“Dear Sega:

I understand that you seem to be on a one-company crusade to shed the Wii’s “family friendly”  image.  I just finished House of the Dead:  Overkill, and thought that you accomplished just that.  The game is a lot of fun, but is definitely not for kids.  It still seems kind of tame, however – What I’m really looking for is a game that’s about the same length as a rail shooter,  but really takes the arbitrary violence to the next level.

Love and kisses,

Jeff Feeser
Spectaclerock.com”

Shortly after writing this letter to Sega (in my head), I picked up MadWorld, Sega’s latest foray into the world of ultra-violence.  Did it fulfill my wishes and sate my thirst for blood?

As a game, MadWorld has me incredibly torn:  On one hand, the game is very short, very simplistic, and conceptually, very derivative.  On the other hand, it does what it sets out to accomplish, and does it very well.  The game is a love letter to violence, misogyny, and gore.  In the end, it come down to whether or not the visual presentation is enough to make you overlook a game that is very repetitive, and only three hours long.

Seriously, you can read that paragraph and have it take longer than it will take you to beat MadWorld.

It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

Sarcasm aside, I’d like to delve a little further into MadWorld’s presentation.  The designers of the game, clearly big fans of Frank Miller’s “Sin City”, have given us a unique presentation of an entirely black-and-white world, which serves to accentuate the bleak situation that Jack (“just Jack,” as our hero is quick to tell us) finds himself in.  The game looks like a comic book come to life, complete with written-out sound effects for the various trouble our hero raises.  Much like Sin City as well, color is used to accentuate only certain areas, in this case, whenever Jack makes someone bleed.

Yes, dear readers, red is the only color you will see in this game.

In hindsight, after finishing the game, I think this visual style worked immensely to the game’s advantage.  Don’t get me wrong, the game is incredibly gory, but if it wasn’t in “skunk in a microwave-vision” (it goes black-white-black-white-red….ba-zing!), I don’t think it would be seen as any worse than the violence seen in a Manhunt game, or in the case of chainsaw use, a Gears of War.  As it stands, the visuals are very effective, and downright unsettling at times.

Women, Amirite?

As I said above, the game is also a love-letter to misogyny and exploitation, with every female in the game depicted as a scantily-clad dominatrix/hooker/vixen, there specifically to get the young male even more amped up than the violence already has.  Several “bloodbath challenge” sequences feature pin-up girls with spikes on their boobs and va-jay-jays, onto which you impale enemies that you’ve launched with a catapult/golf club/baseball bat/etc.  When the hits are scored, the women moan orgasmicly, followed by a puerile comment made by the game’s “announcers.”  It smacks of exploitation, which in this case, isn’t necessarily a bad thing, given the game’s ultra-testosterone theme.

Battle Royale + No More Heroes + Running Man = MadWorld?

In terms of story, (and really, why is there one in a game like this?) MadWorld is exactly what you’d expect.  Jack has come to a sealed-off city to participate in the “DeathWatch,” a competition run by shadowy billionaire supporters, in which contestants murder each other until one man is left standing.  The overseers claim that DeathWatches have happened over and over throughout history, used to settle political, social, and economic disputes without the need for all-out war.  A country/entity would sponsor a contestant, and if that contestant wins the DeathWatch, the entity wins the argument.  This apparently spares the need for armies to die to win an argument, although who supplies the endless army of punks that Jack slices and dices is unknown – I guess they didn’t get the “send one guy” memo.  Having gotten himself sponsored, Jack sets out to become #1, No More Heroes style.  He’ll progress through five areas, each area having three locations to fight through.  At the end of each area, (and some of the lesser locations), he’ll fight a single opponent, and go up in rank if he defeats them, until he fights for the #1 spot in a giant floating coliseum for the grand finale.

As the game progresses, you find out that Jack has his own motives for being in the game, and that he’s using the game itself to find out who’s behind the scenes, and to bring them down.  All of this is completely insubstantial, because as soon as he finds the person who set the game up, he murders them, despite knowing that there’s people “up the chain” beyond him.  With that, Jack walks off into the sunset, job well done.  As I said earlier, however, none of this really matters, since you’re just there to slash dudes up.

Waggling = MURDER!

Unfortunately, despite the striking visuals and amusing (albeit trite) story, the gameplay is where MadWorld falls a bit flat.  Jack has simple controls, using the nunchuk to move and the WiiMote to perform various attacks.  Pressing the A button throws a punch, swinging it horizontally or vertically throws a haymaker or an uppercut, and holding B and swinging swings your chainsaw.  Holding the Z button on the nunchuk allows Jack to grab enemies, and hurl them into various objects, or, in a twist, grab objects and hurl them at enemies.  In the first tutorial, the game teaches you how to do combo damage, usually based around inflicting terrible amounts of violence to a single poor shlub that comes your way.  For example, the basic combo is to throw a “ring object” (it varies by level, but usually a tire, barrel, or anything else that can be used to surround the enemy), then spear him with a “pole object” (lamppost, roadsign, etc), then pick up the whole mess and toss it into some spikes.  This combo instantly kills the enemy, and nets jack a ton of points.  As you gain more points, various extras open up in the level, such as weapons, extra lives, and “bloodbath challenges”, which Jack can use to earn points even faster.

The Bloodbath Challenges are actually the most fun part of the game.  When a challenge is triggered (by reaching a certain point total and then going to a certain location in the level), Jack enters into a minigame designed to murder even more people at once, while racking up giant scores doing so.  Each challenge is introduced by “The Black Baron”, a pimped-out stereotype accompanied by his dominatrix clad hostess, who explains the game, and then has it demonstrated on him by the hostess.  Please believe me when I say that these cutscenes are far and away the highlight of the game.  The VA for The Black Baron sounds like he’s having a ton of fun with the part, and it shows through his performance.  Once the video is over, Jack gets to play the game, which can be anything from hitting people under a giant press which squashes them, to knocking guys down and playing golf with their heads, to “man darts”, a game which arms Jack with a giant bat that he then uses to hit dudes into a dartboard.  Once these games have been played in the main quest, they can be played by themselves later on off the main menu, giving the game a little bit of replay value in a party situation.  Because if you can’t fill a Wii game with party minigames, then it’s just not a Wii game.

Once Jack has reached the requisite score, the boss fight begins by going to his section of the level.  Jack is given a full 30 minutes to achieve this score, but through the entire game I never had it take more than ten, and in some cases, five or less.  The boss battles don’t usually require much strategy on the default level, outside of “run up to him and spam the chainsaw over and over until they’re dead,” at which point a QTE triggers to guide Jack through administering their bloody death.  Herein lies my main problem with the game:  Outside of fighting to see the QTEs, the boss fights aren’t interesting, and quite frankly, neither are the levels themselves.  After the first couple times with each new “kill”, the animations gradually get very boring, and you find yourself just quick-killing enemies by throwing them into pits/spikes just to get the score you need and get on with it.  Repetition is the enemy of this game, and outside of several clever challenges and level-specific ways to kill enemies, you’ll get bored with killing enemies by the time the game is over, which considering this is a 3-hour game entirely based around killing dudes, is not a good thing.

All in all, I did enjoy my playthrough of MadWorld, but I can’t in good conscience recommend a purchase.  I found myself killing the last boss, ready for more, and being very disappointed to find that the game was over.  A harder difficulty can be unlocked with a few new weapons after finishing the game, but as the core gameplay really doesn’t change, nothing really warrants a second playthrough.  The game is a good rent/GameFly, but for a game that can be played through from start to finish on a free Sunday afternoon, I’d recommend saving your money for something with a little more longevity.