Duke Nukem 3D
=== Setting ===
Duke Nukem 3D is set on Earth "sometime in the early 21st century". The levels of Duke Nukem 3D take players outdoors and indoors through rendered street scenes, military bases, deserts, a flooded city, space stations, moon bases, and a Japanese restaurant.
The game contains several humorous references to pop culture. Some of Duke's lines are drawn from movies such as Aliens, Dirty Harry, Evil Dead II, Full Metal Jacket, Jaws, Pulp Fiction, and They Live; the mutated women saying "Kill me" is a reference to Aliens. Players will encounter corpses of famous characters such as Luke Skywalker, Indiana Jones, Snake Plissken, the protagonist of Doom, and a smashed T-800. In the first episode, players navigate a tunnel in the wall of a prison cell hidden behind a poster, just like in The Shawshank Redemption. During the second episode, players can see The Monolith (from 2001: A Space Odyssey) on the moon. In the bathroom of the first level, 867-5309 is written on a wall.
The game cover itself is a parody of Army of Darkness, with Duke posing as Ash Williams.
=== Story ===
There is little story in the game, only a brief text prelude located under "Help" in the Main Menu, and a few cutscenes after the completion of an episode. The game picks up right after the events of Duke Nukem II, with Duke returning to Earth in his space cruiser. As Duke descends on Los Angeles in hopes of taking a vacation, his ship is shot down by unknown hostiles. While sending a distress signal, Duke learns that aliens are attacking Los Angeles and have mutated the LAPD. With his vacation plans now ruined, Duke hits the "eject" button, and vows to do whatever it takes to stop the alien invasion.
In "Episode One: L.A. Meltdown", Duke fights his way through a dystopian Los Angeles. At a strip club, he is captured by pig-cops, but escapes the alien-controlled penitentiary and tracks down the alien cruiser responsible for the invasion in the San Andreas Fault. Duke discovers that the aliens were capturing women, and detonates the ship. Levels in this episode include a movie theater, a Red Light District, a prison, and a nuclear-waste disposal facility.
In "Episode Two: Lunar Apocalypse", Duke journeys to space, where he finds many of the captured women held in various incubators throughout space stations that had been conquered by the aliens. Duke reaches the alien mothership on the Moon and kills an alien Overlord. As Duke inspects the ship's computer, it is revealed that the plot to capture women was merely a ruse to distract him. The aliens have already begun their attack on Earth.
In "Episode Three: Shrapnel City", Duke battles the massive alien resistance through Los Angeles once again, and kills the leader of alien menace: the Cycloid Emperor. The game ends as Duke promises that after some "R&R", he will be "...ready for more action!", as an anonymous woman calls him back to bed. Levels in this episode include a sushi bar, a movie set, a subway, and a hotel.
The story continues in the Atomic Edition. In "Episode Four: The Birth", it is revealed that the aliens used a captured woman to give birth to the Alien Queen, a creature which can quickly spawn deadly alien protector drones. Duke is dispatched back to Los Angeles to fight hordes of aliens, including the protector drones. Eventually, Duke finds the lair of the Alien Queen, and kills her, thus thwarting the alien plot. Levels in this episode include a fast-food restaurant ("Duke Burger"), a supermarket, a Disneyland parody called "Babe Land," a police station, the Exxon Valdez, and Area 51.
With the release of 20th Anniversary World Tour, the story progress further. In "Episode Five: Alien World Order", Duke finds out that the aliens initiated a world-scale invasion, so he sets out to repel their attack on various countries. Duke proceeds to clear out aliens from Amsterdam (Netherlands), Moscow (Russia), London (England), San Francisco (USA), Paris (France), Giza Pyramid (Egypt), Rome (Italy), with the final showdown with the returning alien threat taking place in Los Angeles, taking the game full circle. There, he defeats the new "Inferno" Cycloid Emperor, the current alien leader, stopping their threat for good.
violence