It’s fair to say that we have Game and GameStation’s sales to thank for the big shake up in this week’s UK top 40. Just about every game they have reduced has shot back up the chart, with the most notable risers being DiRT 3 up from #2 to #7 and Call of Duty: Black Ops up from #17 to #7.

Brink only moves up one place to #8 even though it’s currently available for a purse pleasing £14.98 at GameStation. You can read our review here, if you missed (or ignored) it first time round.

Zumba Fitness is still top of the chart, making it four weeks in a row. Transformers: Dark of The Moon rises from #6 to #3 while F.E.A.R 3 drops from #4 to #9. Surprisingly, both Virtua Tennis 4 and Top Spin 4 have managed to remain in the top 10 at #6 and #10 respectively.

One game that hasn’t benefited from price drops is Duke Nukem Forever. Even with the price edging towards £20 already, this week the Duke falls from #12 to #21. If you’re a fan of useless tat, even the Balls of Steel edition can now be found online for under £35.

Fore! With tennis on the television this weekend both Virtua Tennis 4 and Top Spin 4 re-enter the top ten at #5 and #8 respectively. Oddly though, Fight Night Champion dropped down the chart despite boxing being on the picture box as well.

As predicted last week, with Transformers: Dark of the Moon now out in cinemas, it too makes the top ten rising like the fallen up from #17 to #6. Zumba Fitness is still #1. Is it any good, or is it just selling on name alone?

The new arrivals in the top ten have forced both The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D and Duke Nukem Forever down, to #11 and #12.

Resident Evil: Mercenaries 3D is the next highest entry at #21, followed by UFC: Personal Trainer at #22.

Remember – if you buy a copy of Resident Evil: Mercenaries 3D pre-owned, somebody from Capcom comes over your house and does a dirty on your doorstep. Either that or you won’t be able to make new save files. I forget.

With more negative reviews of Duke Nukem Forever appearing (EDGE’s 3/10 is one of the latest), 2K’s shoddy shooter has lost the top spot of the chart. But not to Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D as you may expect but rather Zumba Fitness.

Link rides in at a respectable #2 with 20% of all current 3DS owners making a purchase. Nintendo only has themselves to blame for it not being #1 – they started the whole fitness game trend with Wii Fit back in 2008. Well, that and the fact that Zumba is absurdly popular.

At #9 there’s another new entry in the form of Square-Enix’s Dungeon Siege III. It’s not the PC version that’s been shifting loads, which is odd given the series’ heritage, but rather the Xbox 360 version that has charted the highest. It should be pointed out though that the chart doesn’t include all PC downloads. Despite what we said last week, it would appear that it’s actually worth a look – the average score on Metacritic is currently 75%. Sorry about that, Square-Enix.

Also charting surprisingly highly is Alice: Madness Returns at #12. For a new IP with not that much promotion and a few mediocre reviews behind it that’s not bad going.

But we are going to have to end this week’s UK chart round up on a duff note – Child of Eden has only managed to get to #25. With Kinect sales still strong we could see it rise up next week. Even if it doesn’t, it’s bound to re-enter once the belated PlayStation 3 version is released in a couple of months.

Publishers – if you want your game to go straight to #1 no matter how rubbish it is, just delay it for 13 years and release it without letting anybody review it first. Case point: Duke Nukem Forever, which takes #1 in the UK chart this week. Take 2’s own L.A. Noire is at #2 so I expect lots of back patting has been going on in their offices today.

Chart Track tells us 56% of all copies of Duke Nukem Forever sold so far have been on Xbox 360, followed by 30% on PlayStation 3 and 14% on PC.

PlayStation 3 owners were too busy buying iNFAMOUS 2 it would seem, which makes it in at a respectable #4.

THQ’s Red Faction: Armageddon tunnels in at #8. The Chart Track chaps come to our statistical needs here yet again – Xbox 360 takes the majority of sales at 70%, then PlayStation 3 at 26% and PC with 4%.

EA Sports MMA makes a re-entry at #21 due to being cut in price both online and on the high street. I’ve been playing it recently and it’s actually pretty good; less of a button basher than UFC: Undisputed and fights can be wildly unpredictable.

Both Green Lantern and Kung Fu Panda 2 fail to make the top 40 but they’re knocking around in the lower parts of the single format charts. White Knight Chronicles 2 also marches in at #13 in the PlayStation 3 chart while White Knight Chronicles: Origins arrives at #7 in the PSP chart.

The first reviews for Duke Nukem Forever are in, and they don’t make for very good reading. The lowest of the low so far include a 3/10 from Eurogamer – who labelled it as “depressing” – and 2/5 from Joystiq. The average Metacrtic score stands at just 54%.

Perhaps we should have seen this coming all along after, you know, the game slipped its release date for the umpteenth time. People put good faith in Gearbox turning the project around and although I’m sure they had good intentions a game this anticipated shouldn’t have never been released in this shape.

If you delay a bad game and make it good, nobody will remember that delay. A bad game is bad forever and in a situation like this nobody wins. Sure, 2K will make some money off it but poor games dent company’s reputations and leave a foul taste in people’s mouths.

What’s more, 2K knew full well that Duke Nukem Forever wasn’t up to scratch – review copies weren’t sent out to press in good time. In other words: they are quite happy to charge £40 for a product that they know will disappoint many. I’d imagine that come next week there will be dozens of pre-owned copies lining the shelves.

To quote a fellow Twitterer: “It should have stayed as the mythical joke of the industry, now it’s the very real joke of the industry.”

Giving away inFAMOUS for free wasn’t just a way for Sony to say sorry for the PSN fiasco, but also a way to get a few more people interested in the franchise before the sequel comes out. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t buy inFAMOUS 2 though, as with the majority of Sony’s PlayStation 3-exclusives it’s very slick and polished.

Another game matching that description is Red Faction: Armageddon. The demo had one of the smoothest frame-rates imaginable – it moves like greased lightening and looks good while doing it. Unlike the last Red Faction, which was an open world affair, this one goes back to the roots of the PlayStation 2 original.

And how’s this for an epic event? Duke Nukem Forever is finally being released this week. Not many people seem to realise though that to play the PC version you need to re-install Windows 98. Obviously, that’s a joke but it has been in development for so long that Windows 98 was the newest OS at the time. Gearbox has been busy finishing it off after 3D Realms closed in 2009. There are no reviews on Metacritic yet but those that have played it suggest it’s short but sweet. As well as the standard version there’s a Balls of Steel collector’s edition with a bust, hard back book, poker chips and loads of other useless stuff.

Green Lantern: Rise of the Manhunters is another that hasn’t been reviewed yet. I can’t imagine it being completely terrible – Warner Bros. were showing it off at the recent comic expo in London. User reviews on Metacritic are encouraging but one gamer mentioned that he managed to finish it in one night. That said, you can beat a lot of games in one sitting if you have enough coffee on stand by.

Rounding the week off is THQ’s Kung Fu Panda 2. The Xbox 360 version has Kinect support. I’m surprised Microsoft didn’t boast about that during their E3 conference.

Next week: Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Child of Eden, Williams Pinball Classics, Dungeon Siege III, Alice: Madness Returns and Naruto: Shippuden 3D – The New Era.