MadWorld Review - Is this really what the Wii needs?

Mike Bantick
Sunday, 22 March 2009 08:59

Entertainment

Looking through my library of Wii games, they are a smattering of G and PG rated titles.  Now there is a MA 15+ game that grabs the Wii audience by the Nunchucks and hurls copious buckets of blood at them.  Time to enter MadWorld.

Currently I am playing two SEGA published games; one is an in depth simulation of mans 18th century war mongering.  It requires a strategic and tactical mind as well as the aptitude to work through multiple layers of command and organisation.  It is Empire Total War. 

MadWorld
	Developer	Platinum Games
	Publisher	SEGA
	Rating	MA15+
Wii

Then there is MadWorld.

The world of Richard Bachman’s (AKA Stephen King) The Running Man, and perhaps a lethal dose of the more recent film version of Death Race, is explored in MadWorld.  A world where TV violence and reality programming combine, where game show and blood sport erupt as one.

All combining to bring the Colosseum clashes of ancient Rome into modern day lounge rooms.  It is bloody gladiatorial events staged like gang warfare in an urban sprawl cut off from both the rest of the world and reality.  MadWorld is the most apt title developer Platinum Games could have chosen.

Presented like an animated version of Frank Miller’s Sin City graphic novel, both in its use of stark black and white imagery, spattered with limited, yet stunningly contrasting colour to emphasise areas of interest and of course blood!

In order to survive the televised DeathWatch “game” players take on the role of hard-man Jack Cayman.  Jack comes – quite literally – well armed.  Wielding a prosthetic arm chainsaw attachment and an attitude that has his bio listing his interests as “drinking, women, cigarettes and cigars – not necessarily in that order – he’s also wild about raw onions”

It is obvious from both that description and the subsequent game play that MadWorld is not trying to be serious. 

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