Game of the Day - Dynamite Duke

Dynamite Duke is the swiss army knife of cross-hair shooters.  The general gameplay is like any slowly scrolling, cross-hair shooter (Cabal or Operation Wolf), but it throws in several other elements to try to be all things to all gamers.  And while it doesn't do any one specific thing great, it does do many things very well and thus all together makes for a very fun and engaging game.

You have three button in addition to your joystick.  The buttons are punch, kick and gun.  So usually you are firing at the enemy with your gun, however when they get up close & personal you have two different attacks to take them out (punch & kick).  There are the standard power-ups, as you can shoot MANY of the items populating the landscape and background and they turn into power-ups for you and your weapons (the machine guns are particularly helpful - as they usually are)!

But Dynamite Duke goes a little farther.  In addition to standard punching and kicking and the souped-up weapons, there is the Dynamite Punch.  It is essentially a charge bomb.  You hold down the punch button until the meter fills and then release.  The Dyna-Punch strikes everything on the screen (killing most immediately).  There are a limited number of these - but you can always collect additional ones.

But wait, just like a TV ad, there's more...  In an effort to make the fighting just a little more detailed and interesting, moving the joystick in certain ways in conjunction with the punch and/or kick button actually throws different kinds of punches and kicks (a little bit like playing a stripped down version of Punch-Out or Title Fight).

So, with the weapons and power-ups and fighting and special moves and Dynamite-Punch, there's lots to try and keep you interested.

The enemies are many and the game gets very intense very quickly.  One slight bummer is that the graphics are mediocre, but they are not weak enough to detract from the fun.  You'll be too busy happily blasting and fighting to worry that it could have looked a little bit nicer.