As vast alien mining cities suck the power and minerals from every major metropolis on Earth simultaneously, time is of the essence as millions of civilians are expiring by the second.
Using your stealth parachute and the now infamous "Zooming" head-mounted sniper weapon, your task is to slip in undetected from the sky, seek out and remove the alien leader by any means. Fully reactive “smart enemies” think, listen and communicate in a calculated assault on your life. Think fast and act faster against the most sophisticated artificial enemy intelligence of its time.
The main objective of the game is to basically shoot everything that moves and everything means every alien you will come across. The one and only way to stop the alien invasion is to kill'em all by any means necessary, such as the smallest nuclear bomb, surfboard-like jet or bomber plane. Your goal is simple - repulse the alien invasion and save the Earth... almost single handedly.
Age requirements: ESRB Rating: TEEN with Animated Blood, Animated Violence.
Minimum system requirements: Windows XP or Windows Vista, 1 GHz Processor (1.4 GHz recommended), 256MB RAM (512 recommended), 3D graphics card compatible with DirectX 7 (compatible with DirectX 9 recommended), Mouse, Keyboard.
Besides the offbeat humor and the entertaining variety of the gameplay, MDK has one major thing going for it: presentation. This decade-old game holds up rather well thanks to some inspired level design and art direction. The colors really pop out; the game is dark, but isn't afraid to throw in vivid reds and oranges amidst the browns, blacks and grays. The dated graphics inadvertently... full review give an otherworldly quality to the world's architecture. It's true that the assets are blocky, yet manage to be discernible and even look futuristic somehow. There are some seriously awesome textures here that are meant to disorient the player and try to turn genre conventions upside-down.
The game is a joy to look at, listen to, and play -- despite an old-fashioned control scheme layout. WASD-inclined players will end up making some sense out of the archaic controls after some time-consuming fiddling before the game starts. Surprisingly, the sniper interface is still stunning, and is a real testament to the care this game was given. There are three sub-screens that help you see where your bullets are going. You can even look at all three at once.
Levels typically take 10-15 minutes to complete, but offer few - if any - checkpoints. It's kind of a pain to have to restart from the beginning. However, the aforementioned variety in gameplay and excellent pacing among the different action and platforming setpieces helps alleviate this. When your play session is over, you'll likely feel gratified and wanting to keep playing; MDK is a very original piece of work. It is a very worthwhile, steadfast example of the action/platform genre that everyone should check out.
Before going on to make lackluster movie tie-ins, Shiny made some of the most creative games on the planet. MDK was a technical tour-de-force when it was released, with ridiculously large levels and insane draw distances. The game also had a crazy, dark sense of humor that permeated the whole design, from taunting enemies that held targets up to their faces, to weapons like "The... full review World's Smallest Nuclear bomb".
There is a frantic pace to the whole experience, only pausing for breath between levels (but even there, there's no progress bar, just a long tunnel to keep running through). It's an extremely linear experience, but in a good way, focusing on quality over quantity.
By today's standards, the visuals have aged a bit, but I think MDK is still one of the best 3rd-person shooters ever made, and the core gameplay still shines through.
First of all, this game rocks.
It's fast-paced, very funny and extremely enjoyable. I suppose you can expect nothing less from a company like Shiny!
Its flaw, quite possibly the only one, is that it's rather short. On the other hand the few hours you spend playing MDK will be so action-packed, they're definitely better than a 10-hour grindfest in some JRPG or MuMORPuGer.... full review ;)
Overall a must-have for any FPP/TPP fan and for all of you who like a good laugh. Did I mention this game rocks? Because it does, srsly.
chad)
Macilatthefront)
Firek)