MDK (PC)

As requested, today I'm looking at MDK, created by the same blokes that brought you games like Earthworm Jim, Aladdin, another Earthworm Jim, and Cool Spot. Though not in that order.

There's been a few explanations for what M.D.K. stands for. "Mission: Deliver Kindness" (in the manual), "Max, Dr. Hawkins, Kurt" (the main characters' initials), "My Dear Knight" (on the back of the Japanese box), or "whatever we say it stands for on any given day". Though everyone knows it's actually supposed to be 'Murder Death Kill', like in the movie Demolition Man. Probably.

The game opens with this picture of Doc Hawkins explaining that a huge City Minecrawler is headed for Laguna Beach, and this is apparently my problem somehow.

And so our hero Kurt gets into his fightin' suit and freefalls down to the Minecrawler from orbit. Okay that's pretty hardcore.

On the way down I get a minigame, where I have to avoid the green radar beam, while collecting the equipment floating down on parachutes. Or perhaps I'm avoiding the parachutes too, I'm not too clear on that yet. I'm pretty sure missiles are bad though.

It's hard to tell with these graphics, but I'm 90% sure my character just switched from a Quake style 3d model to a Doom style sprite when I landed, though I'm not sure why they'd do that. That's not a Mega Man style gun arm by the way, Kurt's actually holding the spiky front half of his helmet as his weapon.

First thing I did here was turn around and walk the opposite way, (hey, sometimes wandering off the path works out), and found that I could walk right up to the wall just fine, but if I turned the view around Kurt would actually physically slide away from the wall to make room for the camera. Not exactly the typical way a game would handle it.

Well know I know why it's called a City Minecrawler. Because it has an entire bloody city sitting on the back of it. It ain't a bad looking city either. I gotta say I'm loving this graphic style, the game looks like it's been airbrushed onto black paper.

Oh, that's Kurt's parachute by the way, which lets me glide around for a bit, shooting the enemies as I drop. Apparently thin hoops can be a suitable substitute for a big sheet of cloth, after the application of little mad science.

Hmm, here's a nuclear bomb pickup and a over on the left there's a sealed door with a nuke symbol on it... I wonder if these two things are related somehow. I hope they are, and that isn't the door to the nuclear warhead storage shed, or else I'm going to be known forevermore as the idiot who accidentally turned California into a smoking radioactive crater after I set this thing off.

It helpful flashes up "Unlock door with Nuke!" when I get close in case I didn't figure it out, which I do appreciate. I don't mind having to work out a few things logically, but the minds that thought up Earthworm Jim have a special kind of logic all their own, and I might need clues from time to time.

This was actually one of the first 3d shooters to feature a sniper rifle with a zoom scope, just beating Goldeneye by a few months. I'm sure there must have been some other game with a sniper view released before this, but I doubt any of them included three semi-pointless bullet cams as well!

The enemies have been nice enough to bring targets to this fight, so there's no mystery to what I'm supposed to be shooting. Though it is a mystery why the assholes won't stay dead.

  

I've only got the one gun with generic infinite ammunition in third person mode, but in sniper mode I've got some more creative ammo types available, depending on what I've foraged from the level. Shame it doesn't default to standard bullets when I switch view, so if I need to snipe something in a hurry, I could end firing off some of my precious limited supply of an ammo type more useful elsewhere. It doesn't help that certain kinds of ammo look really similar at a glance.

That's Mortar rounds on the left, and Sniper Grenade rounds on the right by the way. Or maybe it's the other way around. One fires in an arc like a grenade, the other is more like a explosive bullet, so it'd be nice if I knew which was which.

It doesn't matter what ammo I use, these enemies just keep bouncing back onto the platforms, and I kind of need them out of my way before I can jump up myself and get to the exit. It's a conundrum. Where's the helpful text message when I need it?

Hang on, I think they're jumping out of that pipe in the middle of the room. It's a fucking ENEMY GENERATOR! That's the real target I should be shooting at.

A few mortar rounds and my infinite enemy issues are resolved, and I can finally move on.

For a game with a sniper mode as a selling point, it sure does like to keep me running around instead. This boss tank isn't the only thing out here I'm dodging. Those specks in the background are enemies spraying bullets in my general direction. Which is a bit awkward for me, because that's where I am.

Taking out the boss took some of the pressure off, so now I can relax for a split second and send a few bullets back their way.

Of course I forget to switch ammo first, so I wasted my special dog airstrike bonus pickup by mistake. Shamefully I couldn't even get a good shot of Max and his plane at once. The thing looks like it's modelled after the top half of a dog's head, complete with teeth and ears, but missing the jaw.

Of course the enemies keep respawning here too, so I've basically been wasting my time sniping them. But I have a suspicion setting off one of these explosives will open up a way out of this arena.

Crap, don't you hate it when a suicide bot does a kamikaze run, carrying a bomb right at your face? Hang on, I know what this game reminds me of now. It's a bit like third person Serious Sam, all about strafing around open areas shooting waves of semi-humorous enemies, with a bit of corridor shooting to connect places together.


FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER (STILL LEVEL ONE).

Uh, what? Is that a shocking story development, or did I fuck up a mission objective, or what? The game hasn't kicked me to a game over screen yet, so I guess it was meant to be. Sucks for poor Laguna Beach though.

The game really likes to block my path until I can figure out what exactly it wants me to shoot at. Fortunately this one's pretty straightforward. I've been given grenade bullets (or are they mortar bullets?) and there are openings above these enemies. I just need to get one bouncing down each funnel and I'm done here.

Uh, how the hell do I get up onto those ledges? Have I finally found a problem that can't be solved by shooting things?

Ah, there's a huge target at the bottom of the room. Looking at all those spikes around it I guess I'm supposed to be a safe landing spot for me to parachute down to.


LATER.

Yeah, turns out I was meant to shoot it, not land on it. It revealed a fan and I was able to glide up using the air current to reach the glass ledges.

That reminds me, the game doesn't have a crosshair or a target lock in third person view, but it's got so much auto aim that it's not really necessary. Even when I'm running around sideways and jumping across platforms, my bullets usually end up where I want them to go.


A FEW MINUTES LATER.

Damn this level seems to be dragging on forever. I must have been wandering around this Minecrawler close to an hour by now, though to be fair I did waste a lot of time stuck on a couple of the puzzles.

Alright what do I have to do here then? I'm stuck on this balcony, and there's a control tower opposite me, so I suppose I should start shooting at it.

Aha, there's a lizard monster manning the tower. A few shots aught to finish him off... though they don't. And I don't see a health bar, which is usually the big clue I'm shooting in the right place.

After a while this triggers some enemies to be airlifted onto my balcony to fight me, so I fight them right back, but still nothing opens. There must be something I'm overlooking here, some trick...


TWO MINUTES LATER.

Actually it seems that I just had to shoot the guy some more. The Minecrawler blew up, and I got sucked through a wormhole with the debris. Fortunately Max showed up just in time... to stop me from catching up to a health pick-up a little further down the tunnel. But whatever, the level's finally over with and I can save.

(Actually it turns out that I could have saved AT ANY TIME, but I didn't realise this while playing because they don't list the save hotkey on the help screen or the redefine keyboard options. The load key's there, but not save.)

(It's 'F2' by the way.)

Oh cool, I have a spacestation base. That'd explain the orbital drop at the start of the level. Kurt could have just opened the front door and stepped out.

Well the day's saved and everyone's happy. Time to put my feet up and have a cup of tea.

Shit. So I could have saved Laguna Beach somehow. Damn, I know what's going on here. There must be a time limit, and I was so damn slow I ran out of time halfway through the level.

Well I can't just keep playing after letting all those poor people suffer potentially avoidable horrific deaths. That's the kind of reckless behaviour that leads to bad endings.

Okay, starting level one again then, from the start.


HALF AN HOUR LATER, ON LEVEL TWO.

And after another orbital drop, I land on City Minecrawler #2. Interesting choice of targets for their firing range there...

Wait, shit, I'm standing on a firing range? Well that's not good.

I took so long wandering around this room that the game eventually took pity on me and explained what I had to do here. You see, what I was supposed to figure out myself is that if I stand on the middle gun while it's firing, it'll break off its mount and crash through the window on the right, taking me with it into a new area.

To be fair I think this is the only time in the game so far I've come across a puzzle that's so clearly bullshit. And hey, it's possible I missed a clue somewhere. Perhaps there's a big warning sign just off to the side somewhere with "DO NOT STAND ON THE MIDDLE GUN, YOU IDIOT" written on, and a picture of a gun falling off.

Well there's the exit to this room on the left, but there's no way to get up there. But there's also a pendulum swinging across the room (on the left), a red monster shooting at me (on the right), and some balls rolling across the sandy floor below. And I'm betting one of them is going to be a bullet activated switch for that door.


FIVE MINUTES LATER.

Here's the 'you done fucked up' screen, for anyone curious. This is what it looks like when I get Kurt killed just when I'm about to finally escape the room I've been struggling with for five minutes. It doesn't continue from a checkpoint after this, or load my latest save, or even give me a 'try again: yes/no message. It just dumps me back to the title screen. Actually it dumps me back to the logos before the title screen. It basically just resets the game after every death.
 
Now I have to jump out from orbit again and do the whole damn level from the start.

(Still didn't know about the mid-level save button yet at this point).


EVENTUALLY, A FEW ROOMS FURTHER ON.

The game hasn't actually glitched out here, I'm just in a maze of mirrors. The type of mirrors that only reflect the background. Either that or I'm a vampire and no one bothered to tell me.

You know, it just occurred to me how there aren't really any infinite enemy generators on this level so far. It'd be nice if I've left them behind for good, though I'm not getting my hopes up.


LATER, AT THE END OF THE LEVEL (HOPEFULLY).

You know, I'm sure I've seen that guy hanging around on one of the menu screens. Hey, if this is the level two boss, then I've gotten to the end with more than half the time left on the clock (the timer is the green line encircling the health meter on the bottom right). My new strategy of 'holding down the run button' seems to be paying off.


EVENTUALLY, ON LEVEL THREE.

Yeah, this is definitely by the makers of Earthworm Jim. Though it is a lot more restrained with its humour and weirdness. The music in particular has been played entirely straight, all serious dramatic action tracks. Tommy Tallarico has successfully resisted the urge to throw in any classical music this time... so far.

Oh now they start ramping up the weird. Fortunately this cardboard cartoon room is filled with handy grenades, so I can demolish it and move on to the serious business of saving the world from aliens.

Actually I don't even know if they are aliens. I don't know anything at all really. The entire story up until now has pretty much been limited to Dr Hawkings telling me which Minecrawler I'll be jumping onto next.

Okay now I don't even know what the fuck. I was doing pretty well up to this point I thought, until too enemies speeding across the floor took Kurt apart in seconds. Game over (again.)


I don't know if I'd recommend the game, but I definitely don't dislike it. My biggest issue with it while playing was that I couldn't save and take a break mid-way through the king-size levels, but it turns out that I actually could all along, so... can't really complain about that any more. It does have a time limit (which I hate), some enemies can take a ridiculous amount of bullets to kill, and a few of the puzzles are just dumb (especially considering the time limit). But once I figured out that most problems can be solved by shooting every enemy, bomb, door, and wall in the area until a health bar appears or something explodes, I started making steady progress.

The game ain't crap, so it gets a star.