Interplay

Game Description: Kintaro, an evil crime lord, kidnaps a young girl. You play the role of Travis, who has been hired by the girl's parents to find her and stop Kintaro. Aware of the difficulty ahead, Travis recruits Michelle, Ushi, and Tetsuo to help him rescue the girl and defeat Kintaro. Battle through Kintaro's minions in six different modes: Urban Fighters, Arena Battle, Shadow Fighter, Street Gang Battle, Team Battle, and Survivor. If you're feeling sociable, get together with three friends and try to save the little girl in Gekido.

Gekido is a shameless rip-off of Sega's Genesis classic, Streets Of Rage 2. It also steals gameplay elements from Treasure's amazing Saturn game, Guardian Heroes. Despite the fact that Gekido offers 3-D graphics, in no way is it nearly as fun as the two games that inspired it. In fact, the two games that basically started this genre—Double Dragon and Final Fight—are 10-times more fun than Gekido. I'd even go so far to say that Sega's Dreamcast game, Zombie Revenge, is a better game (although I hated every minute of playing it). It's certainly a better example of the genre, which is why I gave Gekido a lower score.

According to ESRB, this game contains: Animated Blood, Animated Violence

Game Description: Playing MDK2 is like riding a roller coaster or watching a good action movie. In fact, fighting aliens has never been this much fun. You begin the adventure as Kurt, a human in a Batman-like suit equipped with some loopy but lethal accessories. Kurt packs a powerful chain gun and a built-in parachute for gliding around levels. Kurt also has access to a simple-to-use sniper mode that allows you to smoothly zoom between multiple magnification levels (1x to 75x) for long-range kills.

 From the comic-book style cut scenes to even its darkest moments, MDK2 sustains an enjoyable tongue-in-cheek atmosphere that provides a refreshing break from the many somber action titles that populate store shelves. The result is a refreshing, unique gaming experience no gamer should pass up.

I liked the idea of sniping, shooting and thinking in a one game, but here it's done in three different games. MDK2 is essentially split up into three alternating parts—Kurt's adventure, Max's adventure and Dr. Fluke's adventure. Because each character's missions are built around their various abilities, each part plays completely different, and there's not much to hold everything together to make it feels like one game. MDK2 is a beautiful 3-D action game, and it's pretty fun, but there are problems in the game's basic concept that keep it from being really fun.

According to ESRB, this game contains: Animated Blood, Animated Violence

According to ESRB, this game contains: Animated Blood & Gore, Animated Violence, Strong Language

The so-called mature premise of Kingpin revolves around a fallen gangster who is now out for revenge and domination over the underworld. No heroic macho lead character or buxom heroine here, just a thug out to do no good. While politically incorrect, it's certainly conceptually interesting and has a similar appeal to films like GoodFellas and Pulp Fiction, which also revolve around bad people doing bad things.

Make no mistake, this is just another FPS with some great ideas (my personal favorite was being able to assemble my own crew) and stunning visuals that ultimately go to waste. Dale pretty much hits the nail on the head when the refers to Kingpin's creative direction as nothing more than 'dressing' with corrupt intentions of exploitation.