Madworld (Hands-On) (Wii) Preview

That's what struck us most about Madworld: the game's developers really seem to have thought of every death possible with the provided items and environments. We knew you could spear heads with signposts, but what if you were to plonk a bin on somebody's head, then thrust a metal pole through the bin and their head, then chuck the resulting mess into a car, pick him up, hurl him towards a flaming bin, grab him, headbutt him and finally put him out of his misery by launching him into a dumpster which promptly slams shut on him, slicing him clean in two, all punctuated with a comedy 'DONG!' sound effect? Yep. A train is rolling by, you pick up a bench, smack an enemy with it, grab the stunned man and back him into the side of the moving train, holding him there until he's scraped into pieces. Then you do a little jump and stomp on his freshly bled-out corpse. This is Madworld, Platinum Games' first Wii game, and it is, in a word, awesome.

All this would be nothing but twisted if not for the approach it takes. We can completely understand the controversy this time - it clearly is one of the most ridiculously, brilliantly violent games ever conceived - but equally we can understand why it's gotten away with it uncensored, unlike Manhunt 2. It's all about the attitude. While it's a game about nothing but death, where every single one of your actions results in murder as far as we can tell from our playthrough of the first two stages, it's sprinkled with so many tongue-in-cheek moments (such as enemies' stumbling when they've got, say, a flaming barrel firmly attached the upper half of their body), slapstick moments (from some of the deaths to enemies running away in fear when a particularly nasty kill is witnessed) and hilarious colour commentary from the likes of John 'Bender' DiMaggio that it couldn't possibly be taken seriously. That's not even mentioning the insane OTT moments, especially the mini-games that crop up mid-level (which can be unlocked for multiplayer fun), or the sound effects more associated with Tom and Jerry than a game about mass murder.

It also helps that the game is presented with a limited colour palette - black, off-white, red and yellow. It lessens the effect of the gore to a more acceptable level while also making the starkest acts of depravity stand out even more. With the style, though, the moments that might make you wince in more realistic titles just make you laugh out loud as viscera gushes all over the camera, quips are yelled and points are thrown at you (the more creative your kills, the higher your score is). It shouldn't feel this good, but it does. We feel no guilt. Like No More Heroes, a game from which there is clearly some kind of inspiration garnered, it never forgets it's a game, and that's how it gets away with it. As high score tables appear after assassinations in Grasshopper Manufacture's game, kill-as-many-as-you-can minigames pop up with all the flair of a cheesy gameshow, presenter in tow (though never for long if his assistant has anything to do with it).

The control system is brilliant. We don't want to bring up No More Heroes too much, but the way motion is used is a direct evolution of what Suda 51's title has already done, and Madworld comes off like the evil love-child of both that game and Godhand (which many at Platinum Games had a hand in anyway when they were a part of Clover). B controls the chainsaw on your right arm - hold the B button and you can swing it up, down, left or right to deliver different attacks (i.e. backhands, uppercuts), so long as you don't use it too much and overheat it. Tapping the A button controls both your punches and grabs, but you'll more than likely want to hammer it - Jack has no problem adhering to this, Godhand-stylee - or keep it pressed down to hold onto enemies or items. When you've got an item or enemy held you can hurl them away with a swing of the Wii remote, or you can approach another item/enemy and interact with them by swinging when a prompt pops up. For example, if you're holding a bin you can sidle up to an enemy and move the remote to slam it on his head; vice versa, if you're holding an enemy you can move to the bin and stick him inside it. Swiping the nunchuk instead while holding an enemy delivers a swift headbutt, but more of the fun is to be had in stunning enemies. Punch them repeatedly until they're swaying about and you can perform a finishing move on them by pressing either A or B. You'll then move into a position where you use motion to perform a finishing move. There looks to be loads of these, but the ones we came across involved splitting a body vertically from the groin up, throwing enemies in the air and chainsawing them through the torso as they're above you, slamming the chainsaw through numerous body parts, slamming enemies side to side until they fall apart, twisting necks to break them and swinging bad guys around like a hammer toss. We're not sure how much motion is actually required because we became so immersed that as we were smacking guys side to side while holding their feet we were overemphasising every slam left and right because it was just more fun that way. Small waggles may be all that is necessary, but where would be the fun in that?

We only touched upon a couple of the first stages from the game's city level in our demo, but each had been taken from a final, or very close to final, build and were not just demonstration stages. During these stages we were met with a couple of mini-games and a giant dual-chainsaw wielding mid-level boss. Later on, we're told that the levels begin to diversify; in gameplay movies and trailers so far we've only seen the city and some elements of China Town, but there are actually a variety of settings such as a sci-fi one that partially takes place in a ship resembling the Enterprise of Star Trek fame. They wouldn't tell us anymore.

One of our two main quibbles with the game is the enemy AI, which doesn't seem to be up to much, although we imagine that will change after the first few levels. In fact, if previous hardcore monsters Viewtiful Joe and Godhand are anything to go by (and they should be, having been developed by many of the same people), Madworld's first few levels will ultimately serve as tutorials that offer the chance to mess about with your new powers, more than anything else. Our second quibble pertains to difficulty in trying to ascertain where we should be going next - random TV cutscenes occasionally showed us an item appearing, but we couldn't work out where these were and how we should get to them. Perhaps when we have more time to mess around with the full game and use the radar properly (rather than just sawing things up) we might get a better idea of what's going on.