The Flying Frosty is an enemy that appears in the Duke Nukem 3D expansion Duke: Nuclear Winter.
It's first encountered in "Deja Vu".
Description[]
It looks just like the Snowman but at the base it has a holly wreath and it can fly; unlike the Snowman it also lacks coal buttons. Its behavior and sounds are exactly the same as the enemy it replaces, the Assault Commander but notable differences are it fires freeze ray blasts at the player as opposed to rockets and while it can be damaged by the Freezethrower unlike the Assault Commander if it's hit enough times it will become impossible to kill instead of being frozen; so the player needs to be cautious if they decide to use the Freezethrower against this enemy.
Combat Analysis[]
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Like the Assault Commander, it can fly and go anywhere. It's quite a slow moving enemy as well.
The Flying Frosty tends to appear at a distance from its opponent, so its primary weapon is its Freeze Ray. It tilts back on its Holly Reef, exposing its lower appendage, and fires Freeze Rays from it at a fast rate. These rays also bounce off walls just like the Freezethrower the player has but they pack a much stronger punch.
The Flying Frosty's secondary method of attack is a melee attack. Once close enough to its opponent, instead of firing freeze rays, it will begin to spin around rapidly, causing the holly wreath and the holly leaves lining its edge to behave as a circular saw.
The best weapon to use against it is undoubtedly the Shrink Ray, as only one shot is needed to shrink it. The Shotgun is also quite effective. The worst weapons include the Mighty Boot because of the enemy's melee attack, and the Pipebomb and the Laser Tripbomb for difficulty of use (because the enemy flies around in open spaces, it won't often be close to a wall or the floor, which these weapons depend on). The worst weapon choice of all is the Freezethrower because if he is hit enough times by it; instead of being frozen he will be invincible; it's advisable that if the player must use it; they should only use it to lower his health and then finish him off with another weapon; the Freezethrower fires quite quickly so if the player wants to damage him they should tap the firing key instead of holding it in to avoid accidentally hitting him too many times with it or preferably don't use it at all.
Trivia[]
- This is the only enemy that has a chance to become invincible in normal gameplay because while he can be damaged by the Freezethrower; he'll become invincible if he's hit enough times by it instead of being frozen. The fact that it can become invincible instead of being frozen was possibly a bug in the expansion.
- If it manages to freeze Duke Nukem, the Flying Frosty itself cannot smash him but will cut into him as soon as he unfreezes; this could be because in the main game Duke Nukem is highly unlikely to get frozen since none of the enemies in the original can actually freeze him and thus would not have a specific behavior programmed to try to break him. In fact when Duke is frozen no one will attack him but they will hang around till he unfreezes; Duke will only ever get broken by an enemy if a stray bullet happened to be coming at the same time he was frozen. All the same it's unusual that no behavior was programmed into the Flying Frosty to break Duke when he's frozen via its close combat attack.
- If the Flying Frosty manages to freeze Duke and he gets broken by an enemy an Atomic Health will spawn.