After the ground-breaking Duke Nukem 3D, where would the poster child for toxic masculinity – albeit a satirical one, of course – head next?

Unfortunately, his mid-90s FPS would remain the peak of his career – to this day, Duke Nukem has struggled to keep up with the times; not just with his outdated sexist attitudes (which seem less like satirical barbs and more just the misogyny of its developers as the years pass) but also in terms of the games he stars in.

A prime example of this are two utterly forgettable third person platform action games from the PlayStation era; Duke Nukem: Time To Kill and Duke Nukem: Land of the Babes.

Both make a ham-fisted attempt at aping the Tomb Raider style of 3D action and exploration; though even the PlayStation era Tomb Raider games themselves have aged pretty badly in terms of their visuals, they do at least play a little better than the clunky and awkward Duke in this pair of misfires.

That aforementioned sexism is front and centre right from the get go in both of these games too (though with a game titled Land of the Babes, it’s perhaps more obvious that it’s on the way when you get to the sequel).

Time To Kill opens with a shockingly terrible FMV sequence that features the old Duke staple of a strip club, fully populated with barely clad women, pole dancing – to apparently no customers whatsoever – as the world burns outside the dimly lit establishment.

There’s some plot about time travel and the pig cops from Duke Nukem 3D make an appearance, but what it boils down to is a third person action title in which the main character stumbles about, unable to perform actions like pressing buttons while he’s holding a gun in one hand.

It just feels like such a huge step back from Duke Nukem 3D in almost every way; even the visuals, as impressive as they may have been at the time, have aged far less gracefully than in Duke’s first FPS.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Land of the Babes begins with a shockingly bad FMV intro too, with one ‘bonus’: the ‘babes’ all have extremely jiggly, pre-rendered boobs. Wow – progress.

It is a better game, at least in terms of its gameplay and presentation; that’s pretty much damning it (and quite rightly) with faint praise, however – it’s certainly not a ‘good’ game, by any stretch of the imagination.

At this point – especially after a game so brazenly titled Land of the Babes, it does feel a bit pointless to complain about the sexism and outright misogyny in these games.

Fans and defenders will no doubt point out that you know what you’re getting with these titles and that you should probably not be such a sensitive beta or something.

Especially when it’s been over two decades since they were released in the first place.

Still, it’s such an awkward element of these games that really doesn’t help their case; if they were decent games, perhaps a certain amount of this nonsense could be forgiven – as it is, it’s just one more thing to add to the pile of reasons as to why they’re just not worth bothering with.

Thankfully, there’s an underdog to be found on the cartridge in the form of the third – and last – game it features.

Duke Nukem Advance might sound like folly – an attempt at an FPS on a platform, the Game Boy Advance, that wasn’t exactly a natural fit for the genre.

Yet, rather than adapting the then-six year old Duke Nukem 3D to the GBA, it’s actually an original title designed specifically for the platform.

And, surprisingly, it works quite well.

It feels smooth and responsive, as well as being pretty bright and clear in terms of its visuals – a necessity on the original, non-backlit screen of the Game Boy Advance.

I had fun with Duke Nukem Advance, which is much more than I can say for the terrible pair of PlayStation games included in this collection.

Is it worth picking up Duke Nukem Collection 2?

Only Evercade completists and Duke Nukem superfans (if such a thing exists) should even consider it. From a game preservation point of view, it’s somewhat admirable that access to a pair of forgotten titles – along with an underrated, handheld FPS – is now legally possible.

However, this is an underwhelming and unnecessary compilation that feels like a cash grab from Evercade. Surely there was room to squeeze Duke Nukem Advance onto the first collection and just forget the two dire Tomb Raider-style games?

In any case, avoid the Duke Nukem Collection 2 unless you really can’t stomach having a gap in your Evercade library. Or if you really are Duke’s number one fan.

Though of course, that honour clearly goes to Duke himself.

You can purchase the Duke Nukem Collection 2 cartridge from Amazon here.