Some of you kids out there might not remember Duke Nukem 3D. Hell, I don’t think Justin Bieber was even alive when that game was released. But those of us who played the first round of PC first person shooters will remember that the game separated itself from Doom and Wolfenstein by not taking itself too seriously. The game was packed with shrink rays, pig cops, naked strippers, and pithy one-liners. But no gum. The sequel, while hardly revolutionizing to the genre, still captures the spirit of its predecessor.

Duke Nukem Forever, a one-time joke of the industry, is finally approaching release, and today I got to wrap my mitts around a 360 controller and play it. You’ve likely heard about the demo by now. It starts off by giving you a rematch against the final boss of the last game, this time with polygons. It feels really cool to pick up the Devastator and take down that alien cyclops again, this time with a satisfying finishing move. The controls are fluid and the gameplay satisfying, showing that 3D Realms and later Gearbox understand how games have changed over the last decade and a half.

Then (after a suitably inappropriate cutscene) I was thrown behind the wheel of a pickup truck. I remember seeing this scene in a magazine back during the N64 era… and I don’t think it’s been upgraded significantly since, as the controls were clunky and awkward, and the animation wasn’t that great. You can run over aliens along the way, but in a mercifully short time you thankfully hop out of the truck and get back to the shooting, going through a nice assortment of guns from pistol to rail gun to shotgun to the classic shrink ray. The combat is adequate, but I saw little here that I hadn’t seen before. Let’s hope that there are some other sweet weapons to keep things interesting.

Another thing that hasn’t changed is Duke, but that’s not a bad thing. He’s still badass, he’s still crude, and he still knows how good he is (in fact, you have an “Ego Meter” instead of a health bar). He’ll throw out dirty jokes and insults as you play, and you will crack a smile almost every time. The sense of humor here is fully intact from the last game. Naysayers aside, I think that his character still has a place in the modern age. I don’t know how much you’ll enjoy the moment to moment shooting, but I could see having a blast with this game by setting it to Easy mode (ahem, “Piece of Cake”) and shooting your way through hordes of enemies.

So the magic of the original still appears to be there. Duke Nukem Forever definitely doesn’t have the same tone as every other shooter on the market. But will the final product be all we’d hoped for? In the words of Duke himself, “After twelve fuckin’ years, it should be.”