MDK for PS1

by Sony

Product Details

• ASIN: B00002STJC
• Media: Video Game
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #28,711 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)

Product Description

GameSpot Review

Shiny has created another stylish, funny shooter with MDK, which lands solidly in the 3D shooting adventure gaming genre, with a heavy emphasis on shooting. You play Kurt, who is armed to the teeth and sent onto the orbiting spacecraft of aliens hell-bent on destroying the Earth, and race through room after room of jumping and shooting, with a little sniper-view action thrown in for good measure. With innovative graphics, great level design, and awesome special weapons, everything looks great on paper. A number of flaws limit the game's life span, though, and raise questions about what's really important in games - style, mood, and vibe or solid gameplay, consistent graphics, and a continual challenge.

From a design standpoint, the graphics are amazing: goofy, ugly, stupid-looking monsters; a hero in a skintight suit with a giant pterodactylesque head and huge, inflatable rings for a parachute; incredibly strange special weapons, like the inflatable plastic decoy dummy that draws enemy fire and then explodes; and a massive array of different styles of rooms and levels, from a Hoth-like snow arena, to a psychedelic room with iridescent mirrored walls, to a creepy Romper Room whose primary-colored, paint-splattered platforms and vacant, dark crevices often line up to form eerie skull faces. MDK packs a punch in the style department. In execution, the flaws show, and you may wish they'd traded a little of the game's visual inventiveness for some consistent graphical clarity. There's a ton of polygon dropout. And when things get busy, with dozens of onscreen enemies, projectiles, and explosions (which is in almost every scene), things slow way, way down, or animation frames disappear. Movement is smooth one minute and jerky and awkward the next.

Gameplay is fast, with relatively loose control. Shooting is easy. At long range, just coming close with the chain gun is enough to take out most bad guys. This is good because most locations have dozens of enemies to take out. Many have generators that you must seek out first, since they're continually creating reinforcement troops on the spot. Jumping with any accuracy is awkward and never feels quite solid. Get used to it, though, because many of the game's puzzles involve jumping from platform to platform, or working your way up a series of jumps and airlifts, all while under fire from enemy guns. For the first few levels it's a real challenge to clear out room after room, all with completely different layouts and types of jumps. After a while, though, you realize that if you never stop shooting and strafing, your success is almost inevitable. If the battlefield is large enough, you don't even need to strafe back and forth, just hold R1 (strafe right), and press the D-pad left (to remain pointed at your target), and you'll literally run circles around your enemy, who's too stupid to adapt to this level of tactical virtuosity. Of course, when there's a gun turret or something, you'll need to switch into sniper mode to remedy the situation, but aside from that, the same pattern works for about 80 percent of combat. In short, the game gets easy quick.

The game's sniper mode is a lot of fun, even if it's ineffective in most circumstances. It's great when there's someone menacing you from such a distance that, in normal mode, he appears the size of a single pixel. Hit the select button to activate the mode, and zoom in to find that what appeared to be an innocuous curve in the scenery is actually a gun turret with someone inside, busily preparing megablasts to hurtle your way. The mode also has a "bullet-cam", which shows the scenery rushing by from the perspective of the projectiles you fire. This is great for lining up difficult long-range shots, since when you miss, you can easily pinpoint the exact spot you hit. Unfortunately, there are only three cameras, and you cannot fire a fourth shot until the first three land. This dramatically slows your rate of fire, especially with the chain gun. It's also difficult to move while in sniper mode - not just because it's hard to see what's around you, but your movement is actually slowed considerably - and since continually strafing is essentially the key to survival in the game, you'll probably only use it when there's a really powerful gun to take out.

Rounding out the game is an amazing soundtrack by the inimitable Tommy Tallarico Studios. This time around, Tommy's been very tasteful with the score, creating extremely dramatic music that could have come right out of Escape from Alcatraz, the Great Escape, or Escape from New York. Very cinematic, it lends a sense of urgency to each mission, and there are no shredding guitar solos. The other sound effects, especially the whimpering complaints of your alien enemies, are awesome, too.

In all, MDK is something of a mixed bag. Amazing graphics style, but little graphical consistency. Awesome combat action, but little combat challenge. Great puzzles, but they're really pretty simple, and the whole game can be solved without using too many brain cells. You've got to hand it to Shiny, though, for consistently trying to come up with something different. --Josh Smith
--Copyright ©1999 GameSpot Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of GameSpot is prohibited. GameSpot and the GameSpot logo are trademarks of GameSpot Inc.

Manufacturer Description

It thinks. Therefore it kills. Available now with six new arenas designed exclusively for the PlayStation. MDK combines the elements of stealth ambush program in- telligence stunning futuristic graphics and a wide open playing environment. In the not too distant future alien beings known as slavery.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Funny, funny, and really good graphics, December 23, 1999

By A Customer

= Durability:5.0 out of 5 stars  = Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars  = Educational:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: MDK for PS1 (Video Game)

MDK has very good graphics. The story behind it is pretty cliche, but the gameplay is fun and there's always something new around the corner. The controls are very easy to get used to.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Charlie's Review, December 1, 1999

By A Customer

= Durability:5.0 out of 5 stars  = Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars  = Educational:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: MDK for PS1 (Video Game)

If you play this game on a moderately advanced PC it truly rocks. With great special effects, play control, play variety and level depth it is one of the best Games I've played. The plot is a little thin, and it takes some thought to figure out the story and how it relates to the game, but once you get it, it's a great game.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars a lost gem? probably, February 22, 2007

By 

B. E Jackson (Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: MDK for PS1 (Video Game)

MDK for the Sony Playstation is a pretty good action/shooter game released in 1997. In fact, you will be shooting quite often as that's the main purpose of the game. Kill all (or most) of the enemies you encounter to advance to the next stage.

I mention in another review how it's pretty sad in my opinion that so many people feel the need to upgrade their video game consoles when there's *so* many unpopular (though entirely enjoyable) games such as MDK that go by without hardly anyone noticing them. Once the Playstation 2 hit the market, the odds of people discovering a hidden game like MDK are *really* slim. It's really a shame that once a new console hits the shelves, everyone runs to it like there's a dinner bell attached to it or something.

You should NEVER ignore old games just because they're no longer brand new. Am I right? If the reviews for a game are mostly positive, then it's probably worth owning no matter HOW many copies sold, or how many people know about the game. It makes you wonder how many other fantastic games are available for the original Playstation that hardly nobody knows about. Thanks to the Playstation 3, the PS2 will experience the same problem one day.

With that out of the way (sorry, I like to ramble, but you have to admit I make a good point) let's talk about the actual game.

MDK is a VERY pretty game to look at. Colorful and whacky graphics dominate. MDK was clearly a notch above other games at the time of its release. The graphics look a lot like the original version of Star Fox that appeared on the Super NES. If you recall, Star Fox had an FX chip which allowed the graphics to stand out and look distinct. I don't know if it's possible for an FX Chip to be included in a Playstation game, but it sure looks like MDK has one. The graphical similarity to Star Fox was immediately noticeable to me.

I guess the best way to explain MDK's gameplay is that your main character has a gun (apparently with unlimited ammo, though not entirely sure about that) and a bunch of other things like grenades and whatnot which are mainly used to help open doors once you've eliminated the necessary amount of enemies in that particular level. Once the door is open, another stage begins. It's cool how you just WALK into another stage, with a different atmosphere and background. It's like walking into a carnival. Of course, the items you collect are not simply called grenades because apparently a word THAT short and simple would be boring to the people who created this game. Everything in MDK has to have a funny side to it. Well, not the shooting itself, but besides that, everything else.

You see, MDK is a really goofy game that shares a few things with Earthworm Jim (the same company made both games, by the way). I was taken by surprise when I first played MDK because, reading the reviews, I was expecting an alien-shooting action game to lean on the serious side. Instead, it's just a really goofy game.

I'm happy to report that NONE of the goofiness turns annoying after a while, which means I give the people responsible for this games creation a LOT of credit because many times game companies like to try to be funny with all sorts of experimental ideas, and most of the time they end up with a super-annoying, unplayable game. SOMETHING usually goes wrong when too much humor is thrown into the mix, but I'm happy to report MDK is able to still proudly stand tall as a really good action game. It's just not a serious one.

The only difficulty you will discover in the game is trying to learn how to jump properly at all the right moments. For some reason, your character has an awkward way of landing after he jumps, which can make it tricky to land on certain platforms. Other than that, the game is pretty simple. Shooting aliens over and over is actually not very challenging at all because all you have to do when a bunch of them appear on screen is simply hold down the shoot button (Square) and continue walking back and forth with the L1 and R1 buttons. If you continue doing this, the laser beam attacks and other gunfire from the enemies will miss you, but you won't miss them. Also worth noting is that every enemy you encounter has a life bar. Some are short, some long.

It took me a couple hours to get used to the controls, and figure out what everything important on the screen means. Thankfully my copy came with an instruction booklet, but if your copy didn't come with one, well, there's a lot to learn. It's well worth putting time into MDK though, and eventually you will probably figure out what all the buttons do. It just takes some time to learn. Though honestly, there's a couple things I STILL have no clue what they mean, but they haven't interferred with the gameplay in any way as far as I can tell. And they haven't held me back from completing some levels either.

Saving your progress can be hard to understand at first. You have to pause the game and then hit the select button. This will bring up the save option. If you die, luckily you can start over at the last savepoint. HOWEVER, as far as I can tell, the game NEVER asks you to save on its own. You have to do it yourself. So, if you die 10 levels into the game and then realize you forgot to save, you will have to start ALL the way back at the beginning of the game. Just remember: every time you enter a new stage, SAVE THE GAME!!!

The loading times are really short. In fact, while walking into the next stage, they are barely even one or two seconds long. It's funny because I remember back in 1996 everyone would complain about the loading times on the Playstation. One year later and the waiting time apparently went down considerably.

The music is really good overall. Many times it builds tension. I especially like the theme that plays when the Game Start/Options screen appears at the beginning. It starts off with an innocent flute melody which turns into a much bigger castle-like theme. It reminds me of the Genesis song "Watcher of the Skies".

Call me extremely observant, but the way your main character fires his weapon is exactly the same as Earthworm Jim. In fact, the only difference between Earthworm Jim and this game is that MDK is a 3D third-person shooter game. Earthworm Jim was just a 2D side-scroller. Well, I haven't come across any COWS yet, which is a trademark for Earthworm Jim. But you can clearly tell the same company created both games.

I really think if you like nonstop shooting action in a colorful, unique environment you will enjoy what MDK has to offer. It's not a best-seller, but that shouldn't matter. It shouldn't stop you from going ahead and buying MDK. The graphics are really cool-looking, the animations from enemies exploding is quite a spectacle, and the challenge is just right for anyone to play (but make sure you have it on EASY mode the first time). Don't give up on the game if the first couple levels are confusing to you. Give the game a chance. A really good forgotten Playstation game that can be purchased for a very good price.