MadWorld

By Dave Rudden & Patrick Shaw
October 13, 2008 14:49 PM PST
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The Wii gets gory with MadWorld, one of the bloodiest brawlers yet. Here's our impressions of some sick fatalities and other enemies.

On the Wii, it seems as though M-rated games not named Resident Evil are destined to die a bloodless death. No More Heroes, though loved in the hallowed halls of GamePro's office, didn't find the same adoration on store shelves. Mortal Kombat similarly couldn't match its high-def counterparts in terms of sales. Sega, and its newest development subsidiary, Platinum Games are working on a game that is the Wii's bloodiest yet--and hopefully the most critically and commercially successful to boot.

The Running Mad

Much like No More Heroes, MadWorld's story and setting are both refreshingly simple, borrowing from familiar sources while making a name for its own. In MadWorld, you control Jack, a man fighting for his life on an ultra-violent game show, much like Arnold Schwarzenegger's classic action flick The Running Man. All the while, your adventures are being covered with color-commentating by a pair of foul-mouthed announcers--one of whom I'm almost sure is voiced by "Who's Line is it Anyway?" star Greg Proops.

The color scheme for MadWorld seems to consist of varying shades of black, white, and red, with dabs of yellow for the comic-book styled exclamations accompanying big hits--think a more mature version of Batman's "BAM," "ZAP," and "KAPOW." The stage we got to see the most of--a downtown subway station--had an old-school style to it, and was filled with fatality-combatible items. Jack himself is still a bit of a mystery to us, looking like a mix between Marcus Fenix and Marv from Sin City. One thing we do know about Jack are the numerous gruesome ways he can eviscerate, mutilate, and peel the flesh of his enemies. With his default chainsaw weapon you can saw straight through enemies vertically, horizontally, or if you're in an especially bad mood, you can savagely remove their beating heart with the gardening tool and smash it in your fist as if it were a rotten apple.

Environmentally triggered fatalities also come into play in MadWorld, with each city presenting their own unique death traps and contraptions for you to experiment with when killing your enemies. For instance, in the first level there's what we'd describe as a gigantic meat crusher that slams down on anyone below it. In that same area, there are also dumpsters with serrated teeth that'll close on anyone thrown inside, chopping them in half. Huge metallic fans are also attached to walls, which can be used to grind enemies down into a bloody pulp.