MDK: Murder Death Kill by Shiny Entertainment

October 1, 2007

Overview

Aliens invaded the earth, but fortunately for the rest of humanity you happened to be on an extended "holiday," floating through space with your eccentric inventor father and a six armed, bio-engineered, super-intelligent dog. You personally had been bored and in need of some excitement, having been along on this sabbatical not entirely of your own free will (as kids often are), so it would seem a perfect opportunity for the earth to be saved.

The aliens ride across the surface of the planet, pillaging Earth’s natural resources and destroying populations in their gigantic, city-sized mining machines. Of course, as is usually the case when the earth is invaded, you are our only hope against this terrible thing. Dad is inventing some weapons and building you a keen black suit of space armor, which (he’s sorta sure) should protect you as you dive through space and into the mine-crawler to destroy the invaders. There’s a firearm (and in this case that’s a literal term) built into the suit which is mostly adequate, but you’ll need more. He’ll parachute supplies down to you as soon as he can invent and build them.

Gameplay

MDK Gameplay Video

Given that MDK is, basically, a 3D shoot-’em-up like Tomb Raider, it starts with something of a surprise — instead of being in a room, a field, or a flat surface of any kind, you’re hurtling towards the earth, free falling in the direction of the mine-crawler. You have to avoid the radar or else you’ll get zapped. The game has a few more moments like this — if you lose your footing while walking down an air shaft, for instance, you’ll start to slide out of control and have to maneuver the length of the shaft while on your back. Or you might find yourself on a makeshift surfboard, shooting it out at high speeds, anti-gravity style.

There might be, generally speaking, a bit of a learning curve when it comes to the controls. While it isn’t the first game with a sniper option (although I haven’t seen one this cool before), the capacity to jump, or a parachute, you do have to do these things pretty often in MDK, while in most other old games they’re "special" and not required with regularity or in such rapid succession. Once you have the hang of it, though, it’s a blast. You can use the sniper mode to take out the big cannon at the back of the room, then leap through the air and parachute to the ground — raining death on all the aliens below.

Unfortunately, the game occasionally falls into the same trap so many of its kind have in the past: Where’s the damn door?!?! Everybody’s dead but me, and I’d like to leave now, pleeeaazzeee! This is rare, though, and as far as I’m concerned, a disagreeable side affect of 3D shoot-’em-ups to which I am resigned.

Graphics

The evildoers and bad guys all have nice, fluid movement, and zooming in on them in sniper mode is especially impressive and fun. While the usual blockiness of 3D games is present, it seems less noticeable here than in many other recent games, and the overall impression of the environments certainly isn’t one of an alien ship constructed of gloomy Legos. In fact (speaking of gloomy), the game uses a wide variety of colors and concepts to design its spaces. Ranging from harsh to zany to downright creepy, the use of color in MDK is a welcome relief after so many games that seem afraid to go beyond one or two color schemes because they might compromise the game’s "personality." I went from beige and light red to sharp primary colors to lush blues and purples, and never forgot what I was playing.

Audio

Both the music and the effects are, in a word, fantastic. I can’t think of a game in which the musical accompaniment seemed so notably well-designed — at turns adventurous, suspenseful or fantastical, and perfectly appropriate to the setting. Also, when you enter a new room or (more impressively) open a saved game, the first thing you hear is the ambience of the room — machines rumbling in the distance, wind from a tunnel, and so on. Then, at the first peak of suspense or mayhem, the music fades in — a rhythmic pulse with a simple gliding melody or a one-two-three punch of synthesized horns. All in all, the music compliments the action in an extraordinarily rare fashion, and it’s a tremendous treat.

As if that weren’t enough, the sound effect design, complete with a nearly subliminal "dog and cat" motif, is great, too. The assortment of alien noises is interesting and, unlike some other games, manages not to become irritating after having been heard over a thousand times.

Documentation

There are some thirty pages of back story included, and more than enough instruction on how to move, shoot, and so on (including a "quick start" guide on the back of the disk packaging), but details concerning the weaponry and aliens are intentionally sparse. This is by design, of course, and doesn’t hinder old gameplay at all. (Remember — your equipment is being conceived and constructed on the fly, and the bad guys and evildoers you’re trying to destroy are new to this planet. What’s more, you’re alone in your efforts, so there’s no network of scientists or military to supply you with information.)

System Requirements

Recommended: Pentium 90, SVGA video card, 100% SoundBlaster compatible sound card, 16 MB RAM
Reviewed on: Pentium 150, SVGA video card,100% SoundBlaster compatible sound card ,24 MB RAM

Bottom Line

As far as I’m concerned, advances in technology — including game engines, graphics and stuff like that — are a given, and don’t really impress me. The folks at Shiny could probably have made a fair amount of money on this title while taking longer lunches, scrimping on design and contracting second-rate music, but they didn’t. They worked for a living, and it shows.

Download

This game is abandonware and you can play it without breaking the law. Download MDK: Murder Death Kill in ZIP archive format from Abandonia

Important! The game files need to be extracted to C:\mdk. If you extract them elsewhere, you have to manually edit mdk.cfg file and enter the directory it is residing in.

You will have to run this old game in Windows, by using the MDK95.exe file. Be careful NOT to press the Windows key while playing the game, as you will have no way of getting back into the game. This is not the game’s fault, since keyboards didn’t have a Windows key back then. Also, the game can be run in DOSBox, but you will have to have a fast computer. If you want to use DOSBox, then use the MDK.exe file.