Madworld certainly has a neat and flashy coat of blood, but it's over within four hours.
- What I disliked : Clunky combat system, unfriendly challenges, lack of boss finishers in some case, over in three and a half hours on normal.
Madworld looks appealing. At least in motion, because on picture, its easy to be turned off by the black and white color scheme. Fortunatly, when the game runs, it's surprisingly easy to figure out all the details of the environments actually dig the concept.
The graphics for this game are quite good. I always said ; artistic games are always better looking than technical ones, and they can take age without any problem ; they won't ever get old any time soon. The contrast between the red blood and the black and white color scheme is really well designed. It's well stylised, and everything is properly executed within its own nature.
The gameplay is, at time, great, and at other, not so great. See, the game will quickly introduce you to the killing. And you'll soon realise that your character, Jack, doesnt have any combat skill under his belt. No, all you'll do is clunkily position yourself in front of an enemy and pummel the A button. If by mystake, you move forward doing so ( because the enemy will usualy back off while getting it ) you'll launch an annoying flying fist that'll send the enemy thirty feet away. Once the pummeling is enough, the '' finisher '' button will appear, letting you execute your foes in a very cool way.
Problem is that it gets old - real fast. So the game introduces to you new ways of killing - by throwing your enemies on various hazards like spiked walls, toilets, train rails, etc.
And after seing them once or twice, it really makes you yawn. Environemental kills aren't supposed to be the main dish of any fighting games, and yet, it's Madworld's goal. Dev's should realise that it's way more fun to shred a guy in two with your bare hands than throwing him on a plane propeller.
That said, the game pits you in levels that lasts from five to ten minutes, doing various ways of killing, until you reach the boss fight. Most boss fights are extremely unique in design, and will require you to dodge a lot and use your chainsaw on them. During the fight, you'll be able to activate a very cool looking QTE to inflict some more pain on your enemy. Once the boss' health bar is depleted, you'll have the real finisher that'll pop up.
Don't expect anything glorious like God of War - no, you'll get a very half-assed '' finisher '' that is almost in any case, less satisfying than your very own run-off-the-mill goons finishers. It's jaw-droppingly disapointing to see a premise such as this being ruined with some very un-violent finishers. Worse, some boss DON'T have any finishers! You just press B, there's a cutscene, and its over! It'll leave you disapointed, since really, you've just been going through 10 minutes of goon fighting for a disapointing bossfight.
There's some voice actors like John Di Maggio and some other no-name that'll constantly comment on your ways of killing with some funny dialog, the problem is that you won't ever hear them. There's no subtitles ( what the hell? ) for their comments, and in the chainsawing roar of bloodshed, the grunt's cries of anguish and the sub-woofing hip hop beats, its impossible to comprehend anything.
The game tries really hard to bring a cool story to the table, and succeeds for the most part. It's not very well sewn together, but its still easy to love how they portray the background.
All in all, you'll reach the final confrontation in three or four hours. When you actually see this, it's easy to guess why this game had a disastrous sales chart of only 66,000 units sold. People shouldn't spend 60 bucks for a 3hours and a half game. Sure, there's two new unlockable weapons by the end of the game, but they get old after one or two kills, and seriously, the game tells you '' hey, you've got 3 hours and half of content, so replay it a lot - and cope with it. ''
At full price? Never buy this. Buy it when it's like 20 bucks, knowing it'll last you one afternoon of tedious repetition. Madworld is better played 10 minutes a day - that way you'll never see how boring it can get on larger doses.
Protip : platinumgames, who used to be named Clover, did some pretty amazing games before, like Okami. This time around, you guys should work more than two months on your games. Just saying.