Madworld
By Francis Nash / April 16, 2009
Let me get this out of the way: Madworld is the best looking 3D game yet on the Wii. We really can't say enough about the developers
pulling off successfully a mostly monochrome visual style, grimly punctuated by the blood you wring out of your enemies. Frank Miller's
Sin City is unapologetically imitated for the entirety of the game,
lending it the appearance of a neo-noir thriller from the start menu to the final credits. The look is perfect for the violent game show
premise that's ripped straight from The Running Man.
And it's one of the most hilarious games I've played in ages. Listening to the announcers' play-by-play accounts of my bloody escapades (voiced in the North American release by John DiMaggio and Greg Proops) kept me laughing the whole time. Their machismo is of the South Park toilet-humor variety, though many phrases become less amusing as they are obnoxiously repeated. They are still funny enough to listen through the ending credits, which is much more than I can say about the terrible hip-hop soundtrack. Thankfully, this can be turned down in the options menu at any time.
But the good news ends here. Mechanically, this is little better than No More Heroes. If you had told me that the remnants of Clover Studio made this game, I wouldn't have believed you. How can they go from God Hand -- a difficult game with complex combos, superior enemies, relatively complex controls, etc. -- to this? God Hand allowed customizable combos, for fuck's sake, and this game doesn't even have a maneuver you could call a combo! The most complicated move has to be a jumping chainsaw attack, whilst the enemies are nowhere near as cunning as those in God Hand. Grunts rarely ever force you to evade, because they rarely attack. They simply huddle around you for a few seconds, giving you ample opportunity to jam something in their skulls. Sure, they are slightly smarter than those in NMH, but that isn't anything to brag about. Enemy A.I. was shitty in NMH, and though it's noticeably better here, it's still lacking compared to most other decent action games.
Then there's the boss fights. Some of them demand a bit more of you at first. Active dodging is finally useful, though not entirely necessary given your enormous life bar. Whatever pattern the boss has for defense, the jumping chainsaw attack is the quickest way to take them down. Usually you have to strike at specific opportunities until an on-screen command pops up for you to trigger a mandatory QTE (think God of War), though instead of button presses you are supposed to flail around with the remote to trigger further motion commands. Any semblance of complexity is retired at this point.
There's just no decent challenge here until you unlock the hard difficulty mode -- after beating the game. This drains what little fun there was in the bosses because their attack patterns have already been memorized, diminishing the challenge of a second play through. At least this mode gets you increased grunt A.I. and removes your extra lives.
There's also a failed attempt at something like a scoring system. The more brutal your attacks, the more points you receive, which are actually required to advance to the boss fights in each stage. All of the basic attack maneuvers yield very few points, so punching and chainsawing your way through the game would be a bloody chore (especially within the half an hour you're given). A simple chainsaw to the skull may give you 10,000 points, but turning to environmental aids is a better idea: Jam a candelabra or two in a guy's eye sockets and a shaken bottle of champagne down his throat before you throw him into pit of spikes, and your point total could increase sixfold. Unfortunately, the only skill this colorful display of cruelty requires is being able to press the A button at the right time. Press A to pick up candelabra, press A to cram it into an eye socket. Repeat until you grab the enemy (Protip: A button) and shake the remote to throw him forward into a pit of spikes. The visual results are entertaining, but it's obfuscating true variety with eye candy.
The Wii's predilection for mini-games is not entirely avoided here either, with a few motorcycle segments that demand little attention other than driving forward really fast and shaking the nunchuck and remote to kill enemies on either side of you. That's seriously all there is to these stages! Plus there are unlockable "Bloodbath Challenges" in each stage that are usually timed events requiring you to throw enemies into a billboard's tits and panties or knock their heads off with a gold club. At least these are good for a few laughs.
So yeah, the graphics save this game from being a complete LOL, really. What do you call the Xboxification of a genre that has already been a staple of home consoles?
[Wiification. --Ed]
Note that, in a perhaps-growing trend that includes the recent Advance Wars: Days of Ruin, Madworld has yet to be released in Japan, with still no word out on when it might be.