MadWorld
A bit of the old Ultra-Wii-olence
MadWorld is the eye-catching monochrome action game set within a sadistic game show called Death Watch featuring meat-headed protagonist Jack, ("just Jack") whose motives for entering begin unknown, but we're told become gradually less ambiguous as the story unfolds. Having entered Death Watch, Jack must fight for survival while unravelling the mystery behind the eponymous game show that takes place within the quarantined Varrigan City, following the outbreak of a deadly virus. Heady stuff then, serving as the perfect excuse to chop all comers into mincemeat with a bloody big chainsaw.
The first of three games in the pipeline from the re-branded Clover Studios responsible for the fantastic Okami on PS2 and Wii, the newly formed PlatinumGames are no stranger to creating interesting visuals and MadWorld follows in Okami's watercolour paw-prints with a stunning black and white style that lends the game a crisp, clean look, which makes the frequent bursts of arterial red all the more striking.
MadWorld is a surprisingly violent game that simultaneously seems out of step with the usual Wii fare we're all used to and somehow right at home with a wonderfully intuitive control system that manages to translate your gestures perfectly. Our hands-on at the Wii Flat in Central London revealed a compulsively playable game that makes fantastic use of the Wii remote and nunchuk, translating your movements into acts of murderous nastiness in-game. Each of the game's stages are divided into a series of enclosed zones where you're presented with waves of expendable goons desperate to be diced into meaty chunks by your arm-mounted chainsaw. As enemies go, they're not the brightest bunch, lining up to willingly accept the business end of your rasping blade.
Jack has a whole range of brutal moves at his disposal from basic melee moves on the A button, to limb-severing swipes of the chainsaw when holding the B trigger and swinging the remote. Stunning an enemy with a volley of punches activates the finisher icon at the bottom of the screen, which is your cue to hold B and perform one of Jack's fatal kill moves. Our favourites? How about stomping a prone baddie before sawing his head off or thrusting the remote and nunchuk in opposite directions to garrotte and decapitate him from behind? Cringe! It's like Manhunt 2, but far more gratifying. MadWorld is what we feel the Wii remote was really made for - acting out depraved deeds of wanton violence.
Interacting in MadWorld's environments quickly becomes second nature since the control system has been tailored to be as tactile and instinctive as possible. Grabbing bad guys, throwing them into rose bushes (MadWorld's name for spiked walls), slamming tyres over their heads and - our favourite - ramming a road sign through their face all become second nature. The more outrageous the acts of bodily trauma you can inflict upon your hapless opponents, the higher your score and the more satisfying the results. There are all manner of props lying around MadWorld's mean streets to add a little extra inventive edge to your slaying and visiting multiple rounds of punishment upon an individual enemy can boost your score significantly. Being creative with your killing is key and there're more than enough opportunities to do so.
Certain sections include interactive elements of scenery to throw enemies into such as the spiked runaway train at the end of the first level. There's an attache case filled with cash that you can throw onto the tracks, sending your rivals wild, rushing for the falling notes before inevitably being ploughed into giblets by the oncoming train. In the same level, there are public toilets that once an enemy has been dunked headfirst into the lavatory bowl, their carcass is spun down the U-bend in a mist of claret. Bet they didn't see that one coming. Take a moment to have a cursory look around your surroundings and chances are the majority of what you can see can be used in some capacity. There are obvious things like trashcans, tyres and signposts that can be utilised in surviving through the perils of Varrigan City and other less obvious, but no less effective methods in the shape of the aforementioned toilets and money cases.
Get to grips with the core game mechanics and you'll find yourself experimenting with numerous different components available in the environments to aid your crazy killing spree and gain access to the next stage. Dispatching enough rival contestants will cause the end of level boss to come out and play, and we got to encounter one of the smaller boss characters during our hands-on. Despite his lack of relative size he's no less menacing, wielding a double chainsaw and fearsome bull head, he also takes some serious effort to put down, which shows that MadWorld should provide a decent challenge for Wii owners looking for something a bit more hardcore.
With a madcap commentary provided by Whose Line Is It Anyway? regular, Greg Proops and the voice of Futurama's Bender and Gears Of War's Marcus Fenix, John Di Maggio, MadWorld has its tongue firmly pressed in-cheek. And although the violence could be seen as overly gratuitous, the game show presentation and comic-book style on-screen sound effects (a la 1960's Batman) give the game a cartoon, over-the-top quality that removes much of the violence's impact. Further opportunities to rack up points present themselves in the form of ludicrously gory mini-games such as the 'Turbo-nator' and 'Man Darts'. Each stage has one or two of these mini-game moments and involves slaughtering large numbers of bad guys in disgustingly hilarious ways. We got to give Turbo-nator a try and found the simple idea of throwing enemies into a massive jet turbine to be enormous fun. That these mini-games will be available to unlock as two-player challenges is music to our ears.
With a dark sense of humour and deeply enjoyable combat mechanic, MadWorld is shaping up to be a very exciting prospect indeed. Jack is a suitably hard-edged, grizzly lead and his bionic arm with wrist-mounted chainsaw is the perfect weapon. Jack's finishers will satisfy even the most demanding gore-hound - squashing a still beating heart for instance - and the overall aesthetic is both pleasingly stylish and boldly original. Whether there's enough substance and depth to keep you playing to the end and invite repeated play is another matter that remains to be seen, but ultimately we left wanting to desperately see more of what MadWorld has to offer. On the strength of what we've seen and played so far though, it's difficult to see how MadWorld can be anything but an essential Wii title and a deliciously blood-soaked brawler.
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