Madworld

A puchase in June, Madworld is one of the most recent and anticipated additions to my backlog. When I first heard about the concept for this game, people were hailing it as the most violent game to come out for the Wii. Having played some of the recent over-the-top violent Wii games such as Resident Evil 4 and No More Heroes already, I felt I had been jaded and wanted to see if the game would really quench my thirst for blood and gore. I'm happy to say, Madworld delivers and is really, really fun. The plot is that you're a guy named Jack who has stumbled onto an island full of crazies all taking part in a game show where everyone kills eachother to win. People hold some secrets and I think there was a government conspiracy in there, but none of that really matters, it just serves as an excuse to murder everyone in sight. The standard way of killing a guy is to chop him in half. This is something I've seen before in No More Heroes, but NMH never moved far beyond that- Madworld pushes creativity in your killings. Instead of just taking a chainsaw to a guy, why not first trap him in a barrel? Then with him unable to fight back, ram a pole through his skull, and then finish him off by throwing him into another enemy and have them both land on a bed of spikes. Stuff like this keeps the gameplay fresh all the way to the end. In addition to the fun gameplay, the overall atmosphere of the game is great. The entire world is black and white, except for red blood splatters. Combining this lack of color with onomatopoeia words displayed everytime a sound effect is made ("CLANK!" "SNAP!") and the whole thing feels like playing in a comic book. It's important to note that these gimmicks never really got in the way of the game or distracted me; this is a game first and foremost. Also adding to the experience are the two announcers- Greg Proops and John Dimaggio do some spectacular voicework and have a hilarious dynamic together. They made the credits worth watching, which I can't say about any other game I've played. Overall, the game may have been a little short, but I can't fault it for that, because that kept it from ever getting frustrating- the game never wore out it's welcome. While it won't got down as one of the top games I've played, I'll certainly remember Madworld as a fun but extremely violent experience.