Duke Nuken Balloon Review

Duke Nukem: Balloon Annihilation

Who could guess Duke Nuken would strike again after its last launch, 'forever' got nuked in every review?
Balloon annihilation is as silly and unexpected as it says on the tin, but puting good old Duke afloat against barely airbone enemies is any fun? Does it at least do better then 'Forever'?

The team at 'Cheatcode', a new Malasian developer got the dangerous IP that no one wants to touch right now, and in 10 months(rather then 10+ years) came up with a nonsensical game that looks like any of the various generic mobile games coming out with Dukes name tappled on it... but surprisingly the game is much more Duke Nukem then the previous installment.

Surely the premise is bonkers insane but since when Duke Nukem was about drama or story? Here the aliesn pretty much won but not without Duke nuking(i didn't came with this joke, they did) their mothership; Thus begin a new venture in an anihillated earth not far from the likes of Borderlands and Rage where few moments in Duke finds out not only the good n old pig-cops(now all scrap-clad like they came out of a Mad Max movie) but a bunch of drug-crazy human raiders and... balloons, if you hadn't guessed yet.
It seems that after our world ends, balloons will become the next great thing once again; Theres some mention of lack of fuel, tech and proper vehicles somewhere, so balloons tackled with some steam and missiles become floating vehicles of doom that at any moment can go all jet-packy across the skies or blow in your face.

The premise is as silly as putting fancy hats in any games(when i reviewed there weren't any, but Cheatcode just anounced hats in a dlc), and if you can handle the over-the-top Dukeness, some bad-writen attempts at jokes and more sillyness then Valve could put in TF2 then you're in for a crazy joyfull ride.

At core DN: BH does almost all that the last Duke didn't, deliverying pretty much a copy-paste gameplay of the Duke Nukens 3d of yore, and is all the oldschool FPS experience you might expect: no health regen, kicking and lots and lots of big guns in your pockets; Technology might be lost in Dukes Ballooned world but not the warfare kind, as theres pretty much all the high-tech bulky guns of the franchise and some more.

The change comes with the balloons; During the single-player campaing you play some few segments tottally on foot, but most of the time theres balloons to use around or completely aribone sections. The game tackles balloons on 2 ways: on enemies and with you.

The large variety of enemies can, almost all of them, appear on balloons, be it party ballons or big ones like those used today. The thing with the balloons is that shooting then can create two outcomes(somewhat 3): blowing then and making enemies fall(sometimes the explosion sends then flying everywhere and that is important on gameplay) or creating a hole that will ejet the balloon fastly to the opposite direction.
That would be only gimmicky if there weren't so many and hard to deal enemies all around; Properly shooting the ballooners is almost required the further you go into the game. The player can create large chains of exploding balloons by, for example, puting one on fire and then sending it flying to a bunch of others.

Theres quite a bunch of interesting 'tactical' decisions the balloons bring in(as most tactical as a no-covers shooter can be); For example some heavy enemies won't die by the fall at all, so its faster to send then flying off the level arena/space BUT instead i could make him fall on top of those other enemies to kill them, or on top of those explosive barrels if i only could push his balloon just a little to the left and... crap! Someone shot my ballon!

The other side of the balloon thing is when Duke take it to the stars(i mean, skies) in full inflated glory. It feels almost like tribes with lots of vertical exploration, but where the 'jetpack' can go up or down on various speeds and where you can hover on air almost as much as you want.
But theres a catch, actually a bunch of them. Shooting affects momentum and direction, the stronger a weapons kicks the further you and your balloon goes the opposite direction(considering variations by balloon kind). Kicking gains a whole new purpose when enemies are trying to board your bigger balloons and it goes crazy when your balloon gets a hole and you fly in high speed uncontrollably all around.

Theres some balloons 'bulletproof' with high hp both for you and your enemies, but even then your balloon will be short lived, wich is no problem for our bad-ass hero and here comes the next layer of balloon gameplay: stealing balloons. On air. Mid free fall. While shooting and kicking. And avoiding explosions. With a cigar.
It adds a lot but the most relevant change it makes is creating a dilema; If i shoot/kill all enemy ballooners i will be a sitting duck if my balloon gets blown. Will i let at least one survive? Can i avoid damaging his balloon? The closest balloon is a hard bad enemy but theres one much easier far behind: will i risk jumping that far, or aproaching it with my balloon under fire? Or will i take the harder and closer enemy?

Jumping off your balloon(for example, before it explodes or goes crazy) and taking others is as simple and responsive as click and lots of fun. Depending on the target balloon and the enemy on it taking it over differs, some few enemies can't be robbed of their beloved balloons, but you can always shoot then before landing on them (with the risk of damaging the very balloon you want to get to save your ass).
Most of the time its a mini-game that deep down is a QTE but executed amazingly: the shoot button becomes punch and the kick remains kicking, you can conect various punchs 'combo style' if you time it right but must avoid enemy blocking, that can create a counter-atack like you being the one kicked out. Switching and timing punchs and kicks feels rewarding and varied each time.

As you might expect balloon combat becomes a hectic fast paced almost chaotic mess... but a FUN one. The chaos that arises feels less troublesome once you get the hang of it(got it?) and understand things better, and even when things goes extremely messy and you can't figure what's happening amid all the explosions and flying balloons all around the frustration is highly mitigated because we know our fault and cause on that. It feels almost cheap but the thing is that it trully isn't and precisely because of that comes that urge to load the checkpoint to do it better this time around.

The campaing might get repetitive tought and the game have some various minor flaws, the most jarring ones being the occasional crazy bug, the more common being the ones with the balloons physics; Except a few frustrating ones like getting traped outside the game space even the bugs are more often then not as fun(even funnier) then the main game, ragdools and all.
The bad, bad, BAD 'ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US' style translation is also an amazing touch to the fun if you're into that, most of the time funnier then the lines and jokes by design. Of those made on intention theres some few jewels that made me laught my @$$ off but most of them are the bad, boring bad kind.

BUT the singleplayer isn't where the game most shines. After winning against the bugged matchmaking system and praying for a good ping DK:BA is the most unexpectedly surprisingly fun multiplayer game i never asked for that can't stop coming back at. The somewhat chaotic nature of the balloons don't create much space for competitive play(altought some clans are starting on that) but it doesn't matter: its simply plain FUN, even more with friends you know(better use some Voip other then the in-game talk as theres some bug with the controls while talking, how on hell that happens is a Malasian mistery).

The multiplayer is more tiresome then most other multiplayer games around, but not for being boring: it sucks a lot of atention, tension and energy from you each round. Its a game to jump in, blow a few balloons(or get blowed, or kicked, or burnt) for some rounds and jumping off... to return later in the day. It is addictive if you're into fast paced action.
AND it comes with the most fun kicking(from server mechanic) i ever saw; It needs almost all votes to kick/ban someone, but anyone can start a hatefull unballony(yeah, its called like that): everyone that accepts are impervious to each others attack and stop doing damage, needing instead to acumulate a number of damage on the chosen player(to kick) 'at once'; Stop doing damage and the acumulated damage starts to fastly goes down. This creates a situation where you play to make your point across, where its hard to kick someone alone(but if you're really good and he is really bad it works) but can be much easier the more players get on the bandwagon. To tell the truth me and my mates played some private matchs where we were kicking each other on purpose, a 'hunt the hated' emergent gameplay that was really fun; Also the devs noticed it and already anounced a balloon-hate gamemode alongside the next hat wearing dlc.

*I almost forgot to mention: theres a 'no balloons' deathmatch and team deathmatch game modes, if you want to play good old Duke Nukem with revamped graphics.

So that's Duke Nukem: Balloon Annihilation; A buggy oldschool game with a second game strapped on top of it, really fun and deserving to be played for fans of Duke, fast paced shooters or Balloons i guess. The graphics are last gen but nice and overall i feel the 25$ price tag to be fair; My biggest grievance being the skins and balloons in-game store that was really uncalled for; Since im not that much into playing dollhouse using only Duke(with some different shirts) or the pig-cop suffice as far as skins goes.

FINAL VALUE: WORTH IT

FANS OF THE IP: BUY IT
FANS OF THE GENRE: RENT or wait a price-drop; theres no hurry to play, better to get it after some patchs down the line.
ANYONE ELSE: NOPE.