Duke Nukem: Time to Kill

Duke Nukem: Time to Kill is an average shoot-’em-up slash RPG. It has all the problem-solving scenarios of Tomb Raider with an exceptional gunplay factor on top, loads of enemies and a pile of weapons. The catch is that it keeps reusing the same level under different paint: travel through time and you still find roughly the same number of switches to pull and the same kinds of puzzles to solve in each era, which makes it too easy and meant I was not entertained for long. But if you liked Tomb Raider and only wished there were more stuff to kill, this is the game for you.

Control is a lot like Tomb Raider, with the camera set just above Duke’s head so you can see him in a 3D space. Time to Kill improves a few things that plagued earlier games of this type: you can stand still and freely look around your surroundings, and any object in front of Duke turns transparent so you can see past it. Even so, I still found it hard to walk him through some corridors, and sometimes could not spot enemies that were busy shooting at me. Good fixes, then, but not a perfect job.

The graphics are also Tomb Raider-like, which is to say not great. The environments are not very convincing and just do not look good, I had trouble telling enemies apart and often could not work out what an object was supposed to be. The gore is nice, though, and the gunplay papers over a lot of the visual flaws. Overall the graphics are average, not the best I have seen.

Sound is average too. The screams and snarls are pretty unrealistic and often arrive late, and the whole mix gets irritating after a while. The guns, at least, make a good, loud, realistic noise. Decent gun blasts on an otherwise forgettable soundtrack.

Overall, Time to Kill is a game for the blood-hungry Tomb Raider lover, with plenty of puzzles to solve and plenty of enemies to kill. The problem is that those puzzles, and the bosses, go down far too easily compared with the better games in its genre. There is fun here if shooting is all you want, but the lack of challenge keeps it from being more than average.