Review by: Jeff McAllister

Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project is a straight up reissue of the 2002 side scroller from 3D Realms. In it, our testosterone filled hero travels across various locations such as the New York sewers, an oil rig and even into outer space, on the trail of Morphix, a maniacal villain who is trying to spread his green G.L.O.P.P. ooze which transforms animals and insects into mutated creatures.

Being that the game is eight years old, it holds up surprisingly well in its resurrected XBLA form. While the game is essentially a side-scrolling shooter, the environment will turn at times to follow Duke as he goes around corners for some visual variance. The camera will also shift around at different angles revealing the 3D world, although while playing, you will still be bound to only explore it on a 2D level.

For the most part, the game is pretty straight forward. Make your way to the left and right and shoot everything you come across, hopping up ladders and pulling yourself up to higher levels when necessary. For each level you will need to rescue a bomb strapped, half-naked woman, who will thank you with eye-roll inducing appreciation and find a key card that will allow you to exit and move on. In later levels, the game does mix up the linear paths a little by making it so that you need to switch to a different stratum, taking you to the foreground or background of the screen, as well as into doorways to enter different areas. It does get a bit frustrating when you can see where you need to go but can't reach it – “just jump down to your left Duke!”

Death comes quick and often during play but Duke has the arsenal he needs to survive– including a shotgun, machinegun, pipe bombs, pulse cannon and the GLOPP Ray that de-mutates enemies to their original form and makes them prime for stomping. If the weapons weren’t enough to help you through, there are also the Double Damage and Force Field power ups and jetpack to help you deal with the mutated rats, cockroaches, whip snapping females and of course, the returning Pig Cops.

For the most part Manhattan Project is a passable game, but in later levels, the frame rate drops to a slide show. There’s not much going on the screen at the time, but the visuals get choppy and skip, when a game – especially a remake of an eight year old game- really shouldn’t. While the running and gunning and few puzzles were easy to deal with, the constant chatter from Duke wasn’t so much. Hearing him continually repeat “I hate pigs” and “makin’ bacon”, among many other ridiculous catch phrases, gets tiring quickly. Maybe I’m just older and more jaded, but hearing “say hello to my little friend” just made me shake my head and sigh.

As far as side scrolling shooters go, you could certainly do a lot worse than this with games that were released this year (coughMattHazardcough), but you can also do much, much better. Duke is a nice trip down nostalgia lane if you have been missing Duke’s smug face over the years and want to get reacquainted with the jeans wearing meathead but if you have already been there, there’s really no real reason to return.