I have MDK since it's release. It's one of my favorite games ever and I consider it to be one f the greatest ever made. Everything on it is epic, and you know what I'm talking about.
Since it was a short game, I was kinda thirsty for a sequel, but when I saw the pics, the trailers, videos of MDK2... I got so frustrated. No Shiny anymore (loved that guys). No more Tallarico epic score and now for some generic techno music. And no more pre-rendered 2d Kurt, which made the first game so charming and not looking like just another 3d action game.
Also, I didn't like the overall mood and level design from the videos I saw. I also didn't understand why the dog is now called Max and not Bones anymore (his name was bones in the first, right? Or just his attack?)
Nothing against BioWare, I like them (although they were starting by that time)... but it's not the same guys! It's difficult to continue somthing started by other people and keep it going the same way.
So, do you think I shoud yet try it? Or I'll get really disappointed?

I really enjoyed it. It's still got the quirky humor (atomic toaster!) but rather tough. Bouncing sniper targets, oh my.
It's definitely not just another 3d action game. It's hard to know how you will perceive the "mood and level design" relative to how I did, of course... but in short, yes you should try it. You won't hate it! The worst that could happen is you'd say you liked the first one better.

I think you should try it. While it's probably not as amazing as the original (I haven't played the first MDK, but I have played a little bit of the second one), it's still fun and really goofy. One nice addition to the second game is that you can play as three different characters: Kurt, Max (or Bones), and Dr. Hawkins. They each play differently and each have different styles of fighting and their own special levels designed around their skills. In short, it's at least fun to play.

I've got MDK2 off here. I'll get around to playing it eventually.
I understand completely what you are talking about. I felt that way from looking at screenshots way back in the day when MDK2 came out.
MDK 1 is like a acid trip. It has a certain feel to it. I'm sure MDK2 will be okay, but it does look somewhat uninspired and overly generic considering what MDK 1 is. It's all kind of odd. I think MDK 1 was on the tail end of the era for such games while being pretty unique itself.
The best thing for MDK at this point would be a reboot by some people that can pull off that whole original art direction, personality, and feeling. Something like that.

I think that, when looking for games that are similar to ones that you like, the best thing to do is look at the games created by the same members of the development team. Don't look at the name of the studio iteself, or even the title of the game. For example, most of the key people at Rare left to form Free Radical after Perfect Dark. That's why Timesplitters is amazing while everything made by Rare since then has sucked, including Perfect Dark Zero. It's the same company, but with totally different people making the games.

In the case of MDK, the people who made it left Shiny to form Planet Moon where they made Giants: Citizen Kabuto and Armed & Dangerous. If you want a game that, while not necessarily similar in gameplay to MDK, has the same style and quirks, play either of those instead of MDK2 (which wasn't even made by the same company). They'll give you the best feeling of getting more of what MDK offered.

If you consider games to be art, then think of it this way: would you accept a sequel to the Mona Lisa that wasn't painted by Da Vinci? No. If you liked the Mona Lisa, you'd be more likely to move onto something else that Da Vinci painted. So, if you like MDK, move onto Giants or Armed & Dangerous.

I grew up with MDK so to speak and i played the 2nd one from start to finish several times so heres my veredict of it:

Even if MDK2 wasnt the same people that made the 1st one they at least managed to keep a somewhat feeling of the first game and include more humour and story and even a different story telling way and still not messing up the personalities or charm that the 1st one had.
So enemies are goofy, and the levels are from serious looking areas to just goofy areas that make you go "wtf?"

However, the only thing the 2nd one have with the 1st one is the first level being more or less of a parody or even a honorable mention of the previous creators before setting its own way by switching your character.

So summing it up: Its a great game, its a decent sequel, but its not MDK with better graphics its a different game... ( except when you play Kurt himself the old MDK feeling is still there )

Have fun ^^

Eh, the mona lisa is not really a great example. Games are a community effort, so the idea of the game holds a bit more sway than any specific people who work on it. Even if the "same" team works on several games, you can bet that the exact makeup of the team is not the same.

There have been many failures with teams inheriting a franchise but also some successful transitions, and I think MDK2 is one of the better ones. Another good example is the zelda games. Each of them has been made by different teams and directors, with their own style, but they are still Zelda. Majoras Mask is basically a Zelda fan game that another team made by repurposing the existing art, and it's brilliant.

MDK2 is much more like MDK than the games shiny moved on to, which is fine and dandy, but if you are looking for more in the vein of mdk mdk2 is probably the closest you are going to get.

I love the additional characters in MDK2, and the more varied gameplay is a breath of fresh air after the somewhat repetitive feel of the first one. There is something to be said for distilling a type of gameplay down into its essense and not complicating it (MDK), but variety can also be nice. You may have some good sections and some poor ones, but it does keep things interesting.

MDK2: Not as good, but still good.

MDK1 it´s far better game than the second chapter, but i´m sure you will still enjoy the second one. Specially the Kurt levels.

So we all agree, not better, but still good.

I still feel this is a relevant question to anyone new who may come here, so I'm going to throw in my 2 cents.

I picked up the first MDK yesterday on a whim. Loved it. Played it straight through almost, from start to finish, and when I was done, I started playing it again.

I remember one moment in the game, near the end, where I thought to myself... "I had no idea this game was going to feel this epic."

So I bought MDK2 pretty much without hesitating. And all I have to say is: Yuck.

The first level looked promising. Kurt controls much the same way as he did before, only now it feels more fluid and up to date. The graphics are amazing for their time too, very vibrant and colorful, smooth - reminds me very much of Phantasy Star Online, which came from around the same era. And even if you have a crummy PC like mine, the game should still run perfectly.

I thought, hey, Bioware did a really good job with this!

Then I started playing as Max and that's when the game started falling apart and I realized that Kurt's levels are little more than fan service. This isn't the same MDK. Heck, I'm not even sure I'm playing as the same Kurt, who has suddenly become generic, poorly acted, and wildly inept since the last time he saved the world!

One thing I liked about Kurt in the first MDK was his personality: They hinted at a somewhat androgynous, underachieving closet-genius. In this game, he exists solely as a reluctant, antisocial foil for Dr. Hawkins and Max. Yeah, I see what you did there, Bioware. We don't appreciate it.

I'm not a long time fan of this game, but I feel the first MDK is one of the best games I've played in a long, long while, and that's high praise considering I don't usually like third person shooters. Many of MDK's design philosophies mirror those found in Resident Evil: Director's Cut, my favorite game of all time.

One of those design philosophies is very formulaic and deliberate level design. The developers knew what they were doing with every room; there was a purpose for everything. Each challenge was designed to send those endorphins running and that adrenaline pumping as the game massages the pleasure centers of the player's brain. MDK's level design was scientific, much like Resident Evil's.

MDK also adopted the DOOM school of thought that a game should be fun first and challenging second.

Another one of those design philosophies is about using simplistic, concise game mechanics. The game doesn't try to do too many things at once, which makes it easy to pick up and play, and figure out puzzles. The game, in other words, sticks to what it does best and doesn't throw obtuse game mechanics at you from left field.

MDK2 does.

MDK worked because it rewarded fast gameplay (also making it good OCD therapy, strangely! "No time to kill those last two enemies, Laguna Beach is going to explode!"), and so if you played fast, the rewards and achievements came fast, and most importantly, you didn't miss anything! That was a good feeling.

The puzzles slowed the pace down, but never to the point where I found them tedious. In fact, the puzzles were a very welcome change of pace from all the running and gunning, and really helped make the first MDK stand out as being more than a mindless run-and-gun shooter.

MDK's puzzles worked because the environments were not very expansive: You would come across a room and simply be unable to advance, so you'd need to figure out what to do. This never became frustrating because every room was relatively small, and so you'd just need to find the piece of scenery that stuck out and figure out what to do with it, which usually involved shooting it, sniping it, or using an item on a door that you got in the same room.

And like Resident Evil, MDK does take some real world skills in order to be good at it. The player needs to be observant and good at problem solving, as usually puzzle solutions are tiny and out of the way, or just simply cryptic. And often times, there are enemies who will surround and jump around you, requiring you to keep them in your sights, which also required a high degree of situational awareness because while your sights are trained on that one enemy who's leaping around like a frog on steroids, you needed to be dodging gunfire coming at you from all directions, even above.

When you complete a level of MDK, you feel rewarded. And why? Because it tests real world skills and cognitive brain functions. You exercise your brain a little while playing, but never too much, and so the game never becomes frustrating, lending itself easily to different kinds of thinkers and gamers.

MDK's gameplay was more logical than people might think, it just didn't hold your hand, or tell you anything about what you needed to do. But that was the whole test!

MDK2, however, is downright obtuse.

First of all, the way Max and Dr. Hawkins control is so ridiculous and unintuitive that I have to wonder what Bioware was thinking when they made this game.

First, I'll start with Max. Max can wield up to 4 weapons simultaneously. This is great, except for the fact that your guns have limited ammo and you need to equip/unequip each gun individually and in real time, which I felt I needed to do often because the guns come with only a short supply of ammo. Guns are everywhere, and you never need to conserve ammo, but I *felt* like I needed to, and that takes away from the run-and-gun action that made the first MDK so beautiful and cathartic. It breaks up the flow of the action when you're worried about having enough ammo for the boss. And like guns, Max's jet pack has limited fuel too - very limited, adding one more thing to worry about.

My main problem with Max is that Max is an overpowered version of Kurt, or at least he feels that way, with limited supplies and more health. Why couldn't they just have used Kurt? Everything Max can do, Kurt can do, even flying upward, which Kurt can do by means of those large fans in the floor, and Kurt is far more fun to control. Max is then a useless addition to the game that adds nothing and improves nothing, boiling down to a clunkier, more annoying version of Kurt.

I don't even know what to say about Dr. Hawkins. Some of his scenes are cute, but his gameplay reminds me of 40 Winks.

You know that era in games, when 3D was relatively new and developers were experimenting with 3D platformers that were light on action and heavy on illogical puzzles that left you feeling cheated and unrewarded? Yeah.

It's not that Dr. Hawkins' sequences are difficult. They're just obtuse (there's that word again), requiring the player to combine senseless and silly items to solve puzzles and defeat enemies, making it far too abstract to make me feel rewarded because a lot of it seems to come down to trial and error.

His control scheme is even worse than Max's. Max's controls were at least manageable, but Dr. Hawkins can at times be downright unwieldy. Ugh. I miss Kurt.

MDK didn't need a sequel. It needed an HD remake with more levels, better sound effects, better graphics quality.

Edit: I'd also like to add that I haven't finished MDK2, and I probably won't. I read that MDK2 only has 10 levels? So I can play as Kurt for 3, maybe 4 times maximum because each character apparently has 3 stages, and you can choose who you play as during the final level?

So, for me, that's 2/3 of the game consisting of stuff I don't like just to get to the stuff I do.

This leads me to believe that any MDK fan who passes this up isn't missing much. It's like the Deus Ex: Invisible War of the MDK franchise.

Well, i completely agree...

For be brief, MDK is a piece of art, a game for remember, MDK2 is just a game... no more... it´s not bad, but is very very very far away from the first one.

I've only played MDK2, and I really love it. I bought MDK here on GOG, but haven't played it yet because I've been too busy with other life stuff. I can't give a comparison of the two, but I heartily recommend MDK2 on its own merits. DO NOT, however, play the final level as Kurt, because sniping zippy whirling little ball targets while trying to dodge really fast-moving enemies coming at you incessantly in close quarters is not my idea of fun.