Madworld is a ridiculous, brutal, hilarious, obscene and short romp through a world that has indeed gone mad.
Graphics: The game is similar to Sin City in that it's pretty much all black and white. The only color used aside form black and white is red and blue. Blue for the few times you kill aliens and they bleed all over. Red for the absolutely ludicrous amount of blood flying around everywhere that you'll be seeing. The graphical style is definitely unique and looks pretty damn awesome. It looks almost like a comic book, and that is enhanced by the cutscenes, which use comic book panels to tell the story. The design of everything is pretty neat, too; enemies will be dressed up in ludicrous getups, and the environments look cool too. The only real issue is that there are times where the screen gets jumbled and it's difficult to tell exactly what is happening. These instances are rare, but it can be a little frustrating when it happens and you lose a chunk of your health bar. Despite that, the game is very good looking, with some of the most unique graphics of this generation. 9/ 10
Sound: The game has a lot of voice work. From Jack's low, gravelly, typical badass voice to the absolutely hysterical yet extremely tasteless commentary by Greg Proops and John Di Maggio, the voice work is superb in the game. The same goes for the sound effects; enemies being ripped apart, sliced up the middle, smashed into things and just being generally slaughtered sounds fantastic. The music is mostly hip hop. Now, I personally don't care much for the genre, but I won't deny that some of the songs got stuck in my head. They are of high quality. Really, there is no bad sound in the game, especially if you like hip hop music. 10/ 10
Story: The game starts out with Jefferson City being cut off from the rest of the world. Bridges are destroyed, roads are blocked, and anyone who tries to fly in via helicopter is shot out of the sky immediately. Enter Jack, a badass biker who talks in a low, raspy voice and inexplicably has a chainsaw attachment on his right arm. He is instantly a part of a game called the Deathwatch. In this gameshow, contestants have one goal: kill. Basically, the entire city is a part of it. Either they kill, or they are killed themselves. However, simply killing the competition won't do. Instead, they need to do it in creative ways. Anyways, Jack takes down a bad guy, and gets sponsored by someone who is referred to simply as XIII. From there he works his way to the top. The story is actually a lot more complicated than this, but I won't risk any of the surprises for you. All I'll say is that it actually has some interesting commentary on violence and other things. As a side note, the story is, for the most part, pretty serious. However, as I mentioned before, during levels there will be two commentators who are absolutely hilarious, and this fits with the rest of the game. It's never meant to be taken too seriously. 8/ 10
Gameplay: so, as I said in the story section, your goal is to kill enemies in the most ridiculous ways possible. In each level, there are numerous objects in the environment that you can use to dispatch your foes and rack up a huge amount of points.
Before I go on, I will explain the structure of the levels. Basically, you need to earn points. There are "tiers" in each level that unlocks more weapons, environmental kills, etc. Once you earn a certain number of points, you unlock something else, until, eventually, you unlock the boss stage.
So, anyways, the gameplay is pretty fun, if a bit formulaic. It is pretty addictive to find more gruesome and funny ways to kill your enemies. For instance, one of the most common environmental weapons in the game is called the Rose Bush. It's a wall or other object covered in spikes. You could just throw a guy onto it and kill him and that will be that. However, it's more fun, and more profitable, to impale his head on a road sign, put a trash can over his body, then repeatedly slam his body into the spike until he is dead. This craziness is constant throughout the game. As you move from level to level, more and more objects open up for more killing mayhem. For instance, in a space themed level, there are turbines and saw blades everywhere. However, you eventually open up a UFO, which can suck guys in, then shoot their body parts out into the air in a spectacular and gory wave of blood. In another, you open up a guillotine that you can use to slice guys in two. The combat remains a lot of fun throughout the game.
There are a few drawbacks, though. The bosses, while fun and flashy, aren't all that challenging at all. For the most part, you should be able to take them out without even losing a life. (Should you lose all your lives, regardless of where you are in a level, you need to return to the beginning of that level.) Whenever they are "challenging", it's mostly because they use cheap attacks or the camera gets in the way. Despite that, they are still pretty fun to fight, if only to see the hyper violent and hilariously over the top ways they die. (And to listen to the funny commentary.)
Additionally, the game, despite being very short (like 3- 5 hours), does get repetitive. The very structure is repetitive, and it doesn't do much to hide this. Granted, the combat is fun and over the top, so it helps alleviate this a bit, but it can't hide the fact that maybe something more could have been done.
My last bit is on the minigames. In each level, once you rack up enough points, you unlock a Blood Bath Challenge. (Which is hosted by a seemingly invincible pimp named the Black Baron. The reason I say that is because after an extremely obscene tirade of explaining the game, one of his hookers demonstrates how to play the game… using him. He gets killed numerous times and always comes back for more.) These are, for the most part, pretty fun. For instance, in one of the more simple ones, you must throw enemies into a small pit in time with a ceiling covered in spikes smashing down on top of them. (And, yes, blood sprays in liberal doses.) Most are pretty fun, but a few aren't. For instance, in one called Man Golf, you must use a golf club to hit enemies' heads into floating rings to score points. The problem is that, when the animation starts, it goes to a predetermined position, making accurate shots pretty much impossible, making the whole minigame feel more like a game of chance than accuracy. In another, called Money Shot, you must line up rocket sodas and make enemies hit spikes on an interesting looking billboard. However, again, precision is fairly difficult in this game, making it seem more like chance than anything.
Despite any flaws it has, the game remains pretty fun to play to the end. 8/ 10
Madworld is an obscene, tasteless, extremely violent, yet hilarious and entertaining game. If you're in the mood for some serious butt kicking in an over the top way, I would recommend this game to you. That is, as long as you can stomach the gore and the sense of humor the game has. (That is, anything goes, really. Tastefulness? What's that?) If you can't handle some huge amount of gore and obscenity, steer clear of Madworld, because it is one giant bloodbath of blood and mayhem from start to finish. So long and thanks for reading.