MDK2
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| MDK2 | |
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| Developer(s) | BioWare |
| Publisher(s) | Interplay |
| Platform(s) | Dreamcast, Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 2 |
| Release date | March 31, 2000 (DC) May 25, 2000 (WIN) March 26, 2001 (PS2) |
| Genre(s) | Third-person shooter |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
| Rating(s) | ESRB: Teen (T) USK: 12+ ELSPA: 11+ |
| Media | 1 GD-ROM (DC) 1 CD-ROM (WIN) 1 DVD (PS2) |
| System requirements | 200 MHz CPU, 16 MB RAM, 250 MB available hard disk space, OpenGL-capable graphics card with 4 MB RAM, DirectX-compatible sound card (WIN) |
MDK2 is a video game and sequel to the third-person shooter, MDK. The original MDK was developed by Shiny Entertainment and released in 1997 by Interplay. For the sequel, established RPG developer BioWare Corp. of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada took the reins, delivering a highly rated gaming experience that followed on closely from the first game.
MDK2 was originally released for the Dreamcast and PC in 2000. It was later revised and released for the PlayStation 2 as MDK2: Armageddon. The main difference between the Dreamcast and the other two versions is the ability to select the difficulty level.
[edit] Protagonists and gameplay
Like the original, MDK2 features three protagonists: Kurt, an ordinary janitor and reluctant hero, Max, a mechanical six-legged dog, and Doctor Fluke Hawkins, Max's creator and all-round eccentric scientist. Unlike in the first game, the player is put in control of all three characters, with each delivering significantly different gameplay and puzzle experiences.
[edit] Kurt Hectic
Kurt, the main hero of MDK, is a janitor for Dr. Fluke Hawkins. He would rather live peacefully, but the doc forces him to fight both alien invasions. Kurt's not one to abandon his friends, but at the same time he'd much rather be sitting back or mopping a floor.
Kurt's levels emphasize the use of his coil suit and Ribbon parachute which allows him to take lifts off updrafts and glide gently from platform to platform. They also focus heavily on his built-in Sniper Scope which allows him to launch projectiles at foes, both directly and indirectly, using the various sniper mortar and rifle options. Kurt's puzzles often involve complex sniper shots with different munitions to strike "lock-balls", which often control doors or barriers. The levels he features include some of the larger, more baffling maps. Kurt's boss fights typically are not straight-forward, and require the player to often snipe or shoot certain locations on the boss itself to damage it.
[edit] Max
Max is a robotic six-legged dog with a major attraction to firepower and a sharp wit. He stands on his two back legs and can equip and shoot up to 4 guns at once. Furthermore, in many segments, Max is outfitted with a jetpack, which allows several mid-air refueling challenges. Max's levels are often the most brutal, often involving massive gunfights. Having double the health of the other characters, Max is very susceptible to being attacked from all directions, but has a large amount of weapons scattered throughout his stages. Unlike the other two, Max doesn't have to look for any little objects, items, or odd out-of-the-ordinary things that the others must deal with. Max's bosses tend to be the same as his stages, very straight-forward. Save for stage 8 where the player must use the environment to destroy the boss within a 2 minute time limit.
[edit] Dr Fluke Hawkins
Dr. Hawkins is a very eccentric scientist, who has voluntarily exiled himself from earth and into his dog-shaped spaceship, the Jim Dandy. In the epilogue, he is revealed to be a fully-fledged archetypal Mad Scientist. A frail old man, he usually sends Kurt and Max into dangerous situations, but is repeatedly forced to go to their rescue himself.
Dr. Hawkins's levels are the most unusual and comical, focusing as they do on finding combinations of items rather than fire-power. Objects found are added into two separate inventories, and the player can experiment in pairing them, producing either new objects or confused comments from the character. The doctor does get involved in fights however, either using an atomic toaster (which propels radioactive toast) or occasionally ingesting plutonium, which causes him to transform into a 'Hyde'/'Hulk' style creature, capable of dishing out and taking much greater levels of violence. There are also more puzzles to solve. Dr. Hawkins is the only character that does not have a boss on every stage. Stage 9 breaks this mould.
Due to his weak strength, the Doc has a much harder time bypassing enemies than Kurt and Max, but he encounters considerably less difficult bosses and enemies.
[edit] Plot
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The game is a direct continuation from the end of the first game, starting with an introductory sequence showing all three protagonists celebrating the defeat of the alien menace, the 'streamriders' from the previous game.
[edit] Level 1: The Hand of Hanz
Celebrations are interrupted by the discovery of one last minecrawler over in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Kurt is dispatched to stop it, with Doctor Hawkins mentioning that Max and himself will help Kurt if they can. Kurt skydives into the mine crawler, and clears his way through, overpowering the pilot, Hanz, who controlled the ship from a large circular bridge armed with massive lasers and locks. After his victory, Kurt establishes connection with Dr. Hawkins to report, but due to a poor radio connection fails to understand the Doctor's warnings. He is surprised and knocked out by a gigantic character wearing odd red shades, called Shwang Shwing, who appears to be in charge of the invasion.
[edit] Level 2: Witness an Inferno
Dr. Hawkins believes that his radio connection is being interfered with by a nearby alien orbiter and sends Max to deal with it. Max attacks the orbiter with a torpedo, fights his way through it and destroys the ship's central AI, a massive robotic sphere. Just like Kurt, he is then surprised and knocked out by Schwang mid-report.
[edit] Level 3: What is the BFB?!
Doctor Hawkins, having lost his two assistants, is contacted by Shwang who taunts him. Hawkins boasts that his ship, the Jim Dandy, is 100% impenetrable, only to be informed by the ship's computer that the hull is breached. The Doctor amends the figure to 99.9% impenetrable, before being teleported to the kitchen by the computer for an emergency self-defence training. Doctor Hawkins, using his zany inventions, clears the ship all the way to the cargo hold, where he is confronted by an alien scientist with a massive cranial capacity, the BFB ("Balloons for Brains"). After defeating the BFB using an atomic toaster, Dr Hawkins is able to teleport Kurt back onboard the Jim Dandy. Kurt has been stripped of his coil suit and wants to give up the fight. However the Doctor produces a wardrobe full of back-up suits and pushes Kurt back into the teleporter to return to the orbiter for Max. Once Kurt is gone, the BFB regains consciousness...
[edit] Level 4: Shwang Shwing
Kurt Hectic is teleported onto the enemy orbiter in his underwear and clutching a coil suit. After a quick change, he fights his way through some very odd and large environments (including some geometrical oddities) and eventually reaches the large room with the holding center where Max is bound. Kurt releases Max but Schwang Schwing turns up, pulls the ceiling off the holding cell and grabs the robotic dog. Kurt then fights Schwing using conveniently placed devices around the room and forces him to drop Max. Once defeated, Schwang conjures a teleporting portal and escapes through it. Kurt decides to chase him through the portal while Max will return to their ship.
[edit] Level 5: Dog Eat Dog
Max uses an escape pod to rocket back to the Jim Dandy which is now overrun by aliens and quite damaged in sections. He fights his way across to reach the hull where he finds Doctor Hawkins tied up and watched by the BFB. The alien produces his own version of Max, a robotic German Shepherd-like monster named Bad Max equipped with a portable force field, and leaves. The two Maxes have a very violent fight across the room. Once Bad Max is down, Max kicks him and a small device activates opening a portal. Having released the Doc, Max crosses the portal in order to instigate payback on the alien homeworld. The Doctor remains onboard the Jim Dandy to tackle the BFB.
[edit] Level 6: What is the BFB?!
Hawkins chases the BFB across the increasingly damaged Jim Dandy. The alien scientist has set up a series of bombs in various locations, each forcing the Doc to activate a series of switches in the correct sequence or blow up the ship. Those puzzles are timed. In addition, Dr Hawkins is provided by a mutant plant in his conservatory with plutonium, which allows him to turn into a considerably bulkier avatar, Clyde Hawkins. Eventually, he confronts the BFB once again in a storage room and, in Clyde's form, boxes him unconscious. The Doc then removes the alien's brain - ejecting the rest of his body into space - and analyses it to extract the coordinates of his homeworld. He then takes the ship there at high speed.
[edit] Level 7: Stranger in a Strange Land
Kurt follows Shwang to his planet, Swizzle Firma, where Shwang climbs aboard an air ship. The level is a succession of indoor rooms where Kurt must find and activate a usually well-defended exit, and outdoors scenes where Kurt must progress ever upwards across the city at dazzling heights while Schwang's vehicle strafes him from above. The final showdown takes place high above the city, on a network of catwalks and platforms near what appears to be a crashed space ship. Schwang is shooting at Kurt from his ship and sending down enemies, while the janitor slowly destroys the ship by aiming at a number of "sniper balls" across its surface. Eventually the ship crashes at Kurt's feet, and a hurt and by now considerably less arrogant Schwing explains that he was only following orders from the aliens' leader: Emperor Zizzy Ballooba. As Kurt uses his parachute to reach the entrance of the nearby imperial palace, Schwing hints that yet more trouble is to come.
[edit] Level 8: The Lazarus Effect
Max also teleports to Swizzle Firma, albeit in a different area of town, and turns up in the back of a shop (filled with Bad Max boxes!). Eavesdropping on a conversation between two aliens, he learns that Earth is due to be destroyed with an "Ultimate Doomsday Device" which will be launched as soon as the aiming is finalised. Max battles his way across town and what looks like a nuclear plant, as well as other baffling contraptions, and eventually infiltrates the heart center of the base. There he finds the UDD - a rocket - defended by a badly-injured Shwang who hovers around in a wheelchair with his arm in a sling. The fight is timed because the rocket is on countdown. Max, using his guns and comically set up objects (gas bottles, a drill, a traffic light!), defeats Schwang for the third time, this time causing him finally to blow up. He then climbs into the rocket to disable it, but the thing launches with him on board. However, since the aiming was not complete or perhaps because of Max's interference, the Device lands in front of Zizzy Ballooba's palace. Kurt and Max are reunited.
[edit] Level 9: The All Heroes Break up
Doctor Hawkins arrives in orbit around Swizzle Firma, locates Kurt thanks to his heartbeat and gets a briefing on the situation. His plan is to teleport his two acolytes on board the Jim Dandy and then blast the palace in retaliation, but he messes up the manipulation of his console and teleports himself to the surface instead. Arriving unnoticed in a public area, the scientist quickly conceives a plan to turn a nearby public phone box into a vehicle. This requires getting his hands on three comically named devices first, which is achieved through a network of teleporters, mazes, puzzles as well as much use of the atomic toaster, now provided with various types of bread as ammunition! Having completed this (there is no boss fight in level 9) the Doc expels three aliens from the phone booth and causes it to fly to the palace, where he reunites with Kurt and Max.
[edit] Level 10: The Final Stage
In an opening cut scene, the three characters, all by now in a bad mood, have an argument about how best to reach the Emperor. They are unable to reach an agreement and fall out. The game is momentarily stuck and the player is required to pick a character with which to carry on. This means that there are effectively three different Levels 10, even though they share some areas and cutscenes. Kurt glides up an air draft to a side entrance and sneaks in through shafts and rooms protected with turrets and sentinels. Max charges blindly through the front door with guns ablaze, and mows down a great number of enemies. Doctor Hawkins scales the wall with a ladder constructed in level 3 and battles his way through the remparts of the castle. Each turns up via his respective route at a central atrium and from there reach the throne room where they meet up again. Once inside, they confront Emperor Zizzy Ballooba, a giant toad-like and rather grotesque character who laughs at them. He confesses to attacking Earth purely to amuse himself, because having mastered space and time he is now rather bored. Zizzy even claims that he let the crew win so far in order to prolong the entertainment, but that the game is now over and that they can just go. The normally mild-mannered Kurt then loses his temper and rushes forward to attack, quickly followed by his friends. The action resumes, with the two characters not picked by the player now assisting as NPCs.
The final boss battle features several extended shoot-outs in the throne room, with Zizzy using various powerful attacks including a hypnotic trick which messes up the player's vision. This alternates with gross but amusing sections when the Emperor repeatedly sucks his opponent into the inside of his body. Ballooba's interior is mostly hollow, and the player must take advantage of their limited spells there to shoot out or punch a number of recognisable organs: heart, eyeballs, lungs, brain etc... while being shot at by curious foes. Once all organs are taken out, Zizzy Ballooba collapses mid-giggling with a theatrical "Fade to black..." and dies.
A final comic-book -style sequence reveals the fate of the player's character depending on who they chose to use to defeat the Emperor:
Kurt goes back to Earth only to find everyone wants a piece of him and his story. He decides to return back the the Jim Dandy, to obscurity, and his janitorial job. However his "Hero" medal can be seen draped around his mop bucket at the end.
Max defeats Zizzy but is not content with a "good job". Seeing Swizzle Firma now devoid of a ruler, he decides to stay and become its ruler, forging an alliance with Earth and thus ending the war.
Dr Hawkins returns to Earth welcomed in open arms no longer shunned. He then decides to return to his last project before he left "Atomic Robot Zombie Men!"
During the final credits, the three reprise their intro discussion about the troubles being finally over, repeating it over and over as if inviting contradiction. This never comes.
[edit] Soundtrack
Unlike Tommy Tallarico's symphonic, movie-like soundtrack for the original MDK, the MDK 2 soundtrack is considerably more modern. It was composed by Jesper Kyd, Albert Olson, and Raymond Watts of the band Pig. Most of the music falls under the category of electronica, specifically bigbeat, breakbeat, and drum and bass.
The Dreamcast edition allows the user to access all the music tracks from the game including the sound effect background tracks using the Dreamcast CD player function.
[edit] Sequel
On November 13, 2007, GameSpot reported that Interplay Entertainment has announced that it will restart its in-house development studio and has plans to develop a MDK sequel among other classic Interplay IPs if Interplay can secure financing. [1] GameSpot stated that:
| “ | Among the projects Interplay has said it wants to develop are sequels to Earthworm Jim, Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance, Descent, and MDK, provided it can find the financing. | ” |
Also, Interplay has confirmed a two-pronged growth strategy which will see the company leveraging its portfolio of gaming properties to create sequels. Among those mentioned was the MDK sequel.[2]
[edit] Trivia
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Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines. The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones. |
- The Comic-Book style loading screens are an homage to Jack Kirby.
- The name "Zizzy Balooba" appears to come from an alien named "Zyzzybalubah" that appeared in an episode of Peewee's Playhouse.
- The telephone booth Dr Hawkins flies in Level 9 is a spoof of the TARDIS in Doctor Who and the phone booth in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure
- Max's rocket flight through a cavern in Level 8 is a reference to the rocketsuit flight inside V'ger in Star Trek: The Motion Picture
- The mine crawler at the start of the game is actually heading towards the BioWare Corp. headquarters in Edmonton, identified as "Sector 8675309", much like the first mine crawler in MDK was heading towards the Shiny Entertainment headquarters.
- There is a folder of concept art on the Dreamcast version available when read by a PC.
- The game's cover is a spoof of Charlie's Angels title sequence.
[edit] References
- ^ Sinclair, Brendan. "Interplay restarting dev studio - Company says it will make new installments of Earthworm Jim, Descent, MDK, Dark Alliance if it can get the money.", Gamespot.com, 2007-11-13. Retrieved on 2007-11-17.
- ^ Interplay confirms plans for MDK and Decent sequels
[edit] External links
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