MDK

The Good
Since in theory you can put anything in a video game, it's surprising how damned unimaginative many games are. The quest for "realism" has produced many pretentious and mediocre games that fail in the basic requirement for a game; to be entertaining. Arcade-style games have less trouble in this regard, as they can suspend the laws of physics and realism any time they want for the sake of a roller-coaster gaming experience. MDK is one such game. While tactical and strategic shooters bog themselves down with realistic physics, firing modes, and squad AI (sometimes sacrificing gameplay to do so), it's nice to see a shooter that has no pretensions about itself and desires only to entertain.

MDK is an over-the-shoulder 3rd person shooter where you play as Kurt (a cute, androgynous little guy with a chaingun cannon built into his arm), who is apparently earth's sole defence against a menacing breed of Alien spacecraft called Minecrawlers. Your goal is to board each of these Minecrawlers (they're as big as a good-sized city) and shut them down through whatever means necessary. This amounts to progressing through a series of linear levels, blasting enemies, and finding out what you have to do to destroy the Minecrawler. This is different on each level, sometimes you'll have to deactivate a set of switches/blow something up, other times you'll have to fight a boss.

The meat of the game is centered around massive set-piece shooting sequences interspersed with puzzles that are similar to Rayman. You have unlimited ammo, and a parachute built into your exoskeleton that allows you to glide across huge chasms with ease. At the press of a button you can switch into sniper mode, which allows you to zoom in and blow away enemies that are seemingly miles away. This versatile combat system allows the developers to pile on the baddies and force the player into seemingly impossible situations that can be escaped through obscure logic and creative use of Kurt's talents.

To add more variety to the game they threw in a bunch of other oddball gameplay conventions, including rail-shooting, hover board flying, Crash-Bandicoot-style tunnel-surfing, and even a few well-placed mini-games (that actually add to the gameplay instead of serving as mere gimmicks and distractions unlike most mini-games). You get a bonus if you complete a level within a set time limit, and a funny one-liner from your boss if you don't.

Already you have the premise for an engaging and quirky action game. But Shiny pulls out all the stops for their fans by pulling off set-piece stunts of sheer audacity. Have you ever seen something in a videogame so amazing and unexpected it sent your brain into a near-meltdown, something that made you think "HOLY CRAP, I HAD NO IDEA THEY COULD DO SOMETHING LIKE THAT". I'm talking about things like the skydiving gun battle in No One Lives Forever, the zero-gravity level in Quake, the fight against Ganondorf in Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, where you think you've won and suddenly Ganon comes back to life for a showdown of near-apocalyptic proportions. Yeah, stuff so mind-numbingly brilliant that it takes your dignity, your sense of reason, and the layer of cynical jadedness that surrounds ever gamer and throws it into an industrial wood chipper.

Well, MDK is full of moments like that. Time and again you'll be thinking you've seen it all and then the game will shock you with something new. One time I was running towards an exit or safety with only a few points of health left, thinking "whew, I did it" and than suddenly the walls of the building fell out to reveal massive laser-shooting turrets that turned the entire level into a technicolor killing zone. The whole feel of the game is one of hectic, unbroken spontaneity, as if the level design was being channeled directly from the mind of Dr Seuss to a C++ program. Many tricks and set-pieces could have easily detracted from the gameplay, or played no other part other than eye-candy, but Shiny pulls them off with brass balls. The final boss fight was so hilariously creative I felt the urge to applaud.

The acid-tripping world MDK is set in complements the action and skewers the lunatic, over-the-top feel the game has. Think of Chronicles of Riddick crossed with Tron and you have an idea of what to expect. At no point does the game try to be realistic so any sort of architecture is possible, ranging from urban environments to sandy deserts to completely nonsensical fantasy worlds that were seemingly thought up on the whim of the developers. There's hardly any eye-candy, though this is no criticism.

The game is graphically exceptional with a first-generation polygon engine that looks far less blocky than Quake 2 or Unreal, and is faster too. It doesn't have real-time lighting to play with, but makes up for it with reflective surfaces and even some particle and flame effects. But the star of the show here is Kurt himself, with by far the most detailed model in the game with some exquisitely well-rendered animations and movements (look at him while sidestepping). The enemy models are very blocky but equally well animated, and will gesticulate and taunt you from a distance. MDK is also one of the first games to have a completely bug-free sniper mode, you can zoom in and out on targets anywhere without having to worry about clipping problems.

The music video (performed by pop group BZK) you get when you beat the game was a hoot, and I wish developers would include stuff like this more often in their games.

The Bad
The cutesy enemies and general level of quirkiness would probably just annoy many of you (make no mistake, MDK has "CONSOLE GAME" stamped all over it) and aside from the music video the ending is as unrewarding as you can get, consisting of little more than a short cutscene and Nintendo style a-winner-is-you screen. But hey, the game itself was so crazy and unpredictable maybe my expectations were unreasonably high.

As far as actual criticisms go MDK is insanely linear. You get led by the nose through a series of tunnels and passages with maybe two or three divergent paths throughout the entire game (seriously, I'm not exaggerating) that you need to explore in order to unlock some other area. The game's puzzles are retarded "figure out which brick you need to shoot" affairs that are usually a matter of trial and error. And the final boss fight, cute though it is, is perhaps the easiest part of the game.

And it's damned short.

The Bottom Line
While not for everyone, MDK is a crazed, high-octane shooter full of originality and invention. Games like this one are rare, and to be treasured wherever you find them.

The Good
MDK is one of my all time favorite games. I just keep coming back to it because I just love everything about it. It's universe, and just the fun of blasting my enemies' heads off with a sniper rifle.

A little about the story: In MDK you are Kurt Hectic, a skinny janitor that is "chosen" to save the earth from evil aliens called Stream Riders. They have come to earth just to crush us, and now Kurt is being sent to the 5 giant trucks that's doing the crushin'. He must battle each commander of these giant trucks and put an end to the final boss, Gunter Glut, the leader of the aliens. A very simple plot, but I like it.

The graphics are just stunning for a game of its age. This was the time of Quake where you would run around in small corridors, and here MDK just launches with an arsenal of huge arenas! This game has some of the most memorable game scenes of the 90's, especially the glass world. Everything is reflected in the surfaces and you really get the feeling of being in a really huge world, giving the game a very epic feel. And it never lags! Promise! I can run this on my brother's stone age Windows 98 computer and it never lags! And not to mention in the first level where you fly over a huge arena bombing aliens and buildings, that just feels incredible. Although the worlds seem polygonal today, the textures and the small details in this game makes it very varied. I still prefer the Windows version over the PlayStation version because the PS1 version had to cut down most of the graphics and using weird scaling methods to make them appeal bigger.

The controls are great. It kind of feels like playing Doom in 3rd perspective, which should give you some idea on how it feels. Very smooth controls that never feel overcomplicated.

The gameplay is really varied too. There are small minigames hidden inside MDK, but they blend with the main gameplay nicely. The level design is also so linear that getting lost is almost impossible. This is what want games to have. I never were so fond of non-linear worlds, because you easily get confused and don't know what to do next. MDK is like old railshooters. Just go straight forward on the path. But there are secrets too of course. Plenty of them, but you can never get confused in MDK, which I think makes it even much more of a classic. Even though the levels are linear, as mentioned before, they feel really big. Each level is composed of several stages, serving as levels within the levels, and the design and gameplay of these levels can vary pretty much, making MDK a very short game that feels like it's huge. Also, the guys at Shiny bring in tons of mad humor, greatly toning down the seriousness of it all. And that's what I like about this game, it never gets to serious! It feels like a breath of fresh air compared to Quake and other action games. It's epic and dark, but there's always some quirky reference or hilarious twist in there to keep you laughing while being blasted by thousands of evil aliens. One of the things to mention is the powerups. Who would've thought the world's smallest nuclear bomb would be used merely to open locks? And how can the aliens take over earth if they are too stupid to notice the difference between the real Kurt and his sidekick, the inflatable dummy decoy? It's just those little details that make MDK a serious action game with humor.

The music is just awesome. Shiny did a right thing in hiring Tommy Tallarico because he gives so much atmosphere to the experience. And the music reflects the level design in variety. Everything from epic rock anthems(Stranger Things, Vengeful Alien), to tribal jungle rythms and big epic themes(title music). The music is pretty much the reason I continue returning to MDK. It feels like being in a really cool movie. The sound effects sound pretty stock, but they never really bring down the experience. Hell, Doom even used stock sounds, but I don't think people mind as long as they fit and don't sound out of place. The voices of the aliens are sometimes incredibly comedic and I can promise you you'll sometimes just laugh your ass off at their speech. And I just love that metallic scream from Kurt Hectic when he dive into the giant cities. "WOAAAAAAAH!!!" I sometimes scream with him.

Also, in the end you get to see a music video. I've NEVER seen that before. A music video!

The Bad
It's a huge game that just feels short when you've finished it. You kinda long for something more. Also, I would love to be able to play this game multiplayer with someone. Either deathmatches or co-operative sessions. But I figure MDK is still great without that, because it focuses on the single player experience, which is just great. But I'd wish they just use more of the world they had created. Also I'd wish they'd include the FMV they had in the PS1 version, because it's so cool to watch, even today. Another thing I hated was the censored version where the blood was colored blue instead of green, and many of the sound effects were replaced to tone down the violence.

Something I also don't like about MDK in general, is that I'm confused about what MDK stands for. But I guess for me it'll always stand for Massive Dose of Kickass!!!

PS: I've heard people complain about the save feature in the initial release but in the version I played I was still able to save anywhere in the game with F2... so what's the big deal?

The Bottom Line
How to describe a work of art? MDK must be played to be believed. Even today with all the realistic and serious games, MDK feels fresh. It has humor without being too silly or cheesy. It still has that epic feel to it. I recommend MDK to anyone who hasn't played it because you are really missing out on a great game.

The Good
M.D.K (stands for murder death kill?? max doctor kurt?? mother's day kiss?? whatever...) was really groundbreaking in it's time back then in 1997. You play as kurt & your job is to terminate the alien bastards out of this world(for saving earth). You have six missions/levels which you will travel & kick some alien ass. Mdk was the first game (at least on the pc) that had a sniper. Boss battles are just awesome & creative . The graphics (for it's time) were unbelievable, you really felt like part of a living world. The atmosphere while post-apocalyptic has a heavy comedic feeling. Also the soundtrack is definitely a plus, it's helping making the game a powerful & epic experience.

The Bad
Well the game was way way way to short-> only 6 missions(at least they are long ones). another problem is the fact the game can get repetitive at times.

The Bottom Line
Great game! very close to a masterpiece( & some may say it is) By far Shiny's best& one of the best gaming experiences ever.