Duke Nukem: Land of the Babes - Review

I recently repurposed a Raspberry Pi 3B+ that had been lying around unused into a retro console. To do that, I used the RetroArch Linux distribution Lakka.

As a child of the ’90s, and with a PSOne—the small white thing with the rounded corners—I first dug out my PlayStation library. In addition, I went looking for which titles actually came out back then as PlayStation exclusives. Because often the versions for other platforms are more extensive or simply nicer, so why play them on the PSX?

One of these games is Duke Nukem: Time to Kill and Duke Nukem: Land of the Babes. This post is about the latter.

I’m playing this not only via RetroArch and PCSX ReARMed, but also with my original DualShock 2 controllers using a PlayStation-to-USB adapter.

By the way, the PSOne still works perfectly. Unfortunately, I’m missing a SCART-to-HDMI converter...

First impressions

Overall, Duke Nukem: Land of the Babes wasn’t received very well back then, with a Metacritic score of just 37 out of 100. Other outlets like AllGame (1.5 out of 5), GameSpot (6.2 out of 10), IGN (4 out of 10), and others also rate the game rather poorly. But that didn’t stop me from giving it a try anyway.

As a fan of the Duke Nukem series, even though a character like this and a game like this would probably get canceled these days, I have to say it’s not that miserable. Sure, the controls are a bit clunky, even by 2001 standards, and it has more the vibe of a flat Tomb Raider with Duke Nukem in the lead role, but otherwise it’s quite okay.

I haven’t played the predecessor, Time to Kill, yet, though it has noticeably better ratings. Maybe it’s a good thing I started with the weaker entry in the series.

The story is, as usual for Duke Nukem, shallow—bad puns and not particularly intelligent. But the series never claimed to tell especially sophisticated stories or to be politically correct. Like I said: in 2026, the game would probably get canceled, accused of being misogynistic and promoting toxic masculinity. In the end, anyone who plays Duke Nukem expects Duke Nukem, and the game fully delivers on that cliché.

Originally, the game was apparently going to have Planet of the Babes as its subtitle. Allegedly, however, there was a legal dispute with the rights holders of Planets of the Apes, who felt the name was too close to their film. On top of that, the mutants in the game are also ape hybrids. Officially, it’s been said that the name and the setting were not intended as a reference to Planet of the Apes, but the title was changed anyway.

Visuals and level design

Visually, it’s simply a PlayStation game: blocky characters, pixelated textures, wobbly geometry, warped textures. Basically the normal PlayStation experience due to the hardware that was used back then. With no floating-point unit, no affine texture mapping, and no Z-buffer, that’s hardly surprising.

Internally, the game was dubbed Duke Raider, and I can only confirm that, because it has very strong similarities to the very first Tomb Raider. Even some of our protagonist’s animations are almost identical. But you can’t really blame the developer for that, Tomb Raider was very well received (not only because of Lara, I think).

All in all, a third-person platformer with Duke Nukem and plenty of shooting is definitely a good thing in my book.

Duke Nukem does a pretty good job of replicating exactly that here. Despite everything, the levels are really nicely designed and actually feel quite “organic," if you can call it that. Meaning: so far, I haven’t had the feeling at any point that everything is repeating itself, or that you’re doing the same thing over and over again, just in a different environment.

In some sections I even had to search for quite a long time before I found the way forward. Probably just me having been "degenerated" by modern games and their endless mission markers. There’s nothing like that here. You have to find your own way. There isn’t even a minimap. I actually like that. It pushes you to really look at the level instead of just running through it.

Each level also has its own distinct "solution". Sure, there’s always an exit that leads to the next level, but the path to get there is always designed differently. It’s not always about keycards to open doors, like it commonly was in Duke Nukem 3D or the classic Doom. It does happen, but not as often. I see that as a big positive.

Sometimes you have to climb to reach a control room and press a button that moves a crane so you can continue elsewhere. Sometimes you have to shoot a bad guy out of the sky, or find a fire axe to crack open a crashed spaceship and rescue the person inside. All in all, pretty creative.

German localization

I’m deliberately calling this chapter “localization," because there’s no dubbing to be found anywhere. Only the text is in German in the German version. That’s a bit unfortunate, because in various cutscenes there are no subtitles. On top of that, the mix between dialogue and effects is poor, which can make it hard at times to understand what’s being said. You can configure it, but I wouldn’t recommend the default settings here.

Story

Spoiler warning!

Alright, what can I really say about the story. The intro sequence starts on a post-apocalyptic Earth; women are being escorted by mutants on laser leashes.

Meanwhile, a group of heavily armed women fights against the invaders. As we learn later, they’re the United Babe Resistance (UBR). They try to activate a portal, while a monitor shows Duke Nukem on his motorcycle.

Right after that, he walks into a strip club and relaxes a bit. But the vacation, one might think Duke only ever takes vacations if you go by the previous titles in the Duke Nukem 3D series, doesn’t last long. Because at the "same time", in the future as we learn shortly after, the UBR is interrupted by a few mutants while activating the portal and goes into hiding.

The portal is then activated by the somewhat dim-witted Pig Cops, who immediately step through it ending up in the past with Duke in the club. As befits a proper American, he opens fire right away.

A UBR woman follows shortly after and hands Duke his sunglasses, which he's already wearing, by the way. At night. In a dimly lit club... ... Anyway, that woman is then shot by another mutant who steps through the portal and shoots her in the back. Duke takes him out as well and jumps through the portal into the future.

Why exactly these fairly heavily armed girls can't save themselves, but instead a dinosaur has to be brought in who goes after the invaders with the exact same weapons, I can't really say. That's just how it is, but it's still kind of a shame that the women are portrayed as so helpless.

On the other hand, it wouldn't be Duke Nukem if it were any different. I mean, what did you expect? It delivers exactly what it promises.

The military base - the future

At the start of the actual game, after Duke has stepped through the portal, we meet Jane, who brings us up to speed. Aliens attacked Earth 10 years ago, killed all the men, and the women are enslaved and abducted for dubious "secret projects". The leader of the resistance, Huston, is also mentioned, and an alien-mutant named Silverback is introduced, who is leading the invasion of the base.

First, we have to restore power to the base, and then we're off.

During the game, Jane radios us from time to time to move the story along a bit and pad it out with something resembling plot. Luckily, the frequency with which she contacts us drops off significantly over the course of the game. Otherwise it would have become pretty annoying at some point, having to press "SELECT" every five meters for the next briefing.

Once the power is restored, Jane radios us again to tell us we should meet her upstairs. Of course, all the elevators for our hero are broken. So we have to find another way up. And that's how we end up in the research wing.

The military base - research wing

Here you have to solve various puzzles. Jane suggests getting up (?) through a diving tank. Of course, it's locked, and you can only enter it from above. So we have to solve a few puzzles, find a couple of switches, climb up a centrifuge, and ultimately escape through the tank.

One of the more creative levels, in my opinion, because we can only cross a chasm with a bit of "tailwind" by turning on a huge fan. The fact that in the zero-G test room we don't float, but instead just bluntly climb up the centrifuge, is also pretty funny.

Somehow, we come out of the diving chamber in a bathroom. Which raises a few questions about the base's architectural design, but it's Duke Nukem, stuff like that comes with the territory. In the end, we leave the base by setting off a bomb that was already in place.

The military base - exterior area

The exterior area is a comparatively small level. Not that the other levels are particularly huge, if only because of hardware limitations, but the outside area is really small. All you do there is bring Silverback down from the sky. Also, as if it could be otherwise, Silverback kidnaps a few girls in his craft, including Huston, the leader of UBR.

Of course, you can't use the laser flak cannon in the middle of the map right away. First we have to find Jane, who gives us an access card that lets us unlock the ladder leading up to the flak. But for that, we first have to blow up a power pole so that it destroys a grate on the ground, which we can then pass through and enter a tower from below. At the top of it is Jane, with an injured leg.

Naturally, Silverback doesn’t hold back from shooting at us with his spaceship and spawning enemies. There are a few resistance girls running around the map who are supposed to support us, but they're more ambience than actually helpful in any way. For once, they can't be killed, but they don't really do any damage to the mutants either.

Then a short "boss fight" starts where, as immobile as we are, we shoot at the ship and occasionally laser enemies below us out of existence. Mind you: the kidnapped UBR fighters are still on board. The enemies that spawn on the ground are actually the real difficulty here. Silverback doesn't do all that much damage to the player, even though you'd expect otherwise.

After successfully shooting it down, we luckily return to Jane automatically, and she tells us that reports have come in that Silverback went down in a sunken city. The shootdown was only a few seconds ago, but well, gotta keep things moving.

The Millennium Tower - Silverback’s crash site

The Millennium Tower marks the beginning of the underwater city. Here we first look for the crash site, which you can actually find fairly quickly. It is, like 90% of the map, underwater. It's also guarded by another mini-boss, but he's pretty boring because you can attack and defeat him very easily from cover without taking a single hit. (Not necessarily in the screenshot shown, because I took that on a second run; on the first run, though, the boss was a zero-hit run.)

After that, we find the spaceship, without Silverback, but with one of the kidnapped fighters on board. However, she's locked inside the ship.

To open Silverback's spaceship, we can't use brute force as usual; instead, we have to go deeper into the sunken city and retrieve a fire axe from a flooded fire station. With that, we can then pry the ship open. The UBR fighter is wearing a breathing mask, by the way, which is presumably why she didn't drown all that time.

After the successful rescue, we continue on and even deeper into the underwater city, because a passage has now opened up as a result of the rescue.

The Millennium Tower - basement level

One of the most annoying levels, because at the start, falling debris damages Duke's oxygen tank and the air leaks out.

On top of that, at the beginning there's no way to refill the air. No air bubbles or oxygen tanks like in later levels. So you're under heavy time pressure, you don't know the map, you don't know in what order you need to go where to avoid suffocating, and then there are still those stupid sharks!

In short: on your first run, you'll definitely reload this level multiple times.

So under time pressure, the goal is to disable fans and find a switch that lowers the water level. After that, you have to pressurize an old boiler so it explodes and clears the way. In the process, the water rises again, by the way, and the fun starts all over.

The Sunken City - streets

In the streets, the time pressure and suffocating are less of a problem, because now we can refill our air at fire hydrants... yes, fire hydrants, to pump our air back up. Oxygen bottles are also scattered around sporadically. (You could just replace the broken tank, but not here...)

The main task in this section is to find a terminal in an old library to upload data to Jane. Remember: the whole city has been underwater for ages. In my experience, tech that isn't specifically designed for it works unbelievably badly underwater. But as luck would have it, it still works, and we can transmit the data to Jane.

Still searching for Huston, we also learn that there's a secret access point to the sewers under the city fountain. Oh yes, no game without sewers... Anyway, to get down there we have to blow up the fountain.

To do that, Jane opens the doors of the old police station for us, the mechanism seems to be waterproof as well, and we get some explosives from the evidence room. To open the room, however, we still need a key that a drowned Pig Cop has around his neck and that's hidden somewhere in the city at "Pinky’s Donuts."

Once we have everything, the fountain is blown up and we continue chasing after Silverback.

The Sunken City - sewers

At least this isn't flooded like the rest of the city. They even thought of making the entrance a U-shaped pipe, which makes it somewhat plausible that the sewer system didn't fill up with water as well. It does contradict the function of a sewage system that the city floods but the pipes don't carry the water away, but oh well. Finally, no more suffocating... or is there?

At last we come face to face with Silverback, but because of his foul-smelling nature we can't reach him. It's a mystery to me how, in a supposedly closed space, remember: no water gets in, none flows out, his stench somehow just oxidizes in certain areas, but anyway. The middle of the level is definitely shrouded in a green gas that causes damage if we step into it.

One special feature of this level is that the water is also toxic, but only once you dive. With the bio mask, which can also be found in the level, you can keep your head under water without danger. Someone might want to tell Duke that you can't breathe water? Anyway. With the bio mask you can dive in the water, though it's not recommended, because you'll just waste the mask's already very limited charge unnecessarily. It's better spent on finding the jetpack, picking up the second mask, and quickly getting to the other side of the toxic zone.

Here we find a 3-part shaft with a fan that lifts us upward and serves as the actual hidden entrance to Silverback's secret base. So, a double- or triple-hidden entrance. But first we have to move it into the correct position using three levers.

Silverback’s hideout - upper floor

At last, Silverback is within reach. In this level we get a cloaking weapon that lets us turn the babes we find invisible and send them to Jane.

There's a small Star Wars reference to Han Solo in the freezing chamber here:

At least I think the orange tint and the frozen resistance fighter are definitely a nod to that very scene in Star Wars.

Later on, we can also rescue three babes. They're stuck in a device that spins them around in a circle. The only thing missing was an adaptation of "You Spin Me Right Round (Like a Record), Baby".

Then we move on after we've actually collected two keycards for the first time in this game, a red one and a blue one.

Then, after a girl gives us the cold shoulder, we finally come face to face with Silverback. He shows up in a mech suit that is not over-the-top at all.

The boss fight itself is pretty unspectacular, because Silverback is slower than we are. So while you walk backwards down the corridor you came from, you can take him out at your leisure. The whole thing doesn't take two minutes if you do it right.

Finally, we leave the hideout via a teleporter, through which some of the frozen girls are transported via a rail system on the ceiling.

The mine - location unknown

Somewhere in the middle of nowhere, after two cold boobs, we find ourselves in a mine. Here we continue our search for Huston, who still hasn't been found. Here, too, we can rescue a few babes who are being used as mine workers.

Story-wise, not much happens here, except that at the end we destroy an energy grid to reach the factory complex.

The factory complex - killer factory

After we blow up the force-field/grid thing in the mine, we end up in the factory complex, also called the "killer factory". There, we're greeted right away by a Terminator babe.

At first I expected we'd learn in this level that all women are being converted into combat robots, but that doesn't seem to be the case. The aliens simply built robots in the form of human women, because they can. Why exactly they enslave or abduct the fleshy babes is still not entirely clear. But knowing Duke Nukem, it probably won't get properly explained, it just is what it is.

So you fight your way through the level until, at the end, you end up on a scrapyard via a teleporter.

Alien launch site - scrapyard

Things get a bit interesting again here. The scrapyard, contrary to what you’d expect, is also a hangar and apparently part of the Terminator factory as well. Alongside a somewhat out-of-place boss fight with a wall of mechanical boobs shooting lasers at us, the "mother brain", we obtain a space suit and keys for a spaceship, plus the spaceship itself, to fly to the alien mothership.

I’m going out on a limb a bit and claim that the “mother brain” is the central control unit for the killer ladies. But I’m not entirely sure. It could also be a Doom reference, since there you also fight a wall—the Icon of Sin. Idk.

House of Sin - hangar

House of Sin is what the alien mothership is called, which we land on after grabbing the keys, space suit, and spaceship. Right at the beginning we're greeted with a boss fight: an ape in a mech, again.

It's just as clunky as the other boss fights, mainly because your hands cramp up when you try to shoot and strafe at the same time.

This boss fight isn't particularly challenging either, aside from the fact that you constantly get stuck on something. On my first attempt, I immediately burned through 3 of the 4 extra lives because I didn't want to drain the boss bar from the start every time. A dumb decision, as I realized later.

Because a new type of enemy is introduced: little green men. Not only do they almost always show up in pairs or groups, they can also freeze us, and while we're frozen, they keep dealing damage. On top of that, they deploy small vacuum-cleaner robots that inflict additional damage on us.

All in all, really annoying enemies...

In this level we free some babes from captivity, and we even get lucky enough to surprise a few of them in the shower.

We also finally find Huston, rescue her from a prison cell, and go even deeper into the alien mothership, or rather, further up.

House of Sin - promenade

The promenade is more like a kind of... yeah, I'd say a big alien brothel. Because here we find some women locked in cells, with heart-shaped beds in the middle of them.

That's almost all we do in this level: rescue babes and beat up aliens. I also got lost here regularly, and there's another strip club.

The alien king - Judgment day

The big finale, or so you'd think. At last we face the puppet master. A, not very surprisingly, green alien in a, because we totally haven't had that yet, mech suit... Hooray.

Well, strictly speaking this level is extremely short, on average 5 to 6 minutes, with the final fight being the biggest disappointment. It honestly only lasts a few seconds:

The path to the boss, however, is really annoying, especially, as mentioned so many times already, thanks to the lousy controls. Tight spaces with three or more enemies, and you're supposed not to get hit. But if you manage that, you face, I’m guessing his name is "DAN". But like I said, the pleasure is short-lived.

Operation Repopulation

What can I say... for the girls it's more of a "out of the frying pan, into the fire" kind of situation. They may no longer be banged by aliens, but by Duke, yet in the end they're still reduced to being breeding machines. I wouldn't exactly want to live in a world of tomorrow where all humans are half-siblings.

I mean, imagine it: you meet someone you really like, personality matches, looks match, humor matches... and then it's your sister or your brother... even if only half. Yikes!

Ignore the fact that there are brother-sister adult films because of certain inclinations.

So if nobody here learns to sail on old ships, the family tree of the coming generations is going to be more of a circle than a tree...

I'd say when the story was drafted, a few guys were a bit too horny and fell for the dream of being the only guy in a world of women.

Good thing Duke Nukem isn't batting for the other team... Admittedly, I'd actually find that really interesting. A gay Duke? I'd play that, and it would be hilariously on-brand against the usual background.

Sure, the fans would go up in arms, but people would do that either way, even if there were another "classic" Duke Nukem.

Note to self: Duke Nukem Forever review

Technology

That's it for the game's story. Technically, unfortunately, I found it impossible to figure out what kind of game engine was used for this title or for its predecessor Time to Kill. The assumption is that it was n-Space's own in-house engine. After all, it's the early 2000s, general-purpose engines weren't yet as widespread.

Digging around in the game files with a hex editor (GHex) didn't reveal much either, except that Lieutenant DAN is only allowed to appear in level 14. Poor DAN. I'm guessing DAN is the game's 5-second final boss. His name isn't mentioned, or I missed it.

I therefore tend to assume that the game and the engine don't really exist separately from each other, but are one and the same.

What I can say, though, is that Land of the Babes regularly pushes the PlayStation to its limits, something I've actually rarely noticed in a PSX game otherwise. But depending on the level, or even the viewing direction, the frame rate drops noticeably through the floor. I'd rule out emulator slowdown here, because the audio kept playing cleanly without starting to warble or crackle. Which is usually an indication that the system is too slow.

Especially the last few levels, and especially in the House of Sin, the FPS noticeably fell below 24 depending on where you look.

It's also noticeable that the music stops as soon as Duke delivers a comment. I find that a bit odd, considering that neither music nor sound effects are paused in cutscenes. I don't think it's a technical limitation. As far as I know, the PSX's sound processing unit has 24 channels, so it should be able to play up to 24 sounds.

Conclusion

All in all, though, it's a pretty okay game. Not particularly good, but also not as bad as the ratings mentioned at the beginning would suggest, albeit shallow and with questionable content.

The controls are simply far too clunky to be able to run and shoot properly at the same time, let alone keep an enemy targeted and move properly. So it often boils down to the player standing still to fight enemies. That becomes a real problem especially in later levels with three or four enemies at once.

What I remember most negatively, though, are the underwater levels, because it could easily happen that two sharks soft-lock the player. While one shark holds and shakes the player, the second shark's timeout runs out, so it can grab and shake the player again almost as soon as the first one lets go. All of that without the player having had any chance to fire even a single shot.

A certain delay between holding Circle to switch either weapon or power-up was also very noticeable. Either you hit Up or Down on the D-pad too quickly and end up running around when you actually wanted to switch weapons or you feel like you have to wait ages for anything to happen. Alternatively, you can use the inventory, which also pauses the game, and is therefore the only way to quickly switch weapons during a fight.

Also annoying: when you chase an enemy, since they seek cover at low HP, Duke keeps grabbing onto half-height ledges all the time.

You also have to be careful when turning near walls and edges. Because Duke's hitbox, at least that's what it feels like, is an unbelievably large block. So it can easily happen that you push yourself into the abyss even though the character seemingly only turns in place.

When walking backwards, it can happen that you bump into the "head" of a ladder even if there doesn't seem to be any ladder top in the way. Duke then bounces off it and jumps forward. That, in turn, makes it difficult to climb back down ladders.

So in short: the controls in this game are absolute garbage.

Nevertheless, if you're a Duke fan, I still recommend playing Land of the Babes for the sake of completeness. The game isn't particularly long if you need roughly 20 minutes per level. With 14 levels, that's about 4.5 hours of playtime. The maps are also mostly very linear, so you get through them fairly well.

In that spirit: Hail to the King, Baby!