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MadWorld: Jack in Black
Thanks to influences and inspirations that span the length and breadth of gaming, there are many things to which MadWorld can be compared. You could refuse to look past the visual style and reference Sin City, focus squarely on the combat and think of No More Heroes, hark back to Gears of War when chainsaws clash, or draw attention to the gallons of blood on display, citing anything from God of War to Soldier Of Fortune.
But in spite of all of these, there's one bizarre comparison that tops the lot, and on paper it couldn't be further away from Platinum Games' latest. Nobody ever played Mortal Kombat for its intricacies or technical fighting - they played it because at the end of a fight, you had the opportunity to end things for good with horrible slapstick finishers.
Just as there was in Midway's franchise, there's something extremely puerile and sadistic about MadWorld's constant violence, but amazingly this massacre still manages to avoid cheapening itself or making the player feel dirty. It's like playing through all of the best Mortal Kombat Fatalities and then some. A fully customizable theatre of punishment, with an emphasis on piling as much hurt as possible onto each opponent before finally doing them in for a huge score bonus.
What it could really do with, to mix things up a bit, are Tony Hawk-esque repetition penalties because, as you'll quickly discover, the highest earners can be rinsed and repeated over and over. Not that you'll want to, mind. With each new area or stage comes an arsenal of new instruments of death and torture. Everything from everyday objects to environmental elements can be forced through body parts and shoved where they definitely don't belong. Gruesome, yes, but you'll invariably want to see each flavor of murder before leaving any given level.
On each map, score milestones open up new areas, weapons, and challenges, and generally speaking, it's the latter of these that break up the action best. Jackass-style 'events' with even less regard for human life, the Bloodbath Challenges can entail anything from tossing guys into huge turbine engines to using a golf club to drive heads through a series of targets. They usually account for a good chunk of your score come the end of the level, meaning a good performance is needed to speed through an area and meet its boss sooner.
When these bad boys come out to play, the game suddenly becomes an accidental No More Heroes follow-up - a whole host of freakish cliches lie in wait and these epic battles embody MadWorld at its most intense. While most regular enemies don't put up much of a fight, boss fights often call upon every skill you have - both offensive and defensive. In fact, you seldom have much need for the evasive moves outside the end-of-level encounters where they become a regular necessity. And with a grisly themed execution awaiting each of them when you wear them down, you'll really go all-out to make sure you earn your 'Finish him' moment.
Cheering Jack on along his blood-soaked path to fame on grim television show DeathWatch, are the show's loud-mouthed commentators, the exquisitely cast pairing of John DiMaggio and Greg Proops. Their play-by-play anecdotes and general wisecracks tessellate wonderfully with the feel of the game, and it's all so very quick-fire - perhaps even throwaway at times - that although it can repeat a little too much, you often won't even notice as the obscenities flow thick and fast. They comment not only on what you do, but also on your performance, so repetition can be mitigated by mixing up your beatings, while a poor run will have them tearing you to pieces on the air.
Not that a bad run is ever particularly likely. As we have already mentioned, regular enemies are hardly the most challenging adversaries, so you can quite easily plonk things on their heads, jab spiky things through them and finish them off with style for the mega points. There are one or two exceptions that crop up, especially later in the game, when more powerful enemies and instant death situations present themselves.
Thank heavens, then, for the true old-school 'lives' system in effect, offering players three chances to make it through each area with the most user-friendly respawn mechanic you could ask for. To achieve the best scores - and indeed to complete some challenges - you'll need to somehow avoid death entirely and it's only here that the frustration of being blindsided or killed outright grates more than a minuscule amount.
Between its wonderful style, superb boss fights and chaotic and often hilarious carnage, MadWorld is evidently a magnificent and unique title. MadWorld is marred only by the potentially repetitive nature of the constant slaying necessary to reach each boss and the relative curtness of the whole experience - we clocked the game in just four hours, excluding cut-scenes and death-based replays, so think nearer double that time in total. The game impresses and entertains while the joy of the kill carries it safely through its few issues.
The brief levels make it a great score-attack game and the varied boss battles make seeing it through essential. Indeed, the extra challenges, difficulty levels and weapons that present themselves as it goes on will mean most players will likely do so more than once. There's just no other game quite like this, and if you once drew sick pleasure from watching crappy digital sprites explode in a shower of pixelated giblets, MadWorld will prove a veritable theme park for your warped sense of humor to explore, conquer and paint red.
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