On a system filled with family friendly mini-game collections, a violent black, white (and red) title like MadWorld sticks out like a sore thumb. At first glance, MadWorld seems unique in the gaming world, a sort of mix between The Running Man, Sin City and a pinch of HellBoy. Your first moments of the game are thrilling, as you assist Jack to execute his victims in ways you’d never thought possible. The problem is that MadWorld shows its best hand too soon; when you strip away all of the violence, blood and amusing commentary, it’s really just another run-of-the-mill brawler.

MadWorld puts you in the role of Jack, who’s sort of a human portmanteau of Sin City’s Marv and HellBoy with a penchant for chainsaws. Jack’s smack bang in the middle of Varrigan City, an island which has been cut off from the rest of the world by a group of terrorists who are using the isolated location as a staging ground for a new killing game show named DeathWatch. The inhabitants of Varrigan City have all been infected with a virus, and the only way to gain access to the vaccine is to kill another person and join the game. As you’d expect, there’s more to the game, and Jack, than meets the eye, and it’s all spelled out in black and white as you push forward.


The most distinguishing feature of MadWorld is its visual style, a sort-of homage to Sin City, where everything in the game world is presented in black and white, with one major exception – blood. To be honest, MadWorld is a game that looks a whole lot better in stills; sometimes it can be a little difficult to distinguish what’s going on in a scene, as some objects seem to blend together. Platinum Games has provided us with a PAL conversion that’s reminiscent of the early days of gaming; a squished picture, slower gameplay, and no option for progressive scan. In spite of this visual issues, MadWorld does a pretty good job of providing a mix of TV style presentation in the DeathWatch scenes, and comic book-style sequences for the rest of the story. Comedian Greg Proops and renowned voice actor John DiMaggio (in his Bender voice) provide humorous, but totally foul colour commentary. Sadly, their shtick gets repeated a little too often in each encounter.

Jack’s modus operandi is to basically kill anything that moves. The viewers of DeathWatch want to see nothing but gore and ultra-violence, and you’ve got to give it to them. Jack is equipped with a chainsaw, which can kill the majority of your opponents in one or two swipes, and he’s super strong, but what you soon learn is that DeathWatch isn’t about just killing your opponent, but disposing of them in the most painful and brutal way possible. Rather than hacking away at a guy with a chainsaw, why not tender him up a bit with your fists, throw him against a wall, drive a stop sign through his skull, and then repeatedly slam him on a conveniently located wall of spikes. MadWorld is certainly not for the squeamish; the level of violence on show here far outdoes anything previously blocked by the Classification Board. The unfortunate thing is that the game employs little variety in its enemy roster and methods of disposal, and starts to become dull a little too quickly.

MadWorld does a respectable job of employing the Wii’s motion based control system. It’s a lot more like No More Heroes than one would think, combining traditional game control with gestural motions used primarily for finishing opponents off and completing quick-time-event sequences. Platinum Games has managed to give players the right amount of freedom and accuracy in their motions, but do have a tendency to rely on moments where players need to shake both controllers like crazy. It’s not perfect by any means – motion cues can sometimes take a little too long to show up, Jack often grabs at thin air when you’re trying to pick up objects, and the camera control is a little less than friendly. Once you get the mechanics down, and execute a few guys, control becomes second nature.


The action takes place in five different parts of Varrigan City, of which each has three different sections. Jack starts out as the 200th ranked competitor in DeathWatch, and must make his way to the top by defeating higher ranked opponents, who just happen to be the bosses you face in each of these sections. Most of the levels play out in the same way; you’ve got about half an hour to kill as many dudes as you can to rack up pre-determined scores. These score intervals activate different things in the level; they’ll usually trigger a weapon, followed by a new environmental hazard, a tougher kind of enemy and a score based challenge called the Bloodbath Challenge.

Bloodbath Challenges are the both the most amusing and most psychotic part of MadWorld. They’re introduced by a fellow called the Black Baron, a classy pimp who’ll educate players on what they need to do in each situation. Before the Black Baron can finish his little tirade, one of his hoes comes out and demonstrates how to use each death trap, using the pimp as an example. Yet despite his many grisly deaths, the Black Baron somehow manages to return in each new level. Activities in these score challenges include sticking men in explosive barrels to create fireworks, “Man Darts”, which involves launching your opponents at a large dart board, and the “Money Shot”, where you need to shake up a bottle of soft drink and ram it down an opponent’s throat to launch him into a target. Not all of the challenges are as cool as these, and the game re-uses them in the later stages, which is a bit disappointing. You can challenge a friend to any of these challenges in multiplayer, but the fun wears thin relatively quickly.

Not too long after the completion of a Bloodbath Challenge, you’ll face the ranked contestant of each level. These fights are very intense and creative, again reminiscent of last year’s No More Heroes. Each boss is wonderfully conceived and characterised, though the actual fights are fairly typical pattern recognition exercises. These fights do require you to change your tactics, and provide a nice change of pace from the rest of the game (well, except for the occasional cheap shot as a result of bad camera position). Once you’ve found the opening, you’ll usually have to waggle like crazy to score a decisive hit on your opponent – get enough of those and you’ll be able to dispose of them in a most bloody (and often ironic) fashion.


MadWorld’s fifteen levels will take most players roughly six or seven hours to bust through the first time. There are a few extras present for those who learn to get the most out of the game’s combo system and are willing to chase par scores, but the experience will seem like a one-off to most players. The problem is that MadWorld really only has enough content to remain fresh for about three levels or so; pretty soon you get the feeling that you’re running through the same tasks, killing the same enemies in the same way and hearing the same commentary tracks repeated ad nauseum.

Taking into consideration the pedigree of the developer, the distinct visual style, and over-the-top violence, we really expected a bit more out of MadWorld. There’s not much else like it, but at the same time, when you look beyond the black and white graphics and ultra-violence, it’s really just a straight up brawler that shows all of its best tricks in the first half hour before settling back for a dull trudge to the finish line.