MadWorld

Due out on the Wii at the end of March, MadWorld promises to take us on an unprecedented ride into digital carnage. You take the part of Jack, a chainsaw-wielding citizen of the futuristic Varrigan City. Varrigan City is under the control of The Organizers and the population is forced to compete in the deadly game of Death Watch. What The Organizers don’t know is that Jack does Death Watch like Ritchie McCaw does turnovers at the breakdown. Having a chainsaw attached to your arm also helps. As Jack jogs his way through the stunning black and white cityscape, he uses his chainsaw, and anything else he can get his free hand on, to cut a swathe through a multitude of enemies, in a frenzied crusade to win Death Watch and bring down The Organizers.

In MadWorld you follow Jack around in the third person, chewing up and spitting out everyone who gets in your way. The graphics are straight from Frank Miller’s Sin City. Black and white with the odd splash of yellow text and the somewhat more frequent splash of red. Did I say ‘splash of red’? I meant torrent of red drowning the screen in an endless cascade of blood. In fact Platinum Game’s unashamedly violent opus may just take the whole computer game/violence thing to another level.

Controlling Jack and his chainsaw hand is intuitively handled though the Wiimote and Nunchuck. The Nunchuck controls where Jack goes while his attacks are handled with various combinations on buttons and movements on the Wiimote. Stringing combinations and hitting screen prompts will unleash Jack’s incredibly violent finishing moves.

Ripping enemies in half, grinding them to a soft pulp in heavy machinery, smearing them along the entire side of a passing train (did I mention the game is incredibly violent?), are just some of the solutions Jack comes up with to deal with his continually respawning foes. That’s right, it’s not just Jack’s chainsaw you have to worry about in Varrigan City. If it rolls, grinds, swings or slices, Jack will throw you under it, stuff you into it or mash your face up against it. Killing is Jack’s business and business is good.

If you haven’t guessed, this is not the game for your sister’s tenth birthday party (or even your dad’s fortieth), although it does promise a potentially insane multiplayer option with many environmental features turning into mini-games. Every mini-games offering a solution to one of life’s little problems like “Just how many people can I throw into a trash masher?”

MadWorld is about as politically incorrect as you can get. It is bold and unapologetic in its stylised depiction of bloodshed. However, just how much killing can you do before it all gets repetitive and boring? Like any game its success will hinge on how much fun it is to play, how engaging is its story and, most importantly, just how much blood you can handle.