Nuclear Winter is the flippant take on a winter wonderland. The Aliens (what a wonderfully busy bunch) have taken over the North Pole, and are holding Santa hostage. This is explained through the introduction movie, which seems low tech even when compared to other Duke cinematic attempts. It's poor wrapping for a sad package.

Installing the pack was simple through Windows 95. There's a specific setup program and routine for starting the program, even adding it to your Start menu and a Program Group for Windows 3.x users. The DOS installation, though, is irksome. It searches your hard drive(s) for DUKE.CFG, and assumes that's the directory for Duke 3D. If you have a drive bigger than, oh, 800MB (or worse, two drives each over 1GB like myself, where Duke was one of the more recent additions on the second drive), this search will take a good amount of time, long enough for you to wonder why they couldn't have a manual input for the Duke directory. For both installations, a separate executable runs both the single and multiplayer versions of the pack.

So what does Nuclear Winter bring to World of Duke? Not a heck of a lot. For starters, no new one liners. Sheesh! One would think that this sort of setting would present plenty of opportunity for the infamous Duke quips that cause immediate laughter. No such luck.. You're dealing with whatever you've got installed already. The music files are simply slowed down carols set to annoying MIDI honking. (Don't get me wrong, I'm an avid supporter of MIDI sound, but by now it should be obvious on how to do it right.) If the attempt was to show how grating Christmas carols can be, then Silly Software has definitely done their job. The music was turned off in a hurry.

What's an add-on pack without new levels? In Nuclear Winter's case, a brief rehash. The first two levels are (get this) "holiday-theme" versions of the first two levels of L.A. Meltdown (i.e., the first two levels of Duke Nukem 3D). I know the holiday season is supposed to bring back memories of the past. That's the feeling I got going through levels I hadn't played in almost three years. There are some minor variations (yes, you are going through the level "backwards", and certain doors and exits don't work like they would normally, as well as annoyances such as carolers) but plenty of other things (such as the explosive quakes in the movie theater hallways, the same secrets, etc.) are still intact. So the core design is the same, but the pavement is now covered with snow. Sorry, I'm not impressed. The rest of the levels suffer from the same bit of non-inspiration. "The Land of Forgotten Toys" pokes fun at various "outdated" electronic amusements from 1994 (like Mario Kart and Doom - apparently 1995 games are OK). It's a simple, boring level that should have been forgotten before this pack went gold. Santa's Global HQ was amusing, but the level slowed down and played poorly on machines that were well above the system requirements (and running in DOS). It's hard to have fun when you're guessing where the next frame will jump to so you can aim.

Speaking of snow: although WizardWorks is based in Wisconsin, they're using L.A. snow for this game. It has no sound, it's about a centimeter thick, and it doesn't leave footprints. What the snow does do is create snowmen. Big, evil snowmen. These are one of the few highlights of the game. They look good, they're true to form (blast one with a chaingun and watch the flakes fly!) and they're hard to kill. The ground forces throw snowballs (apparently with ice in them, as they pack a wallop), and the ones in armored snowmobiles are a cause for panic (similar to the Pigcop Riot Tank). The assault commander is replaced with a hovering snowman in a wreath, shooting freezethrower bolts.

The other new enemies are the members of the Female Elven Militia (FEM). Whatever. There's two variations of FEM opponent: green, grey and blobby, or green, blue and blobby. One shoots a chaingun, one shoots a shotgun. Both go down easily. A badly drawn character that's easy to kill - nice try, but no cigar, folks. The elves do leave one small consolation: when they die, they drop wrapped presents that hold your standard Duke goodies like weapons, health, and armor.

The end boss of these levels is the evil Santa, adding a small bit of cheer to this glum package ("It's not nice to shoot Santa!"). The character looks like a squashed red suit toting a gun. For what it's worth, Santa's just as tough to get as your average end-of-level boss, but smaller, faster, and therefore harder to kill. I guess that's evil for you. Santa also appears in the multiplayer level - each player is represented by an evil Santa model. Note that I said multiplayer level - there's only one, and you'll need at least three other nimble masochists to make it interesting.

Duke Caribbean: Life's a Beach

In contrast to Nuclear Winter, Duke Caribbean: Life's a Beach (hereafter, LAB) is downright fun to play. This pack offered almost everything that Nuclear Winter did not. It's almost a total conversion, with new sound, new graphics, completely new levels, more multiplayer levels, better music, additional monsters, and more, well, fun.

The installation of LAB is done through DOS and has two stages. The first is to copy the proprietary Sunstorm file into a separate directory on your hard drive. Once that is complete, the file must be "activated" (i.e. decompressed) to your Duke directory. This two-step process for a 25MB directory seems silly, especially with a CD-ROM as the installation source (why compress the files at all?). A separate executable runs Duke with the proper file settings for single and multiplayer games.

Eight new levels (seven regular and one secret) comprise this add-on pack, along with four multiplayer levels (good for those inclined for explosive frag-fests rather than large hide-and-seek contests). Almost everything in this pack has taken the original Duke design and reworked it for a tropical theme. A resort hotel, a water park, and a cruise ship are some of the environments where you can blast the aliens who are, again, spoiling Duke's vacation.

Everything in this pack is appropriate for the setting. Duke is wearing sandals and shorts, the Pigcops are in Hawaiian shirts, and the assault commanders are wearing inner-tubes and snorkels. Standard power-up items such as health and night-vision goggles are replaced with bananas and sunglasses. The standard Duke weapons are also changed. The shotgun is now a super-soaker (along with the pistol, it's somehow able to shoot water under water, but I'm getting picky), the chaingun is made of bamboo, and the pipebombs are now actual pineapples. (There's also many scantily-clad and heavily pixilated women. Again, noting that Duke is 100% testosterone is nothing new - this game will be offensive to more than a few users.)

Two new tropical monsters harass you - Inflatable Sea Monsters and Seagulls. The bouncing Sea Monsters throw quite a punch by launching exploding coconuts. Being rubber, though, they are easy to deflate. The Seagull is more of a challenge. It's small, it flies, and you don't want to be under it at all. These were instant problems - when you hear squawking, aim up, fast.

The sound for this pack was impressive. Duke has more quips than one would think (favorite: "It's time to limbo!"). At the beginning of the first level, he hits the beach and sings (badly) a bit of "Surfin' Safari". Guess what you hear with a cruise ship and a plane? It's the little things that make me smile, and these remarks make me smile. Remember, it's all about attitude. The music was appropriate for the situation. As you go through the game, you hear steel drums, voodoo chanting, and open-market calypso. It all fits the tropical mood, and it's all well done.