Re:The engine wasn't all that great. (Score 3, Insightful)

Pretty simple, actually - at least, if you're thinking of the point I am when you say that. You're talking about the hidden passage behind the poster in one of the cells, right? All you have to be is observant; if you look, you can see what looks like an odd gap just below the bottom of the poster. If you blow the poster up with an explosive weapon (such as the RPG), the passage will be revealed in all its glory. It just takes a keen eye for detail.

What I liked the best about DN3D's levels, especially in the Atomic Edition upgrade, is that they seem to tell a story of sorts. My favorite such level would be the "Duke-Burger" mission in the Atomic Edition. To set the scene, you begin outside a new fast-food joint built in Duke's honor. In the background are the offices of an organization known only as "S.P.C.H.", though there's no way to enter the building and no clue what that acronym stands for. Eventually, though, you find your way into the burger joint - at first it's bright and colorful, like your local McDonald's, but as you go behind the counter and start to get deeper into the kitchen, you find some clues that all is not quite as it appears (and I don't just mean the alien infestation). Finally, you discover a conveyor belt that leads to the kitchen from what looks to be a slaughterhouse... and when you enter said slaughterhouse, you find it populated by sad-eyed dogs in cages. This is the office headquarters of the S.P.C.H., which you now learn stands for the Society for the Preparation of Canine Hamburgers - and the Duke-Burger is their "factory outlet." The reason I love this level (despite its mildly nauseating overtones) is that it's funny, it tells a story almost without words, and it provides the gamer with a great moment of dawning realization when he or she realizes exactly what's going on here. I haven't really seen this type of imaginative design in any similar FPS before or since.

Another good one is one of the original secret levels, "Tier Drop." This one exploits a bug in the Build engine and plays havoc with your mind... the level itself is a square walkway built as a perimeter around a central area, but as you walk around you'll notice that each time you turn a corner, the contents of the central area change dramatically. It's a great little mindtrip of a level, and even getting here is kind of fun - especially for Kubrick fans. If I recall, to get here you need to be on one of the lunar-base levels (I forget exactly which one), and find a secret passage through one of the crater walls. This passage leads down a dark tunnel, and as you approach the end you begin to hear some eerie (and very familiar) chanting... When you emerge, you find yourself in what looks to be an excavation area, with a black monolith presiding over all (and now the chanting makes sense). You jump into the TMA-1 lookalike to find the secret-level trigger.

DN3D is a game that doesn't take itself seriously at all, a refreshing change from the more modern stuff. It has a sense of humor, and is laden with all sorts of movie and pop-culture references both blatant (the aforementioned 2001 gag, plus the "DOOMed space marine" I'm sure everyone knows about by now) and subtle (on the walls of the bathroom in the very first level, you see a phone number - 867-5309 - scrawled on the wall, a nod to a famous '80s song). Maybe it isn't as technologically advanced as the Quakes, Half-Lifes (Lives?), and Unreal Tournaments of today, but it doesn't have to be - its goals are different, its design philosophy geared more for humor and irreverence. I'm glad 3D Realms decided to finally open the source; maybe now, someone will *finally* give us a version of the game that'll run not only under Linux, but under NT-based systems as well.