Captain Wayne: Vacation Desperation is probably the closest thing we’ve had to Duke Nukem 3D, since that game was released in 1996, and let’s just forget all about Duke Nukem Forever…
Whereas Duke would blast the hell out of every enemy with various weapons, our Cap’n has a shotgun for an arm in this first-person shooter where the levels are generally separated by brief, amusing cartoon viginettes.
In that aspect, it’s great entertainment, but just a few moans… the opening tutorial can be annoying in that when it displays text telling you what to do, you can’t SEE what you’re doing, because it’s in the way!
Also, when I first started, I got almost a quarter of the way through the first main level, and died…. and there’s scant checkpoints, so I was put back to the very start! AAARRGHHH!! I’ll be rage-quitting!
But then I found it had were checkpoints around 24%, then 48% initially, while level 2 made you wait until almost halfway through the level! Why is there such a disparity?
And for some reason, when I did on level 3, it told me “You made it 103% of the way”. Pardon?
Similarly, level 3 was making me die so bloody often, to the point that while playing the preview version, the night before release, I didn’t quite finish and called it a night after trying for almost 90 minutes… Only to find, after tweeting @ciaran_games, that I couldn’t load my saved game! I could tell there’d been some sort of update as menus had changed, but the programmers then confirmed “Saves from review copies do not carry over to the final build, you will have to restart the level.”
Erm… why wasn’t this highlighted from the start? If I’d known, I’d have left level 3 – since I had to restart it, anyway – until the next day, and actually get some sleep!
I don’t want games to be too easy or too hard, but they have to have a balance, and while Captain Wayne: Vacation Desperation is a perfect companion to Duke Nukem 3D, late on, I found myself constantly falling into lava and being on the verge of death.
Another issue is that the levels are lonnnnnnnnnnnnng!
In fact, as they say, less is more, but at the time of writing this, I’m up to level 5 of 8, and while I could do it quicker if I went through it a second time, there are some baddies that are such long-living bastards, that i can’t expend the energy on them a second time. I’m already shattered!
Overall, Captain Wayne: Vacation Desperation is outstanding as a game, and a proper Duke Nukem 3D rivalbut for a game like this, I’d rather have had more levels, but shorter, than fewer levels that are lonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnng!!!
Score: 8/10
Thanks to our friends at Silver Lining Interactive for the review code for this game.
Captain Wayne: Vacation Desperation is out now on PC/Steam.
Important info:
- Developer: Ciaran Games LLC
- Publisher: Silver Lining Interactive
- Players: single-player
PC specs:
- CPU: AMD RYZEN 9 7950X3D
- Motherboard: MSI MPG X670E CARBON WIFI AMD X670 S AM5 DDR5 PCIe 5.0 4x M.2 2.5GbE AMD EXPO™ ATX
- RAM: 64GB (2x32GB) Corsair DDR5 Vengeance RGB PC5-44800 (5600Mhz)
- Graphics Card: Sapphire Radeon RX 7900 XTX NITRO+ 24GB GDDR6 Ray-Tracing RDNA3 6144 Streams
- 1st Storage Drive: 2TB Samsung 990 PRO M.2 (2280) PCIe 4.0 (x4) NVMe SSD TLC V-NAND 7450MB/s Read 6900MB/s
- 2nd Storage Drive: 2TB Samsung 870 QVO 2.5” SSD SATA III 6Gb/s MJX MLC V-NAND 2GB Cache Read 560MB/s Write 530MB/s 98k/88k IOPS
- 3rd Storage Drive: 2TB Samsung 870 QVO 2.5” SSD SATA III 6Gb/s MJX MLC V-NAND 2GB Cache Read 560MB/s Write 530MB/s 98k/88k IOPS
- 4th Storage Drive: Seagate IronWolf Pro 14TB NAS 3.5″ SATA HDD/Hard Drive
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.