MadWorld

[miffy495]

Had to make a run to the drug store this afternoon and as I was leaving, the EB across the hall beckoned. I went in, remembering that MadWorld had been released on Tuesday, and decided to check the price. Luckily for me, the game is so new that they didn't offer to sell me a used one, and I got in and out with a minimum of hassle. Just finished the first boss fight. Thoughts to follow.

Pros:

- Graphics not as disorienting as they appeared in the trailers.

Don't get me wrong, I've loved the style that this game oozes since I saw my first press shot. In the back of my mind though, there's always been this lingering concern that great as the stills look, things always seemed to get sort of muddled in the trailers. When you're only using 3 colours, it's rather easy for important things to blend in with the background. How can you make the essential elements stand out? Even the opening cutscene had a bit of this effect for me. As soon as I was in control though, everything made sense. Some things still blend a bit more than I'd like, but it all comes together quite nicely and the game is a breeze to control. I just don't know if it'd be any fun to watch a mate play it, as you may get the same feeling I did during the noninteractive bits. Not the best game to show to someone unless you're directly giving them the controller right from the start, but for the player it all works perfectly.

- Funny. Actually funny.

I was expecting style and a bit of tongue in cheek over-the-topness. What I was not expecting was the adaptive and context sensitive running commentary over everything you do by Greg Proops and John DiMaggio. Taking a break from Marcus Fenix, DiMaggio puts on a great sportscaster vibe and the banter between the two of them is very well done. I could see the game getting boring quite quickly if there were no commentary, as you'd just be ploughing through the same sorts of guys in the same way over and over until you've done enough grinding for a boss to appear. Instead though, I found myself wanting to experiment more with the tools at my disposal in part just to hear what they'd say about it. Rather than chainsawing through every enemy, I began to see how many guys I could knock down by throwing a dude in a barrel at them. I discovered I could throw a guy into a dude sitting on the toilet and the sitting guy would get stuck in the bowl helpless until I put him out of his misery. The whole time I was chuckling sadistically because of the things the announcers were saying. Brilliant addition to keep the game fresh.

- Creativity. Utterly depraved creativity.

See above. In the first mission alone, I threw 6 guys into one another so they would all fall into the path of a moving train, chopped many people in half with a dumpster lid, drowned a man in a toilet, held a guy against a speeding subway until the back half of his body had been worn off, got a ten kill combo for dudes sucked into a jet engine, and dropped a spiked ball that must've weighed half a ton onto a guy's head. Horrible as it was, I loved every second. This game has so many atrocities you can commit. I feel like a horrible person describing them, but it's really just a prettied up Smash! TV, so I don't quite know why. I've killed so many people in games before and some of those deaths have felt really meaningful. This game gives you a high score for jamming a signpost through a guys neck before ramming his body down on a giant spike popping out of the ground. Am I a horrible person for loving it?

- Aesthetic.

Do I really need to say anything? You should know what this game looks like by now. What was unexpected was a completely original and surprisingly fitting hip hop score. Well played. Here's a vid of the game in action though, for those that don't know the score:

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Cons:

- Camera

Only the first level, and the camera is already becoming an issue. There's a lock on function, but it sucks. Better just to run around and center it behind you with the c button. Still playable just fine, but sometimes I really wish the Wii had a way of doing free camera control...

- Repetition

As mentioned, the game is basically a grind of regular guys who'll barely do any damage until you rack up a high enough score to fight a boss. The more creative your kills of these guys, the faster your score goes up. This does help to alleviate it, and personally it's not that big an issue for me as I'm enjoying the core mechanics, but if it bothered you in No More Heroes, it'll bother you here as well.

- Waggle intensive

Though your basic attack is done with the A button, your chainsaw is far more effective. This is used by holding B and swiping the controller. Every piece of the environment you interact with will require some form of waggle, and there are a few QTEs as well. If your wrists get tired quickly, take this into consideration.

Summary:

This game is pretty damn rad. Glad my anticipation seems justified this time around. Same time last year Mario Kart came out, and I felt completely let down and disappointed. No such issues today when popping in the disc. I'd recommend renting it first, as the fact that I overcame the blending the art style may lend itself to doesn't guarantee you will, and you should probably figure out your tolerance for grinding to the bosses. Really though, I'm so damn happy these last couple of months that I own a Wii. 2009 is looking to be a very good year if things keep delivering on their promise as much as this. It really makes me want to go back and finish No More Heroes, now that I think about it. Only got about halfway through that one. I'm gonna hop back into MadWorld as soon as I've posted this, so consider it a very positive impression.

[Lechimp]

I'm really glad this game turned out well. There hasn't been that much for the Wii that has interested me lately (I still need to get Boom Blox though), so it's nice to have something new. It was made by former Clover Studios people wasn't it?

[miffy495]

Yes, yes it was. I just got home from work and am about to jump back in. Very excited to!

[gdf]

I'm passing on Resident Evil 5 so I can buy this next Friday, good to hear it's awesome.

[Lechimp]

Alright, I'm playing through the game now and loving it. Miffy's review of the game is spot on. I think I disagree a little with how waggle intensive it is, most of the movements aren't that tiring except for the things that involve spinning. But I think I mostly don't mind it because to me, a lot of the games on the Wii feel like they could have been on other consoles and the Wii's controller doesn't really add anything to the game. I guess Madworld also could have been ported to other consoles, but I think that the use of the Wii controller does add a bit to the game so it doesn't feel like it's been thrown in as an afterthought. I'm also impressed at how good the commentary is. I thought it would be something that would get old and repetitive pretty quickly but it doesn't.

[miffy495]

I am now halfway through the game, (7 of 13 bosses defeated) and the early impressions have not changed. I've discovered two new things though, both positives. First off, the story is actually sort of interesting. There have now been flashbacks to the incident that set off the games, Jack's motives are slowly being revealed, and a big conspiracy plot worthy of only the cream of B movies is being unfurled. I figured the story would just be something to loosely tie together the gorefest, but it's becoming yet another motivating factor that pulls me back to the game.

The second is the pacing. It's very well done. A few of the levels (I'm looking at you, Mad Castle and the first part of Asiantown) are very constrictive. There are only so many environmental hazards around, and you begin to run out of ways to kill guys quite quickly. Just as I start to get bored of killing in the same way though, I seem to unlock some new weapon. I was resistant to these at first, as the chainsaw is just so damned effective, but it's become plain that they're fantastic. The spear from the Lusty Geisha level is my favorite, I think. Impaling three guys on it and hurling them into a rosebush, pit of fire, or whatever is not only worth a ton of points, but also insanely entertaining. It's got a brilliant finisher as well where you launch the guy over your head and spin the spear like a propeller as he falls down into it. And again, these weapons always show up just as I'm getting bored. If it's not a weapon, it's one of those minigames. These are kind of hit and miss. A few are fantastic (the man-golf is a particularly fun riff on something that every damn Wii game seems to do and the fireworks one is great.) but there are a lot that just don't seem worth it. Still, they keep it mixed up and the game never gets boring. Platinumgames obviously spent a good deal of time plotting out their levels, and it shows.

The game is becoming more challenging than I would have thought. While you can get through the first few levels button-mashing, recent fights have taught me just how misguided this strategy can be. Dying quickly on first attempts, I'm now getting quite good at dodge maneuvers and triggering those QTEs that otherwise would have resulted in the boss carefully removing my bones. Yokozuna, the sumo wrestler, especially requires careful dodging and striking to fight effectively.

This game is becoming easier and easier to recommend. Not only are all the positives from the first impressions true, it's now surprising me with depth of play and story as well. Get the damn game.

[Noyb]

Sounds awesome. I was a little skeptical, especially after No More Heroes turned out to have more padding than Super Paper Mario, but learning that the guys who did the underrated God Hand are behind it piqued my interest.

[gdf]

Just got it, finally. Miffy, you're so right, it's fucking awesome.

Only shitty thing is that it doesn't run at 60Hz. Puzzling.

[miffy495]

After my last post in this thread, I was unfortunately kicked in the face by school and haven't gotten any further. Thanks for reminding me to not let this fall into the pile of shame.

[gdf]

My pile of shame is almost as big as Little Eddie.

I love the dodge move. The way they've structured fighting is great in that you can quite happily kill a guy in one swift movement, but they can also take enough punishment that you can headbutt them, throw them, stick a barrel on their head, punch the shit out of them, stick a pole through their face and still be able to finish them off with an uppercut onto a rosebush.