Gaming is a funny business. In terms of the average protagonist, we left the eighties about five years later than everyone else, with shotgun-armed, muscle bound titans being the order of the day until relatively recently. It was not until the release of games like that a more cerebral kind of hero emerged. And occasionally, in its shakier moments, gaming lapses back into familiar thinking, and another testosterone-fuelled bodybuilder shambles his way into the limelight. More often than not he’ll come equipped with a variety of one-liners that Arnie himself would be proud of, and a pun collection to match. All of which is well and good, if the purpose of this eighties resurgence is purely nostalgic.

In the case of Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project, however, the motivation is rather more ambiguous. The seminal was released over six years ago, and have done nothing to sate the ferocious appetites of the Duke’s legions of based fans. Realising that they’d soon have the gaming equivalent of a Parisian mob on their hands if they didn’t produce at least something, and perhaps also because the coffers at 3D realms were looking a bit bare, the boys in Dallas came up with the sound idea of tapping all that pent up eighties rage by releasing a game that celebrated all the things that were great about that decade. To that end, they commissioned Sunstorm interactive to produce just such a title.

It follows, therefore, that Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project would turn out to be a platformer, and would involve killing lots of evildoers with a variety of weapons while picking up keys, blowing up barrels and leaping over big pits filled with spikes and flames. Welcome back, baby!

There are all kinds of things here to tickle those nostalgia glands and bring out a smile. There are power-ups, boss encounters, great one-liners, and exploding barrels, hot chicks to rescue and a lot of ass to kick. Throughout it all Duke is as cool as we all remember, although still as dubiously attired, and the sexist attitudes that made him appealing to me as a 16 year old are still very much present. Indeed, they seem to resonate even more now, as I uncover more of the Mystery of Woman (MoW). Anyway, moving on…