MadWorld

The latest in shockingly violent games for the Wii is MadWorld. Will this one have the hardcore gamers dusting off the Wii?

You may be as surprised as I was when I first started the game to discover there is an actual story. It’s not entirely just a mindless run through of various arenas going for the high score which I thought the game would pretty much be. You’ll play as Jack (just Jack) whose agenda is unclear as to why he entered the DeathWatch games. You’ll be treated to some neat twists and turns and some rather spectacular voice acting during the graphic novel style cut scenes. I must say it was pretty refreshing and definitely made me want to push on to see what happened next.

As you may already know, MadWorld features a unique visual style for video games. The presentation is entirely in black and white, with the only colour being red blood gushing from your enemies. It certainly looks quite good for a Wii title, but it can make certain things hard to see in the distance, or if they aren’t moving. The blood also looks great; usually staying plastered on the ground where you just chain-sawed some contender in half.

At its core, the gameplay is an arena style beat-em-up where the main goal is to score points and then take on the boss. You score more points depending on how you kill the enemy. If you stab them with a sign post, stuff them in a tire, and then impale them on spikes you’ll get more points than just impaling. This was neat at first, until I realized that every level seems to really only have those two multiplier options, just with different skins. There are definitely plenty of different ways to kill enemies, but the options for building up your score are limited. Unfortunately, the camera is a big problem. It can cut around unexpectedly, making it extremely difficult to attack an enemy if you run past it. Also the targeting system is incredibly fussy, often not targeting anything at all.

The boss battles are fun, but are rarely too challenging. All you need to do for most of them is run behind and attack with your chainsaw. When the boss attacks, flick the nunchuk to perform a dodge, then rinse and repeat.

There is a time limit during each stage, but it’s incredibly generous since I never ran out of time once before getting to the boss. As you score points, you unlock upgrades or challenges to allow yourself to score points quicker. The bloodbath challenges you unlock are usually quite amusing. The bloodbath challenges give you a certain task to score some extra points. As an example: Death Press has you throwing enemies into a hole so they can be squashed by a spiked ceiling that slams down periodically. The bloodbath challenges can also be played with a second player split screen where you compete for a higher score, and can also kill each other. That’s all the multiplayer you get though.

As you play, you’ll be treated to some funny banter uttered by the game’s commentators. One problem I had was between the commentators, the spectacular original hip hop soundtrack and the sounds made when killing enemies; it can be really hard to make out what the commentators are saying. It can certainly be quite the assault on the ears… Also you’ll hear the same comments made over and over again throughout the game which can get annoying.