Parent's Guide: Duke Nukem 3D: Megaton Edition - Age rating, mature content and difficulty

Duke Nukem 3D: Megaton Edition is a game and expansion pack compilation, bundling together Duke's first first person shooter outing into a handily sized download. Packing together Duke Nukem 3D, and the expansions Duke Caribbean: Life's a Beach; Duke it out in DC and Duke: Nuclear Winter, there's a lot of Duke here for your money, with dozens of levels, hours of gameplay, and hundreds of secrets to be found.

For those familiar with modern shooters, Duke Nukem 3D ends up feeling like a breath of fresh air. Rather than herding you down corridors, Duke Nukem instead plays more like a maze of sorts, with hidden corridors, secret areas, and important key cards waiting to be found, as you figure out how to get from A to B. There's still plenty of enemies to shoot - but working out how to get around is as much a challenge as the combat.

However, this also means it's likely to feel somewhat foreign to some players. With no obvious waypointing to help you figure out where you're supposed to be going next, it's easier to get lost than it is in modern shooters, and even older players will likely find themselves wandering around, lost, looking for the next key card, or a hidden switch that'll let them access the next area - so this may not be the best match with impatient, or trigger happy players. On the plus side, the game's save system takes the frustration out of the sometimes one-hit-kill enemies - rather than restarting you from your last save, the game instead records your progress as you go. What this means is, when you die, you'll be presented with your replay, which you can fast forward, rewind, and jump into at any point to take control again - a really nice touch that takes the edge off the game's difficulty.

Duke Nukem 3D: Megaton Edition is essentially the quintessential Duke Nukem - loud, brash, and far from politically correct. With levels set in strip clubs, the ability to tip strippers in exchange for a flash of boobs, and lots of naked (or half naked) ladies throughout the levels, there's an adolescent kind of humour here, even if everyone you come across is only made out of a handful of pixels, and so it can't really be classed as realistic nudity.

Weapon effects are as realistic as they could have been back in the day, and leave enemies in a pile of blood and mush. Beyond phrases like "blow it out your ass" and "I've got balls of steel", there's little here in the way of bad language, however.

Age Ratings

Format Reviewed: Playstation 3