When I was at school in my year 12 class I think, my friend Gayan gave me a game called MDK. It was on CD (this was back when games came on CD) and I went home and promptly installed it. Wow! I was quckly in love with the awesome graphics of that game. You must understand that this was back in 1999 or so: back then, the best looking game I had played was Delta force 1! So this was a game that I remembered clearly and cinematically in my head. I dont know if you will like it. But I sure did.
In MDK the players take on the role of Kurt Hectic, an unfortunate young man who’s been temporarily stuck in space with Dr. Fluke Hawkins. Hawkins and Kurt had originally gone into space to discover Flange Orbits, but, when that didn’t pan out, the doctor decided to stay and conduct other research. As the doctor didn’t bother to invent a way to get back to Earth, Kurt is stuck with him.
To relieve the boredom the Doc creates Bones, a six-legged dog who’s supposed to help out with the chores. Bones–who calls himself Max–is pretty smart though, and soon he’s helping the doctor conduct research (and fix the coffee machine). Fluke and Max discover that aliens are about to invade Earth, and when their warnings to NASA go unheeded, that’s exactly what happens. Naturally someone has to go down and get rid of the aliens–who are systematically strip mining Earth’s cities–and Kurt seems like the logical choice (plus it will give him something to do).
The doctor creates a “coil” suit for Kurt to give him some protection against the enemy, and it also contains a parachute that will let Kurt glide from heights (and get him down to Earth). His main armament is a chain gun with unlimited rounds that can also attach to his facemask to create a sniper gun. Periodically Max and the doctor will also be sending down some power-ups, like hand grenades, homing bullets, inflatable decoys and the like. Kurt’s job is, of course, to infiltrate and destroy the enemy minecrawlers that are headed for some of Earth’s not-so-major cities (such as Kircaldy, Scotland, and Sparrow Pit, England, to name two).
Despite its elaborate sounding plot–which is entirely contrived and almost incidental to play–MDK is a fairly straightforward game. All of the action takes place in a third-person perspective a la Tomb Raider, where players “see” from a position just behind and slightly above Kurt. Players control Kurt’s movement through simple keyboard commands or via a joystick, and while at first it seems like there is a lot to learn–parachuting, side-stepping, sniping, etc.–the controls actually take little time to master.
The complexity is left to the game itself, which has beautiful 3-D graphics, outstanding sound effects and increasingly intricate levels of play. But the odd thing is that none of these elements, even though they are all executed wonderfully, seem to actually go together. For instance, half of the robot enemies seem deadly serious and just plain, well, deadly, while the other half taunt Kurt with obscene-sounding (though ultimately unintelligible) shouts and weird little dances. And aside from standard power-ups like grenades and mortars, there are also things like the “World’s Smallest Nuclear Explosion” and a decoy made up of a balloon on wheels with Kurt’s picture painted on it. The game’s juvenile attitude, while amusing, doesn’t seem to have rhyme or reason.
Of course, when a game is as flat-out fun to play as MDK is, it really doesn’t need a reason. And the bizarre twists that pop up, such as the snowboarding sections played to a James Bond theme, keep things fresh and interesting. And there’s no question that everything players see, hear and do, while nonsensical, is breathtakingly beautiful, making for a game that’s like none other, and that’s definitely worth playing. I don’t know if the game is still available for download, but I hope a sequel will come up sometime.
