A short while into Gearbox Softwares Duke Nukem Forever it's hard not to get the feeling of being a little hard done by. After a 15 year wait for the return of Nukem, Empire found itself stumbling through a mediocre pad-pushing experience weighed down by grainy visuals, so-so level design, a handful of bugs and some astonishingly frustrating load times.
Duke Nukem Forevers story is delightfully daft and the perfect fit for gamings sultan of smut: Duke is the king and living it large in Las Vegas before being slung into another battle against a race of evil E.T.s hellbent on stealing all of Earths women. Naturally, the blond behemoth cant let that happen and so begins our bumpy ride down memory lane. Truth be told, there are fleeting moments of brilliance, including a fistful of loony sections as a shrunken Duke screeches around casino lobbies in a remote-controlled car, but not enough to detract from the fact that the memories of the 1996 blaster can only carry you so far through the campaign.
If you, like this writer, have somehow found yourself inexorably following the trials and tribulations of Dukes journey from the mid-'90s to this historical moment in time, you owe it to yourself to slap a little alien ass around.