Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project (GOG)

New York City becomes a mutant-infested war zone as Morphix unleashes GLOPP, a strange chemical slime that turns its wildlife and inhabitants into grotesque enemies. Duke answers the crisis with oversized guns, brutal one-liners, and the sort of cartoonishly macho confidence that defines the series. Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project trades the franchise’s first-person roots for a 2.5D side-scrolling action format, mixing classic platforming with a tongue-in-cheek comic-book presentation. The tone is loud, silly, deliberately tasteless, and proudly rooted in early-2000s arcade action.

Duke runs, jumps, climbs ladders, rides elevators, activates switches, and blasts through levels spread across recognizable Manhattan locations, from sewers and rooftops to subway tunnels. Enemies range from mutated vermin and insect-like creatures to armed alien forces, while Duke’s arsenal includes pistols, shotguns, machine guns, rocket launchers, and more specialized tools for clearing crowded rooms. Health pickups, secret areas, trapped civilians, and destructible objects encourage players to look beyond the most direct route to the exit. Checkpoints keep its often punishing platforming manageable, but enemy placement, bottomless drops, and limited room for mistakes give the campaign an old-school edge.

Its strongest feature is the unusual blend of Duke’s crude action-hero personality with a focused platform-game structure; rather than wandering huge maps, each stage delivers a compact sequence of fights, hazards, and hidden rewards. The 3D character models against side-on environments give it a distinctive transitional look, somewhere between a 1990s run-and-gun and a low-budget animated action serial. Levels are short enough for quick sessions, while rescuing every captive and uncovering secrets adds replay value for completionists. Fans of Contra, early 3D platform-action games, or Duke’s irreverent humor find plenty to enjoy, though players expecting the exploratory freedom of Duke Nukem 3D should treat it as a leaner, more linear spin-off.