This was a game I was initially super hyped for when it was announced it was coming to PS4 in 2016. I loved Doom 1993, Doom 2016 and Return to Castle Wolfenstein. I wasn't the Doom 2 fan yet. I might've recalled pre ordering this version of Duke 3D but when I finally played I was really disappointed by it particular in how I found the level design way too confusing. 2 years later, I would actually beat the game and I would really enjoy it. I'd beat it a 2nd time a few years later. I'd decided to another run of the Episode 1-3 again and while I still really enjoy some things like the over reliance on hitscanners and much of the enemy line up can be big sore spots for it.
When discussing Duke 3D two of it's biggest positives are it's level design and how it refuses to tell the player anything.By comparison to the first two Doom games and the first Quake which came out the same year. Duke 3D's location have so much more personality and feel lively by comparison. Instead of in very abstract locations like a Mars Research Base, Hell or Gothic Mediveal settings, you are in futuristic LA, an Alien Spaceship, and various places on earth. It gives the levels an idea of them being actually lived in instead of just places that are an excuse for you to kill monsters. Places like a hotel, subway, bank, prison the San Andreas fault and even the Alien levels of episode feels like there's a slow gradual journey when going through it.
How you start at a Spaceport but then slowly go through a multi layered level where there's space terminals taking you to different parts of the levels that loop you back to the hub of where the level started. It's also fun to just find random secrets by blowing up cracked walls with either pipe bombs or the rocket launcher. You'll need those portable medkits due to issues I will mention later.
There's also a great amount of narrative foreshadowing and in universe reason for player hints with the cameras. The aliens are always watching and if you are confused on where to go, press the interact button on the monitor and it will give a list of places in the level you might've already been to or haven't explored yet. It's a good way of guiding the player without being intrusive.
This might as well transition to the next positive or an issue depending on who you are and that is how the game tells you absolutely nothing. That camera system is the closest thing to guide you even get in the game. Duke 3D tells you nothing. You need a jetpack to get a higher place or across? You even have a jet pack? Need to a puzzle to get furthur in a level? Need to jump on switch to open revolving doors to get a key? Need to go through specific color grading to not get crushed by moving gears? Need to find a shrink ray projecticle to get you small to open a new part of the level? Need to have a hook in factory get you into another part of the level? Accidentally missed a switch? Shooting switches can activate parts of the levels? You get the idea, the game just won't tell you or give you any kind of idea that you can or have to do any of this stuff to get the level exit.
This will be very offputting to many who play the game for the first time and if you are overly used to how a lot of after 1996 to now are used to doing things it will be even more so. It's hard to really get accustomed even if you play Doom 1993.
If you do get used this and come to terms with what the game expects. There's a very rewarding game that rewards problem solving just as much as shooting things.
The weapon line up is good. You got your usual archetypes like a pistol, shotgun, assault rifle(which is a chaingun but same idea), rocket launcher but you also get some weirder ones like Pipe Bombs, Trip Bombs, Shrink and Freeze Ray, and the Devastator. The latter weapons makes the game standout from Doom and Quake.
I do love lining up Shrink Ray shots and then squishing multiple enemies at once. Trip and Pipe Bombs are fun to use when low on rocket ammo. The Devastator is a fun dual wielding rocket launcher weapon.
After all this praise, there is one big problem with the game that can be irritating at best and absolutely infuriating at worst. That is overreliance on hitscanners. There's your usual culprits like Pigcops and they lots of damage but they are the least annoying due to their wind up time. You fight Assault Captains, Troopers, and Enforcers A LOT. They have hitscan machine guns that can chip away at your hp very quickly when in groups. The Battlelord Sentry has a hitscan chaingun too. It also doesn't that the Sentry Drone is also poorly designed and if you aren't chaingunning or firing rockets before they get close you lose a lot of health.
It's good that there's lot of health packs and portable medkits on normal difficulty since many of the firefights can turn into last man standing battles and getting attacked from behind a lot.
Overall, Duke 3D is very good but there can be some massive sore spots.
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