistic attitude ("Babes, bullets, bombs... damn, I love this job!"), the explosion and gunfire sound effects are crisp and everything is just right.

Finally, the level design ROCKS: it never gets repetitive, usually is not easily predictable and all in all extremely pretty. Thumbs up!

The Bad
The save point system is slightly annoying, but admittedly being used to Keen-style platform games where one mistake means running the whole level over again, that's not too bad.

The Bottom Line
An oldschool platform game, with great graphics, sound and level design and 3D twists and surprises to keep you on your toes. If you find it somewhere in a bargain bin, make sure to grab it!

Windows · by Tomer Gabel (4539) · 2004

Welcome back, Duke!

The Good
Duke Nukem returns home to the side scroller platform genre in which he was born in a beautiful action game with glorious graphics and intense action. He may be back in his old genre, but he's bringing with him the attitude from Duke 3D, complete with hilarious one-liners, many of which are original this time*. Duke even pokes fun at himself. "Someone's going to pay for making me find these friggin' keycards!"

It would appear that a big bad villain Morphix is terrorizing New York, so they call upon Duke to save the world, and to save the babes. Duke, equipped with his golden eagle begins his adventure jumping from New York skyscraper rooftop to rooftop killing pig cops and quickly descends into the sewers and subways, deeper and deeper until finally he reaches Morphix's layer.

Any fan of platform games will feel right at home in Manhattan Project. While the game runs in a strictly side-scroller manner, often times the camera will pan around and rotate to reveal to you that you're not just running around in a bland 2D sides-scroller world, but a real 3D environment. But sudden camera twists will never confuse you, because your movement is strictly side-scroller, with the only exception being that sometimes there are alternate and optional routes you can take.

You have eight or nine weapons to your desposal, as well as the infamous "Duke kick" which deals almost as much damage as a shotgun. Throughout every level there are hidden secret locations and "nukes", which if you can gather all ten in the level, you'll receive a permanent bonus to your health and ammo capacity.

Every area consists of three levels (eight areas total - 24 levels), and at the end of every area you'll fight a boss. These bosses, while perhaps a bit easy, are a blast to fight. In one level you'll be hanging off the ladder of a flaming helicopter heaving pipe bombs at it, and the next you'll be riding a subway while a twenty foot-tall cockroach chases you.

The enemies you'll fight are typical, and reminiscent of earlier Dukes. You'll fight pig cops, armed with shotguns, mutant gaters with uzis, as well as some newcomers to the Dukes, like women in leather with whips and goo-spitting cockroaches.

The battles are fought in traditional side-scroller action. Duck, fire, jump and kick, bam! bam! jump back, hang from the pipe, bam! bam! collect dropped ammo and move on. Blood and guts will splatter onto the ground and walls in these battles, and if you're not careful you might find some of that is your own.

The camera movement is excellent. I loved the way you never seemed to be running in a straight line, like most side-scrollers. Often, you would turn the corner, or the camera would shift to an overhead view so you can make it across a difficult path a la Frogger all seamlessly as you marched on. If you can't see what you're doing, you're able to manually pan the camera as well.

Some of the battles can get quite intense, but if you're good (or as good as whomever stars in the demo that begins when you start the game) you can get through it with ease. I wish I could do it that good.

Most of the one-liners from Duke Nukem 3D were swiped from Army of Darkness and other movies.

The Bad*
While the fighting was fun, it did get really repetitive. Maybe if there had been more death animations or more blood or something it would have been better, but it gets a little old when you kill a pig cop, watch him fall, walk a few steps, kill another, watch him fall the same way, and do it over and over again. The death animations aren't particularly interesting, either. They just fall dead. Never a dramatic sort of "knock-back" to illustrate the power of your shotgun or anything.

Your automatic rifle, pistol and shotgun all use the same ammo. Perhaps the rifle and the pistol I can understand, but the shotgun?

The 2nd through the 4th or 5th areas all look identical. It's all sewer and rails, and it gets a little repetitive after a while, especially after the dramatic change from the rooftop-jumping from the first area to the sewer in the second.

This is perhaps just an issue with my video card, but some areas of the game ran awful! There was nothing more in these particular areas than any other, but the game would go from perfect frame rate to .2 FPS for a little while.

Surely there are more "bad" things about this game since it was made to be a platformer and nothing more, and it certainly accomplishes that.

The Bottom Line
For twenty bucks, you bet this is a great game! Fans of Duke or side-scrollers in general, or those wanting to get a bit of nostalgia from them good ol' days will feel right at home in Manhattan Project. It's a great game all around and will provide hours of entertainment.

Wahoo!

Windows · by kbmb (415) · 2002

Fantastic little gem that proves that you can still kick ass well under the 20$ mark.

The Good
You would expect a bargain bin-direct spin-off to a beloved franchise to be a shameful and boring accident for everyone. Truth is, Manhattan Project is a fantastic little gem that is worth much more than it's bargain bin price of admission.

The idea was to give Pc gamers something to tide them over until Duke Forever gets released.... right... anyway, so 3D Realms licensed their main man for a quick return to it's 2D roots in the form of an action-oriented sidescroller. The trick behind it is that regardless of the gameplay style the game uses a fully polygonal engine that allows the camera to zoom in on the action and change perspective on the fly for a more cinematic action, besides allowing for the use of particle and colored lighting effects a fully polygonal environment allows for, making for a considerably more spectacular experience that the usual sidescroller.

Taking place in a mutant-infested Manhattan, the game follows a classic Duke storyline: bad guy Morphix is flooding the city with the mutagenic Glopp Umbrella Corp.-style, but instead of turning everyone into zombies Glopp turns harmless lizards into giant kung-fu fighting monsters, cockroaches into gigantic man-eating beasts and cute piggies into the good ol' pig cops. On top of that Morphix has kidnapped dozens of girls and attached Glopp-bombs to them, and we all know Duke ain't having none of that, so packing his arsenal of weapons and equipment(which include the classic lineup of items from Duke3D as well as some new goodies such as a de-mutating Glopp gun) Duke sets forth to kick some ass while jumping around and saving some babes.

The levels are all simplistic affairs in which you have to collect unlock the exit, find a babe and defuse her bomb, and demolish everything in the middle. Fortunately top-notch level design with plenty of good platforming action and a lot of charisma in the enemies, items and locations take the tedium out of the experience and give the game a fresh look and feel.

As in every platformer you have secret hidden areas, powerups and all sorts of extras in each level which are always fun things to unhide, specially when they award you juiced-up versions of your weapons and other niceties as in this case. Add to that the traditional Duke-isms (by now expanded beyond being Evil Dead ripoffs) as well as good production values for a game of this kind and you have one of the best platformers for the PC in a while.

The Bad
Kind of short (the lenght is where the "budget release" tag in the game is most felt) and truly lackluster boss fights (which should be a high mark in these kinds of games).

Besides that there are some weird ass bugs that caused me to restart at least one level (another consequence I believe of developing a game for a budget release).

Also it comes with a Duke Forever trailer which is extremely sad, specially considering that the game looks quite good.

The Bottom Line
Quite a good release that proves that budget titles don't need to be horsecrap. Add a profitable license, proven gameplay mechanics and a group of developers willing to put some heart into their product and you have a title that delivers the best Duke-fun since the seminal Duke Nukem 3D, and that's counting the gazillions of console-born sequels and spin offs.

Windows · by Zovni (10503) · 2004

[ View all 5 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Very underrated. DNMP (178) Dec 13, 2011

Trivia

Development

Developer Arush originally planned to do a remake of the original Duke Nukem platform game. In the game's folders there still is a soundfile called "proton", where Duke talks about the enemy he fights against. Proton was his enemy in the original Duke Nukem game from 1991. However, Arush then made up their own story with Morphix being the enemy.

Editor

Following the tradition started in Duke Nukem 3D, the game includes a complete level editor hidden in the CD's folders.

Extras

The initial release included a limited edition collectors keychain. The silver colored metallic keychain is circular in design. One side says "Duke Nukem Manhattan Project" and shows the Statue of Liberty with Duke Nukem's signature radioactive (Nuke) symbol behind it. The other side has "NYC" in big letters and says "Good for one fare - Transit authority".

References

  • In the first stage, there's an outdoor to the "Rats" play, a reference to Broadway's Cats.
  • In the second stage, if you pick up a public phone you'll hear a woman's voice saying something like "I know you're searching something Duke, and I know how you feel. Follow the White Rabbit", a reference to The Matrix movie.
  • Latter in the second stage, Duke must avoid some cars crossing a street. As he does it a couple of times, he says "what am I, a frog?", a reference to Frogger, the game.

Release

According to some reports, some retailers were initially not intending to stock this game claiming that it would not sell very well due to it being a budget release.

Information also contributed by chirinea, Daniel Saner and Zovni

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Xantheous.

Macintosh, Xbox 360 added by Sciere. iPhone, iPad added by Kabushi.

Additional contributors: Roger Wilco, Apogee IV, tbuteler, formercontrib, Patrick Bregger, Starbuck the Third.

Game added June 2, 2002. Last modified March 16, 2024.