December 31, 2024: The Last of 2024! |
Alright, it's 35 minutes until we say goodbye to 2024 for good, so here are the last two reviews of 2024: Yellow - Mirrors and The Computer War 2024. Both are WELL worth playing, so waste no time!
As for the usual annual tally, here's how we look in terms of NEW releases reviewed on MSDN in 2024:
2004: 50 new releases
2005: 36 new releases
2006: 30 new releases
2007: 21 new releases
2008: 40 new releases
2009: 34 new releases
2010: 26 new releases
2011: 21 new releases
2012: 29 new releases
2013: 28 new releases
2014: 22 new releases
2015: 19 new releases
2016: 24 new releases
2017: 13 new releases
2018: 20 new releases
2019: 11 new releases
2020: 15 new releases
2021: 23 new releases
2022: 16 new releases
2023: 20 new releases
2024: 17 new releases
So, we took a small step back, BUT there are some worthy 2024 releases that I haven't yet had the time to play and review (but then again you could say the same of every year). In fact, it seems that the community considerably picked up pace toward the end of the year, as December has had quite a few new releases, but for this update I could find the time to review only the two above (I was out of town for the whole Christmas holiday). If you still want to get into the holiday spirit, check out William Gee's Nuclear Winter pack if you want to replay some WG classics in a Nuclear Winter coating.
Anyway, happy New Year and here's to hoping 2025 is an even better Duke year!
December 29, 2024: Fairy! |
Here's Black Fairy from DannyFromNewOrleans, who's been one of the most active mappers over the past few years.
Anyway, the year is about to end, so I'm hoping to get a few more reviews done by Tuesday!
December 20, 2024: Carnage! |
Here's a pretty big urban map, check out Crosstown Carnage.
There are a few more releases I'm hoping to have reviewed before 2025, but we'll see...
December 8, 2024: New Invasion! |
This one has been out for a few months already, but don't hesitate to check out New Invasion - Episode 1, an episode filled with all sorts of neat Build tricks.
November 10, 2024: Knee Deep again! |
It hasn't been long since the last Doom remake, and now William Gee has given us another. Check out WG Knee Deep 1 for a remake of the first two maps of the original Doom.
October 31, 2024: Hell-o-ween! |
Yeah yeah I'm trying to get back on schedule with more regular updates (right now I'm spending my daily gaming allocation on Yakuza 0 and Ghostbusters Remastered).
But hey, it's Halloween, so here's a VERY old map called Hellraiser from 1996, the very year Duke3D was released. It just might be worth your
time if you're familiar with the movies. (And thanks to Andy for bringing the map to my attention!)
Happy Halloween:
September 14, 2024: Showdown! |
Here's a pretty good first release from Kennardion, check out Showdown for at least thirty minutes of fun.
August 24, 2024: Continental Odyssey! |
At last I managed to play through Fernando's "final" (for now) release, FM7X, or more specifically its Continental Odyssey episode. Check out the review here.
August 4, 2024: DNMZ! |
The summer is almost gone, as tomorrow it's back to work for me. But anyway, here's ValiantDan's first published usermap, Duke Nukem Militarized Zone, a very solid urban-themed map.
Alien Armageddon has also gotten a major update, but it'll be a while until I'm ready with a review; I've spent around half of my summer holiday away from my apartment, so I haven't even had time to play Fernando's Marquez's new episode yet.
July 16, 2024: BattleDuke 2 Contest! |
This really took a lot longer than it should have, but I struggled to find the energy to finish some of the maps in this map pack. Anyway, here's finally BattleDuke 2 Contest Pack. It's a pack of three contest entries for Sanek's BattleDuke 2.
July 4, 2024: Factory Parking! |
I was actually gonna review ToiletDuck64's Super Mario 64 themed map Shifting Sand Lands, but it was filled with visual glitches in all renderers with two different EDuke32 versions (separated by two years) and even crashed when a certain explosion took place, so I resorted to reviewing one of his "Doom" type maps instead. So, check out Factory Parking.
June 5, 2024: SIKHL! |
Loke released a new map a few weeks ago. Expectedly, it's a hottie, so check out SIKHL.
Also, rumor has it that Fernando Marquez has released a brand new episode. I'll try to have a review of it written within a few weeks, so keep yer eyes on this space! (This might also be a good time to check out his previous episode in case you missed it.)
May 4, 2024: May the 4th Be With You! |
It's the international "Star Wars Day", and while I don't particularly care for Star Wars, I took this opportunity to review some "neglected" Star Wars Total Conversions. Since none of these got past the demo stage, my job was a little bit easier, so here's a review of Phantom Menace TC Demo, Star Wars 3D Demo and Escape from the Empire Demo.
Playing the demos also made me look back and think of the movies in context of all the more recent stuff, so here's how I'd rate the movies/series in the franchise:
Episode 1: 2/5
Episode 2: 2½/5
Episode 3: 2½/5
Episode 4: 4/5
Episode 5: 4/5
Episode 6: 3½/5
Episode 7: 3/5
Episode 8: 3/5
episode 9: 1½/5
Han Solo: 3½/5
Rogue One: 4/5
The Mandalorian (series): 3½/5
Obi-Wan (series): 1½/5
April 21, 2024: Anniversary! |
MSDN was first uploaded to the Internet a quarter of a century ago. That'd have called for some kind of a special celebration, and I did have some plans for that, but time got in the way. The plans haven't been permanently buried though, so something just might yet come out of them. In any case, to celebrate MSDN 25th birthday, I cleaned up the news section a bit and reviewed Fear of the Dark (by DannyFromNewOrleans), so check it out and have fun!
April 14, 2024: Memories! |
Zykov Eddy is back with Memories, a map that's quite meta. Check it out!
Quality stuff since -99