Madworld

Wednesday, May 6th, 2009

Reviewed by: David Valjalo

Format: Wii

Publisher: Sega

Developer: PlatinumGames

1 Star 2 Stars 3 Stars 4 Stars 5 Stars (1 votes, average: 3 out of 5)

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The first phoenix to arise from the ashes of the studio behind the beautiful, mythical tale Okami is both the polar opposite of that title (catharsis anyone?) and a further polarisation of the Wii cannon in general.

Published under Sega, new studio PlatinumGames presents a three-dimensional take on Streets of Rage by way of Sin City and The Running Man. Set in a fictional island over-run by a brutal game of kill or be killed, you assume the role of Jack – a bounty hunting, one-man-army on a roaring rampage of dismemberment. An arcade beat ‘em up at heart (broken up with some mundane, gimmicky mini-games like “Man Darts”), MadWorld is as old-school in structure as it is offensive in content.

The ability to mute the explicit commentary tracks to each stage is welcome, but can’t detract from the extremity of the encouraged, gratuitous violence on-screen. The drip-feed of the narrative is intriguing/abstract enough to warrant the grind through the stages but it’s the comic-book thrills on offer, ranging from the pugilistic to the perverted which are the main draw. The spanner in the works of the combo-based fighting system isn’t the Wii-mote but the fixed camera, particularly frustrating during boss-battles and multi-tiered levels.

MadWorld has the heart of a good old fashioned, combo-based side-scroller but it has the brain of a disturbed parodist, trouncing its own pop-culture commentary and often satisfying, crunching thrills under a landslide of juvenile gratuity that almost rob it of its appeal.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 6th, 2009 at 4:19 pm and is filed under Game Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.