MadWorld review
MadWorld may be rated “Mature” for Blood and Gore, Drug References, Intense Violence, Mature Humor, Sexual Themes, and Strong Language, but “mature” is the last word I’d use to describe this game.
MadWorld is the 2009 debut work of Platinum Games. That’s right. The same studio that gave us Bayonetta, The Wonderful 101, Anarchy Reigns, and the Legend of Korra game (and under different management, Okami and Viewtiful Joe) first delivered unto the Wii this absurdly violent, blood-soaked, irreverent and profane third-person action game. In short, it’s the kind of game that I had to play late at night when everyone else in the house was asleep. I didn’t want to risk my family seeing me impaling street signs through heads, tossing ninjas into barrels of fireworks, or chainsawing vampires in two. MadWorld is not conducive to a civilized society.
The premise of MadWorld is that domestic terrorists called “the Organizers” have invaded the fictional Varrigan City and virtually cut it off entirely from the outside world. These Organizers have spread a custom-made virus among the city’s inhabitants as part of a contest. The rules of these DeathWatch games: anyone who simply kills another person will be given the antidote to virus. Before long, utter chaos spreads through Varrigan City. As the population dwindles, the remaining people are given ranks and sponsors. Thus, a huge money-making scheme comes to light. The only living souls left are the hardened criminals and those with the skills and weapons to survive in this urban battle royale. Among these survivors is a man named Jack, our protagonist.
Jack rides in with a motorcycle under his butt cheeks and a chainsaw on his arm. As he slashes enemies apart and tears off heads, he communicates with a government agent who works with him to investigate from within the city what’s going on in these DeathWatch games. Jack, sponsored by an enigmatic Agent XIII, busts his way through different neighborhoods of the city to ascend through the ranks and discover the truth behind DeathWatch.
The plot itself stays pretty simple all the way through. The characters and dialogue are kind of fun, but the story overall is little more than just a treat and a justification for the lavishly-gory combat missions. All this mayhem is framed in a monochromatic art style very reminiscent of Sin City. That’s to say, it’s all black and white, every building and character, with the only color being the red spewing from severed arms and cracked skulls.
This color scheme puts strong emphasis on the blood littering the floors and walls. And because enemies and Jack are the only things moving, your eye doesn’t get lost seeing all these white and black shapes on screen. Everything from comic book panels sliding through dialogue to text onomatopoeia’s all enforce this comic book aesthetic as though Frank Miller himself were involved. All this, though, is simply the fancy decor on the actual meat of MadWorld, the insane combat.
The campaign of MadWorld involves traveling through five areas of Varrigan City and completing arena battles, boss battles, and a few motorcycle sequences. The arena battles place Jack in an enclosed area filled with scoundrels and scumbags of all shapes and sizes, from standard ruffians to ninjas to zombies to aliens. Standard combat involves punching, grabbing, headbutting, throwing, chainsawing, and a slew of hyper-violent finishing moves. Sometimes you’ll be cracking necks. Other times, you’ll cut a body clean in half with daggars. The player advances through each arena by scoring points. You earn points with every act of violence, and the more brutality that you inflict on your foes, the more your score multiplies. It’s one thing thing to toss your enemy into a sharp, metal fan. It’s another to slam a tire around them, stick a street sign through their head, and THEN shove them into the fan. MadWorld rewards the player for experimentation and variety.
Granted, all of this chaos can be pretty frustrating. It’s not unlikely that a wave of huge enemies will pin you in a corner and juggle you until you die. Or maybe you’re trying to use a specific environmental weapon on a particular foe, but end up grabbing someone else instead. It’s not a very precise system. Or sometimes you can see a stray alien/zombie/ninja standing around in an open intersection, but when you run over there, the guy suddenly disappears. He just bloops out of existence. It’s jarring. The game has some trouble handling the carnage’s frame rate and the loading of particular areas of the map. Besides that, the pacing of combat is superb.
To prevent this all from getting monotonous, the Organizers present Jack with different BloodBath Challenges in each arena. These minigames include throwing enemies at a dartboard, playing golf with zombie heads, or maybe shaking up soda bottles and forcing them down ninjas’ throats so that they explode and get launched onto far away bullseyes placed conveniently on the bodies of naked women on billboards. For real, this game.
Each arena also features a special boss battle. Jack is tossed into a room with a sumo wrestler, or maybe a huge Frankenstein’s monster, or a rocket-launching military robot. These bosses make for great variety of play, to be sure, but the battles themselves end up being either far too easy to be fun or far too difficult. You see, there are no save points. If you die in a boss battle, you have to start the entire arena over, losing you easily twenty minutes or more. Also, some of these skirmishes give you no clue as to how to harm the boss, leaving you guessing as to where/when you can attack. Contrast to Viewtiful Joe, in which every boss’s abilities and weaknesses are told through their animations and character. This allows the player to figure out how to best attack without guessing or being told directly through hints or on-screen commands. MadWorld’s bosses aren’t so cleverly designed. They mostly involve triggering unique “Power Struggles” with these guys and gals, which follows with motion-based quick time events. Fun, but ultimately disposable.
If there’s any aspect of MadWorld that isn’t so disposable, it’s the commentary. Throughout the main arena battles and the end credits, two announcers named Howard “Buckshot” Holmes and Kreese Kreeley provide comedic commentary over the game play. They act like sports commentators, introducing the competition and environment, insulting Jack, belittling each other, and explaining their sexual failings with their wives. Their commentary is profuse with profanity and absolutely hilarious. It’s the perfect match for the ridiculous action going on in front of us. Don’t take my word for it. Here are some examples with expletives censored out:
Howard: “Sounds like my ex-wife screaming after I walked in on her having sex with another guy!”
Kreese: “She screamed because you scared her?”
Howard: “Nope! She screamed because she said I was embarrassing her in front of the company!”
Kreese: “There’s something about the sound of a grown man screaming in terror that just makes me happy.”
Howard: “It’s the little things in life.”
Kreese: “Mm-hm.”
Howard: “Oh boy, it’s my favorite time of the day!”
Kreese: “Time to huff some paint?”
Howard: “Nope.”
Kreese: “Time to take a dump?”
Howard: “Nah-ah.”
Kreese: “I give up. What time is it?”
Howard: “Bloodbath Challenge time!”
Kreese: “Whatever! If you need me, I’ll be takin’ a dump huffing paint.”
When one minute is left in a Bloodbath Challenge:
Howard: “One minute!”
Kreese: “The amount of time your wife spent [bleep]ing you on your honeymoon!”
Kreese: “Jack had better be careful! That vortex sucks harder than my wife sucks the pizza delivery guy!”
Upon Jack picking up a Health Pill:
Kreese: “I can tell you from experience that those Happy Pills work even better if you
grind them up and inject them into the folds of your scrotum.”
Howard: “I’ll give you a dollar if you can tell me one thing that isn’t better if you
grind it up and inject it into the folds of your scrotum.”
Kreese: “Ha ha, you got me!”
Also upon Jack picking up a Health Pill:
Kreese: “Those pills are great when you wash them down with a little scotch!”
Howard: “I like to wash my scotch down with a little scotch.”
Kreese: “I like to wash down the scotch that I poured that scotch with with a little more scotch!”
Howard: “I like scotch.”
Kreese: “I like scotch.”
Jack makes a deposit.
The campaign of MadWorld lasted me about four and a half hours. It’s pretty short, yeah. Much like Viewtiful Joe or Bayonetta, there’s plenty of replay value for those who want to go back with new weapons and improve their best times and scores. Each level has its own bonus challenges for extra points, too (stab special enemies with five street signs, don’t die, or find three hidden items in the map).
To my delight, MadWorld also features a multiplayer mode. I grabbed a friend and played through individual Bloodbath Challenges with Player 1 competing against Player 2 to slaughter the most thugs. Pretty minimal, but still fun.
At the end of the day, MadWorld is an incredibly unique and memorable action game with flair for style and hyper-violence. It contains a variety of weapons, modes, and punks who need a butt-whoppin’, all while being low-brow and uncouth to the extreme. Disappointing boss fights, frame rate stutters, and a world that easily becomes cluttered still plague this game and hold it back from greatness. That doesn’t stop it from being a rip-roarin’ good time for a lazy winter weekend.
3/5
Very Good
MadWorld is available only on the Wii, published by Sega. Images of game play come from Let’s Play MadWorld by German Youtuber Bruuger. Danke shoen.
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