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Few houses can afford to put game remakes on the market with a few years on their shoulders and be successful. At the pace with which the gaming industry is evolving, a title takes very little time to become "antiquated" and it is increasingly difficult to amaze modern players with old glories. However, even in an era that has accustomed us to very high quality titles, often developed with cachets that would make a Hollywood producer pale, there are some timeless masterpieces that everyone should have the pleasure of trying.

A company that can boast of having created or published some of these pillars of gaming is undoubtedly Interplay. In case it is not known to you, know that it is to this company that we owe the birth of Earthworm Jim, Descent and Fallout. Not just a pedigree, completed by one of the most loved action games of the last twenty years: MDK. The company has had some dark moments in the past, but has recovered by selling the Fallout brand to Bethesda (a transaction which has also led to countless legal disputes that we will not talk about in this area). Now that it has returned economically stable, it has cleverly decided to leverage the brands that made it famous, and one of the first moves in this direction was the release of a remastered version of MDK. the choice, however, strangely did not fall on the first stratospheric chapter (who knows, maybe they want to keep it good for any dark times) but on MDK 2. A less astronomical work but by Bioware and in any case of superb quality. The project was entrusted to Overhaul Games, a sub-division of Beamdog. If you consider that the aforementioned software house is made up of former members of the Canadian giant, some of whom were involved in the creation of the original, there could not have been a better choice. Just a small problem ... MDK 2 is eleven years old. After all this time, will it still be worth saving the world as the most dangerous attendant in the universe and his wacky cronies?

Galeotto was the Goulash

MDKs are not unique in their remarkable quality alone. Among the strong points of the series there are also the insanity and the crazy characters. At the heart of it all is Doctor Fluke Hawkins, a brilliant mad scientist who self-exiled himself from planet earth in order to make some exceptional discoveries. The mustachioed scholar, after building the Jim Dandy space station and persuading his attendant Kurt Hectic to follow him into space by bribing him with Hungarian Goulash, had found himself dealing with an alien invasion. Kurt himself had thought of saving the world, with the help of the doctor's trusty robotic dog named Max and armed with a very advanced combat suit. The second chapter begins immediately after the first one ends, with our heroes discovering one last alien base in Canada and preparing to finish it. But something goes wrong, and Kurt is captured by a huge alien named Shwang Shwing. It is up to Max and the doctor to save him and defeat the invaders for the umpteenth time. As can be guessed from the plot, in MDK2 HD you will therefore not only control the old protagonist in his shiny spandex suit, but also his two friends.

The beauty is that the change of character involves a total transformation of the gameplay. This sequel manages to be more varied than its predecessor, introducing play styles as diverse as they are brilliant. Kurt has the same control scheme as ever: he can open his jib parachute to slowly glide and move through the air, take out enemies with an arm gun, or finish them off from a distance with the visor of his super long "sniper helmet". Max has a less tactical approach to battle and limits himself to piercing everything in front of him using four weapons at the same time (he still has four arms). The big dog can also use a rechargeable jetpack to reach elevated areas. Fluke Hawkins uses MacGyver-fu instead, and can combine objects scattered around the Jim Dandy in a variety of ways. Do you want an example? An atomic toaster can turn a baguette into a homing missile. We have said it all.

MDK, Multimedia Development Kit?

Bioware knew how to do it even 11 years ago, no doubt about it. MDK 2 still has great gameplay today, it's fast-paced and fun. In particular, the structure of the levels should be praised, full of simple but well-structured puzzles that do not break the action. Even the professor's levels, clearly full of puzzles, manage to be a nice diversion from the shootings of his two fellow adventures. To be sure, certain factors show the age of the game, mainly some less sophisticated maps. In any case, these are trifles, and they do not undermine a title that undoubtedly deserves to be played by the new generations.

Overhaul games has decided not to change the gameplay that much (even if the difficulty is that of the wiiware version, more accessible than the original), but has opted for some graphic tweaks. The HD version of the game actually features some brand new three-dimensional models. Kurt, Max, the Doctor and some bosses have been completely remodeled, and their "cubiness" is gone. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the less important environments or enemies, which have remained essentially unchanged even if in high definition. The final effect is a little out of place, especially in animated scenes, where it can happen to see very detailed models flanked by aliens composed of a dozen polygons. It is also strange that the mouths of the characters move in the portraits of the dialogue boxes, but not on the actual models. At least everything moves very smoothly, and we didn't experience any crashes or bugs of any kind during our run. A separate problem is represented by the Beamdog client whose download is necessary to start the game. This is not a particularly invasive virtual platform, but it caused us some problems in the first few days, with a couple of updates that made the game practically impossible to start. The problem was solved very quickly with a new patch, but this increasingly widespread desire to imitate Steam annoys a bit, especially when the alternative platform has neither the social options, nor the reliability and offline mode of the very famous. Valve counterpart.

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MDK2 HD it's a piece of history, a blast from the past that all action game lovers would do well to experience. Of course, the title has its beautiful age and 15 euros for a simple graphic restyling without any additions are a lot, but if you've never played it you shouldn't miss it. It remains a very current and exhilarating experience. Now we are just waiting for the return of the first chapter or, better still, the arrival of an MDK 3.