In Before The Lock

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You can take that toe tag off Duke Nukem Forever. The game, presumed dead after developer 3D Realms pulled the plug on it last year, is alive and kicking at the Penny Arcade Expo, and it's as raunchy as ever.

Borderlands developer Gearbox Software has taken the reins of the first-person shooter, which Take-Two Games will release next year. Two levels of the game are being shown to attendees at PAX 2010, the massive videogame gathering this weekend in Seattle.

“You cannot kill Duke. You cannot kill Duke!” shouted Gearbox's CEO Randy Pitchford to a group of gamers that had waited in line Friday at Take-Two’s PAX booth to see the game. Pitchford, a former employee of 3D Realms, was wearing the Duke shirt the company gave him in 1996. “I couldn’t let Duke go, either,” he said.

The oft-delayed videogame, a sequel to 1996’s Duke Nukem 3D, became the perennial winner of Wired’s Vaporware Awards during more than a decade of delays.

Pitchford insists that this time, Duke is really happening. “We’re in the polishing phase now. This is a game where we cannot make a promise we cannot fulfill,” he told the Wall Street Journal.

Duke Nukem Forever’s troubled development history caused 2K Games to debut the title to the gamer crowd at PAX rather than issue a press release. “PAX is not a show about retailers, not a show about journalists. It’s about players,” Pitchford said. While 2K is not allowing video of the game, the company is encouraging attendees to take as many still cellphone shots as they want.

“Upload that shit to Facebook!” said Pitchford before playing the game’s new trailer at PAX. “Steal a thousand screenshots -- I don’t give a fuck.”

During the PAX demo, we got through the first level but were kicked out of the room not long after I got my hands on the game’s second level, in which Duke drives around an arid desert in a monster truck.

I saw enough to reassure anyone worried that a developer change would take the edge off Duke’s greasy sexist charm. Perhaps the high point was the arrival of a building-size, grotesque green alien with three pendulous nude breasts. “Yeah, I’d still hit it,” Duke growled.

The demo began with space marine Duke Nukem engaging in his favorite recreational activity: urinating. "Right Trigger: Piss," read the on-screen button prompt. Draining Duke’s bladder, I found myself outside in a hallway with some army buddies who were gathered around a whiteboard that described Operation: Cock Block. Apparently we were going to shoot a giant alien.

At this moment, all hell broke loose and the corridors we were inside started getting destroyed, presumably by the giant alien described on the whiteboard. Running around watching men die all around me, I found a big gun, helpfully loaded with exactly 69 bullets. Ha ha.

Arriving in a football field in front of the giant alien himself, I unloaded bullets into him until he hit the floor. At that moment I jumped on him and tore out his eyeball. “A: Kick a field goal,” the screen read. I did. It was good.

As the first level came to its touching denouement, the camera pulled back to reveal that the giant alien fight was really just Duke playing a copy of Duke Nukem Forever. While receiving oral sex. From two women at once.

“What about the game, Duke? Was it good?” asked one. “Yeah,” Duke replied. “But after 12 fuckin’ years, it had better be.”