"Rated M" Month: MadWorld

M-rated games on Nintendo consoles are a rare occurrence, but they exist – I’ve covered quite a few throughout the history of this blog. GTA: Chinatown Wars and the first two No More Heroes are prime examples. Today’s game was developed by SEGA and PlatinumGames, and was released on March 10th, 2009 in North America for the Wii. I’ve had it in my collection for a while but never got to cover it in greater detail… well, aside from its unique visual signature.

Okay, maybe not entirely unique, but games that look like this are a rarity. Imagine: A CGI game almost entirely in black and white, barring game elements in yellow and, notably, copious amounts of red blood getting spilled all over the place. It’s like if someone turned Sin City into an interactive experience… except, even more violent. Okay, who let Frank Miller at the head of a development studio? The plot is similarly gloomy, cynical and dark, but at least we get plenty of humor (most of the vulgar kind) to counterbalance.

Strap in, shit’s gonna get brutal. Tears For Fears? Gary Jules? Forget ‘em. We’re stepping into a whole other kind of MadWorld.

The DeathWatch Games

"I'll have my last smoke right away, just in case."
By the way, I would like to thank Super Best
Friends Play for their Let's Play, where I got my pictures.

Yeah, he just sawed a guy in half.
Not exactly a thing heroes do.

The setting is Jefferson Island, once a thriving city that has been turned into a theater for murder. Cut off from the rest of the world, the defunct Varrigan City is now the setting for this year’s DeathWatch, a “game show” in which contestants kill each other. That’s where Jack Cayman comes in. After displaying his skills at murder, he finds a sporsor represented by the mysterious Agent XIII. Jack sports a tough guy look and a prosthetic right arm equipped with a chainsaw, and he means business. Starting at Rank #256, our protagonist – he sure as fuck ain’t a hero – proceeds to climb his way up.

You move with the Nunchuk’s analog stick, punch or grab something/someone with A, revv up the chainsaw with B then slice by moving the Wii Remote (careful, though, as it has limited juice and needs to recharge after use), C to set the camera behind Jack, and Z to jump. Items (such as pills and weapons) are grabbed with the Up button on the Wii remote. By shaking both remotes at the same time, Jack does a backflip to evade attacks.

As an example, for the finishing blow against the
first boss, you move the Wii remote in a circle to
kill the guy with his own fucking flail.

Special situations and bosses are where shit gets special. The game will make frequent use of quick-time events, asking you to do a particular action with the remotes. Dealing the finishing blow on anyone or struggling out of an enemy’s grasp will trigger one of those. Against bosses, these are called Power Struggles, and are much more varied due to the unique and cinematic fight moves that Jack can pull off there. These Power Struggles are so strong they can shave off a large chunk of the boss’ health, meaning that they’re very valuable in those battles. It’s all about timing.

You mean you'll let me throw dudes into that turbine?
Where do I sign? Wait, I signed already, didn't I?

You have to amass points through your killings; the way to the boss only opens when you reach that level’s goal score, but you can also unlock temporary weapons and special mini-game-like events whenever you reach a certain threshold. In the mini-games, it’s open season: Throw dudes into a plane turbine? Whack them into a dartboard with a baseball bat? Shove ultra-carbonated fizzy drinks into their mouths, then send them flying towards billboards of naked women whose tits and vaginas are covered by targets? The sky’s the fucking limit.

And all of those mini-games are presented by the Black Baron (“stop starin’”), a dude in full pimp gear who then gets brutally murdered by his, ahem, “assistant” in the current challenge’s method of choice, only to be back for more by the next mini-game. Maybe that guy’s got some Kenny McCormick shit going on, Iunno.

Wham! Painting the blades red!

Tire, pole, spikes - Yep! Jackpot!
And lots of blood.

The best way to rack up massive scores in the levels isn’t just to act fast – since DeathWatch is a televised "sport", it’s all about giving a good show. Therefore, your best option is to combine the murder methods. Shove a tire onto a dude to incapacitate him? You get a few points. Plant a pole all the way across his skull? More points. Shove him repeatedly into a spiky wall? More points. Combine all three? Jackpot! The environments are designed in such a way that there’s plenty of items and hazards lying around, allowing a creative player to come up with excellent murder-combos.

And DeathWatch is televised entertainment, so Jack’s actions are discussed by commentators Howard “Buckshot” Holmes, voiced by Greg Proops, and Kreese Kreely, an ex-DeathWatch contestant and champion voiced by John DiMaggio. The actors were given carte blanche to ad lib to events seen in the game, leading to dialogue that’s somehow even more raunchy, vulgar, nasty and violent than the shit you actually partake in as a player. Random mentions of injecting drugs in their scrotums, gawking at every sight of a cleavage, that kind of stuff. They’re a major highlight, even giving advice occasionally, though their commentary is often muffled by the soundtrack or noises from the game. Shame, too, because they’re fucking hilarious.

Jack’s secret mission

Geez, it's the second guy over 8 feet tall I beat up. What
the fuck are the steroids like in this world of madness?

Aside from Agent XIII, Jack also has an earpiece to receive messages and requests from Amala, a helper from outside the Games. He’s not just participating; he’s on Jefferson Island for a mission. Through Varrigan City, he runs into a coup le of tough DeathWatch contestants, including one by the name of Von Twirlenkiller, who has tornado generators on his arms. This guy has a German accent and wears a uniform from the Third Reich. A fucking shitbag of a Nazi, and per the rules, we have to kill him in a gruesome manner.

Aw yes. I’ve been itching to massacre some fucking Nazis since the end of February. Jack ends up killing that guy with his own turbines. Good.

Still more dignified than Mickey Rooney.

Past that point is the Asian Town area of the island, which mixes and matches elements of several Asian cultures in the most offensive way possible. It would have been called Ethnic Stereotype Town and there wouldn’t be a difference. The enemies and mini-bosses follow the theme. However, Jack finds something else in the area: A civilian who goes by the name of Leo, a doctor stranded on the island, who survived by pure luck.

I'm more worried that there are any civilians
left on the DW battlefields.

Yokozuna is one of the more impressive bosses.
You don't fight a lot of them in a sumo arena.

As for the bosses here… The first area, Great Wall Street (subtle), is guarded by RinRin, who fights with giant bladed fans. Next up, Jack “rescues” scantily-clad geishas before facing Shogun, a contestant wearing an oni mask and sporting a staff with motorized buzzsaws on both ends. God damn, the weapons in this game are so cool. The area closes with a fight against Rank #53: Yokozuna, a buff guy who uses moves akin to sumo wrestlers. Killing him involves Power Struggles in which Jack pushes him backwards and into spikes, then into electrocution boards, and finally into a cannon. Be careful; this dude can literally jump, grab a helicopter from the air, and THROW IT AT JACK.

The stuff in this game is so silly, and yet so ridiculously badass it circles back to being awesome.

That's several flavors of fucked-up
rolled into one single scene.

We meet Leo again and get the game’s backstory: Three days prior, a group of terrorists known as the Organizers cut Jefferson Island from the rest of the world, blocking communications and blowing up any exits. They then sprayed over the island a disease to kill everyone trapped there within 24 hours, unless they get the vaccine for it. The catch? The vaccine would be given solely to those who kill someone. Leo got lucky, getting the vaccine without having to kill. However, Shock TV was abnormally quick to make use of the bad situation and, a few days later, set their next DeathWatch on the island.

Geez, it’s almost like it was fucking planned or something.

No regrets, that's a zombie. ...wait.
How are zombies a thing in that world?

Universal called, they want their classic
horror movie monster back.

The Organizers and their leader, Noa, have recognized Jack and know he’s not a normal contestant; he’s on a mission to retrieve the mayor’s daughter, who’s still on the island. In World 3, Jack goes through the Mad Castle, a horror-themed place. Zombies abound as enemies, and the bosses here are:

-The pack of werewolf-like Shamans (for whom only the Alpha has a life bar);

-A Frankenstein’s monster named… Frank (that motherfucker is at the end of a hard level and is also a bitch to kill);

-And a vampire named Elise, whose rack is warmly commented on by Howard and Kreese.

Down with the Games

When Jack finds the mayor’s daughter, he sees she isn’t in danger at all; she was having a reception with other rich people on the island, safely watching the Games where poor people kill each other. Class act. Yeah, fuck her damsel in distress bullshit. A disgusted Jack backhands the girl and leaves. He has a different goal now.

Girl, with all due respect – and that is, NONE
whatsoever – kindly go FUCK yourself.

However, Jack’s being watched by the Organizers; they figure out that he’s in contact with someone from outside, and decide to kill him off. They can’t do it directly, though; he’s becoming a fan favorite, and him just dying would raise red flags, so they elect to put him in more dangerous scenarios so he’ll die in the normal flow of the game.

The motorcycle segments may be tricky to
control, but I still would've taken more than
what the game was giving in that aspect.

The fourth world is an abandoned military base. Jack gets there by riding his bike on a strip of highway, on which he must kill any enemies that come his way. Although interesting, bike-riding is an underutilized mechanic, available only for two levels, one Bloodbath Challenge, and one boss battle. The bike isn’t super-wieldy either, and hard to control in the large room in which the latter two take place, but it feels like there should have been more done with it. The motorcycle boss is Kojack, basically Jack’s clone, and is fun and unique in spite of the tricky motorcycle controls.

Wait, there are actual aliens here now? And what the shit
is that weird-ass otherworldly color? It's, like, the
color out of fuckin' space, man.

Next up is the base itself, Area 66, which hides – you guessed it! – aliens. The boss at the end of this place is double – the Masters, blatant Jedi homages, who use telekinesis to throw shit at Jack. Thankfully, these two targets share their life bar, so they turned out – in my opinion, at least – easier than the level that precedes them.

When things are dire and the new guy doesn't
 fear chainsaws – rocket launcher, that's the answer.

Jack battles the #2 rank, a giant robot, and wins, with only one more contestant in the way to victory. Next up is a casino area, with first a pretty normal level (without a boss), followed by a climb up the final Tower… which involves fights against several mini-bosses in a row. Finally, Jack hits the top, which is a giant coliseum with a ring in the center. The final fight, here it is. 

Meanwhile, a sample of Jack’s DNA is tested by the Organizers, and he’s revealed to be a DeathWatch champion who won three previous editions, and who went through surgery to look completely different.

Against the champion

Yeah, just another mini-boss. Tough, but it
bleeds and dies like everything else.

Not gonna lie, I would have loved to see more cutscenes
like this one, calmer, where the text and the style marry
themselves perfectly. Where the ambiance is soaked in
the mood of the contrasting black and white.

Jack had ended communications with Agent XIII earlier, but the man returns on Amala’s channel to explain himself: He turns out to be Lord Gesser, a sponsor whose wealth terrifies even the Organizers. XIII explains that he has a reason to sponsor Jack: DeathWatch-like games have always existed in history to settle conflicts and prevent wars and greater human losses, but the newest iterations are done solely for gambling and profit. Gesser thinks it's shameful, and therefore backs Jack in what appears to be a plan to end DeathWatch, for good. But apparently, that won't happen unless Jack wins this one. So – Who’s the mysterious Rank #1?

Oh, we know him. We’ve seen him – and his guts – a lot.

There hasn't been a single boss in the game
that matched every of Jack's punches and moves
the way the Black Baron does. But even with that
prowess, the Baron meets his match.

The Black Baron (“stop starin’”) is brought onto the ring. How am I gonna kill this guy? He dies all the time already! The Baron is strongly implied to be a white guy in blackface with a body fully tattooed black (and this, despite being voiced by Roy “Reno” Wilson, a Black man); ‘cause shit in this game wasn’t offensive enough so far! Oh, and the less I say about the Nazi connotations around his name and tattoos the better. However, as the final boss, his battle skills check out; he’s genuinely tough. He prefers close combat and has tricks to pull Jack closer – but he can also throw Jack out of the ring and towards his assistant, who’ll massacre him with her spiky bat. During Power Struggles, the Baron will match every single punch thrown by Jack until the end of the sequence. Still, despite his skill, he's crushed headfirst into a dartboard and Jack Cayman is crowned the DeathWatch champion (again).

Uh... Noa? Bad idea to antagonize the dude
with the mano a mano 4-digit bodycount.

The crowd celebrates; Jack doesn’t. Something doesn’t click. The Games couldn’t have been set up in just three days. Stocking the city full of death traps couldn't have been done so fast. In other words, the terrorist attack on the city, everything that followed; it's been planned for much longer. As discovered through XIII and Amala, Noa, the head Organizer, is also the head of Springvale Pharmaceuticals, a company that went bankrupt after the last election when their practices of illegal donations were discovered. They engineered the terrorist attack to put the world at fear of THEIR virus, so they could threaten and control any other country in the world with it, with the promise of THEIR vaccine. All this, and the DeathWatch, solely to recoup their losses. It was about money the whole fucking time.

Like that dude showing up here of all places
isn't fishy in the slightest.

"And don't bullshit me; you've seen what I
can do. Actually, no. Whatever you say,
you're taking the fast way down this tower."

Jack doesn’t get to kill Noa; instead, Leo does. Remember him? He was a part of the scheme all along. He’s the one who created the virus and thought of the DeathWatch part of the plan, and even played victim to be a part of the action. Jack had figured it out, and shows no mercy for the young man, wounding him and then, with a final QTE, pushes him off the tower to his death. Good fuckin’ riddance. The end, cue credits, with Howard and Kreese throwing snark at everyone.

When you beat the game, you can’t go back to your save file; you can’t even return to play the levels again to get higher scores. However, you unlock the Hard difficulty, providing a tougher challenge. Jack can also now use new weapons: Katanas and double chainsaws. Awesome. The game includes a Multiplayer Mode, which is unfortunately underwhelming, as it’s merely a split-screen mode in which two players, as Jack and Kojack, participate in the Bloodbath Challenge mini-games again.

And… well, that covers everything!

Final thoughts

More violence, more points, and you get to
the next boss faster. As simple as that.

That sure was… a goddamn experience. Forget GTA, No More Heroes, anything else – THIS is the most violent and brutal game I’ve ever played. Although that’s to be expected from a game where the entire point is to cause as much suffering as possible before the kill. More violence, more pain inflicted on an enemy = more points. Its style, in black and white with splotches of red for blood and yellow for gameplay elements, no doubt helps that feel as well. It’s like, you know those ultraviolent games that the moral guardians keep saying that all video games are? Yeah, MadWorld is one of those by design, like a sneer. Like a mockery.

Seeing the Black Baron get killed by his
whore in every Bloodbath Challenge video
is oddly satisfying. He IS an asshole, so...

Hell, it’s not just brutal. It’s also vulgar as all fuck. No shying away from all of the most popular curses, but it’s not just that – the game revels in every manner of humor that would be deemed offensive. Sure, Greg Proops and John DiMaggio ad-libbing most of their lines as Howard and Kreese are a big part of it, but other characters – Jack in particular – aren’t above making such jokes either. As a matter of fact, I can freely say that a big draw to this game is how little it takes itself seriously. Barring a very dark story with a couple of serious moments, it’s otherwise one joke after the next, and there are several instances during gameplay that will make a player laugh out loud. Those Bloodbath Challenges? Hell yeah, hilarious.

There’s a good balance in difficulty, and the levels get longer over time as the required score to fight the boss increases; with that said, the game itself is fairly short, beatable in under five hours (unless you try the Hard mode afterwards), comprised of only 14 levels in total. The unique style makes this title very peculiar to play; you get used to the look eventually, but it takes a moment. And, even then, due to the black and white contrast, a lot of details are easy to miss.

Some ideas and extras definitely could have been
given a bit more spotlight.

Also unfortunate is that, while several levels have their own unique killing methods and hazards, you’ll generally resort to the same simple techniques and combos that give a ton of points – such as the tire-pole-spikes I mentioned earlier, or anything that can achieve that combo with similar items. The game can thus end up feeling repetitive, not helped by the increasing score requirements, and though attempts at shaking up the formula are frequent, like the Challenges and the underused motorcycle segments, it still creates an impression of doing the same things over and over. Last but not least, as I mentioned, the multiplayer mode is underwhelming.

Oh, that zombie's gonna feel that one.

I wouldn’t go as far as to cry out “style over substance”, as the game knows exactly what it wants to be, and delivers on all fronts. It has a fantastic visual signature, a kickass hip-hop soundtrack (a rarity on the Wii, but even rarer is that said hip-hop soundtrack still holds up nowadays), and is as violent as it promises to be. And unlike other forms of media that pretty much insult their viewers/players for enjoying violent video games, any mocking of gamers that MadWorld might partake in is always in a knowing tone, in a nudge-nudge wink-wink sort of way. I think it is a good game, a little rough around the edges, more than a bit fucked-up in places, but otherwise pretty enjoyable if you can stomach its contents – both the violence, the blood and the comedy.

And hey, PlatinumGames went on after this to work on the Bayonetta series, which got big enough to see its protagonist join the Super Smash Bros. series, so there’s definitely a bit of acknowledgement from Nintendo there.

That’s it for the first review this month! Tune in next week for something I never talked about before: South Park.