MDK is a third-person shooter game developed by Shiny Entertainment and released in 1997 by Interplay for the PC, Macintosh, and PlayStation. It was one of the first games to run only in Pentium or superior range of processors (for the PC version). Critically, it was one of the best games of 1997, and did accordingly in the market. The game soundtrack, composed by Tommy Tallarico, was also released, with moderate success.

The game tells the story of its protagonist, Kurt Hectic and his attempts to rescue Earth from an alien invasion. The game combined fast action with great graphics (for the time), as well as weird and grotesque sense of humour.

A sequel, MDK 2 was developed by Bioware and released by Interplay for the PC and Dreamcast in 2000, and later for the PlayStation 2 (titled ) in 2001.

Technology

The game uses a powerful software-based engine, unlike most other games that relied on "brute force" hardware acceleration, low resolution graphics or tricks such as fogging and clipping to mantain good FPS in large maps. Altough a fast CPU was reccomended, the game ran smoothly with (relatively) low RAM and a slow CD-ROM drive, as the game did not use FMV (which by 1997 was the video game component that required more drive speed). The game also surprised the industry with the fluidity of Kurt's movement, which was done using motion capture and sprite-based.

One of the most innovative features was the sniper mode, where player could zoom in all the way from one side of the map to the other without having objects popping up.

Gameplay

Gameplay-wise, the game is a standard third-person shooter, slightly similar to Tomb Raider, altough with less emphasis on puzzles and jumping sequences and a more linear style of play. As expected, Kurt has a wide range of weapons to choose from, but in the third person view only the unlimited ammo chaingun (and the upgrade, super chaingun, which carries twice the power but has limited ammo) and the hand grenades are available. The true focus of the game is in the sniper mode, where more weapons are available. As with the chaingun, the regular bullet is unlimited, but there are other limited munitions such as the sniper grenade, mortars and even a (rather comical) airstrike. Up to three shots can be fired simultaneously, and each of them is tracked in one of three windows above the zoomed view.

Most of the puzzles in the game are solved with the sniper mode. While the chaingun is the best option to clear nearby enemies, it's completely ineffective at medium and long ranges. The enemies, when out of range or protected by glass, tease, wave and moon at Kurt, who had to either aim between a gap or employ the use of a mortar to proceed.

There are other items that can be picked up, including the World's Smallest Nuclear Bomb, a dummy decoy, health powerups (one that boosted Kurt's hitpoints by over 100 was called the most cowardly powerup) and The Worlds Most Interesting Bomb.

Meaning of MDK

While the actual meaning of the title's TLA is not revealed within the game, the gaming press and fans adopted Murder, Death, Kill (used to designate homicides) as the official title, going with the game's tagline In a good day, only 2.5 billion people will die. In interviews, Shiny employees gave each one their own version - My Dog Ken, Max, Dr. Hawkins and Kurt, Million Dollar KO, Massive Dollops of Ketchup and My Diary something beginning with K. Yet another possibility is documented inside the game manual, where the Kurt's mission is named Mission: Deliver Kindness.

It is revealed in the "Making of MDK" booklet that came with the "Limited Edition" of the game that the term was actually the game's codename, when Shiny came around to coming up with a name for the game, they chose to stick with the codename.

However, there is no information available as to why "MDK" was the chosen in the first place.

External links

• Official Soundtrack