Played this on Christmas Eve expecting not to beat it with all the times I tried beforehand and didn't but surprisingly I did this time.

It's... fine? But really disappointing given the premise. A Xmas-themed Duke mappack matches the comedic nature and silliness of the IP perfectly, yet all this campaign really comes down to are two reskins of maps from L.A. Meltdown and a bunch of other snow-textured confusing mazes topped off with a boss fight against a glorified deathmatch bot. A concept like this deserved much better then the quality of maps we got, and they misuse enemies and traps REALLY BAD. The amount of tank pigcops and tripmine traps are awful, especially with how the traps only appear visually when you walk a certain distance, meaning you'll be blindly running into death unless you memorize their exact placements beforehand. A part of me still considers Duke it out in DC worse just for the Smithsonian level alone, which I STILL haven't beat, but it's still pretty mid. If you're gonna play any additional Duke content, make it Alien World Order or Carribean. Those are good mappacks. This... not so much.

Oh, and of course, how could I go without mentioning:

"Ohhoho, it's not nice to shoot Santa..."
"Ohhoho, it's not nice to shoot Santa..."
"Ohhoho, it's not nice to shoot Santa..."

Reviewed on Dec 25, 2023


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