MDK 2

Written by David Ball  on July 20, 2000

Review: Max the dog: "Must grease pelvis, friction is distracting"

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MDK 2 is the sequel to the original MDK on the Playstation. In MDK 2, you play as three unlikely heroes a janitor, a six-legged dog and a mad scientist and your mission is to save the world from some aliens. Although this may not be the most innovative story, it does provide a good excuse to run around shooting things. The game is viewed from a third person perspective and tries to combine three types of action, shooting, stealth and puzzles but comes off as a all round blast feast.

The visuals in MDK2 appear clean and polished. Although the game does not have high attention to detail, the sense of scale within the levels is huge. In some sections, the size of buildings and environment is overwhelming so much that you sometimes need to stop and admire the scenery. The graphical effects used in the game are superb with great explosions and huge laser blasts, using all this in game action helps keep up with the fast pace of the game. The only flaw with the graphics is that up close the enemies can appear blocky and unnatural.

As for the audio in the game, you will hear nothing too special. The music ranges from fast paced to dull space music. Different music is used to set the mood, for example when you have to destroy 3 alien battle ships you do so with guns blazing and suitably the music is fast paced and of coarse when your figuring out a puzzle the music is edgy and nervous. Sound effects are average with each alien and weapon having it's own noise.

MDK2 in gameplay terms plays like a dream, the controls are intuitive using X,Y,B and A to move around and the analogue stick to move around the d-pad is used to select weapons and right trigger to fire. The game can be tricky and even frustrating at times as some of the tasks seem so daunting at times due to the sense of scale. The game tries to add some humor to the game with farting aliens and toilet shenanigans, which only seems out of place for a game that would be too challenging for 6 year olds.

The features include saving game to VMU, vibration pack capabilities and VGA support. There is an option to play the credits and in game movies. MDK2 is 1 player game so year on your own for this one.

Now, the replay value in MDK2 is one of those play once never play again type of games. MDK2 takes a good to complete and it is hellishly addictive but never the less it just isn't much fun the second time around.