MadWorld Wii Exclusive

MadWorld Wii Intro.

(WARNING: violent not-suitable-for-all-ages ultra-violence within)

Holy crap. On a stick.

Are you sick to the back teeth of violence being so goddamn dispiriting and cheerless? If so, Platinum Games, the developers formerly known as Clover, are right with you! In the latest edition of Famitsu, Platinum director Shigenori Nishikawa has broadcasted that "cheerful violence" and "curb brawler" will be the themes of the company's premier Wii title, Mad World. Shades of God Hand, perhaps? One asks, is MadWorld Wii, God Hand has sex with the K7 engine in Robert Rodriguez film studio?

The Wii is in need for more action after Suda 51's No More Heroes, looks like we have it. We've been waiting so, so long to hear what Platinum were up to MadWorld Wii does not dissatisfy. The news is all the better because the game has been reported (on Kotaku, at least) as an over the shoulder brawler, which sure makes it sound like it's taking a cue from God Hand.

"I haven't been this pumped up for a game in who knows how long! My excitement level will multiply by around 1,000 if MadWorld Wii is really is a spiritual successor to God Hand!

I trust an action/brawler game to kick ass from Platinum more than any studio on Earth. This game will probably be pure insane awesomeness!

MadWorld Wii was exposed for a sneak preview through a shaky, grainy and sensational bloody video. Sporting heavily stylized black-and-white visuals, the only color to be found in the game was in the fountains of blood that regularly filled the screen. According to Famitsu, ultra-violence is very much the name of the game, which stars a troubled protagonist dedicated to committing his ultimate slaughter. If you missed the footage (it was constantly being removed from video sharing sites), go past the break to catch up, and see how having a road sign lodged through one's face doesn't have to be a miserable affair.

"WOW! This looks sick! both meanings..." - confirmed pervert

A rumor that Sega had signed up to publish three titles from Platinum Games, the studio formed by former employees of the vaunted Clover Studio. Anyone that has anything to do with Clover might as well marry me!

Okami and Viewtiful Joe are the some of the most amazing games out there! This is insane, I'm so glad that Clover Studios is back under the name of Platinum Games, the fact that every game these guys have ever worked on have been AAA makes MadWorld Wii the most exciting thing to come to video games in years. Described as a game that "straddles graphic novels and 3D worlds," MadWorld Wii looks every bit as stunning as early video footage had suggested. It's set for release during Q1, 2009, and promises weapons that range from chainsaws to street signs, irreverent humor, and sports commentary to accompany the slaughtering.

MadWorld Wii Developers.

Are we more excited about this game on its own merits, or was the news of Platinum's emergence the more awesome component of the MadWorld reveal? The truth is, we were so happy to see evidence that Mikami, Inaba, and Kamiya's crew was back to work after leaving Capcom they are joined by project lead. Nishikawa who has worked on Dino Crisis 2, Resident Evil remake and Resident Evil 4," he says and pauses. "Sorry. I forgot Dino Crisis 3. But I think he would like to forget that one, too.

You may not know the name Platinum Games -- not yet, anyway -- but you definitely know the people behind it. Tatsuya Minami. Hideki Kamiya. Atsushi Inaba. Shigenori Nishikawa. These four alone have backgrounds with Capcom and Clover Studios and were integral in the development of some games you might have heard of. Viewtiful Joe. Okami. Resident Evil remake. Resident Evil 4. Kamiya created Devil May Cry. Nishikawa helped design Resident Evil 4. We can keep going, but you get the point. Today, Minami leads the ex-Capcom and Clover personnel as Platinum Games, a company which employs 130 people working on four projects: a PS3 / 360 game called Bayonetta. A DS science-fiction RPG called Infinite Line. A still-unnamed title by another person you might have heard of -- his name is Shinji Mikami; he created the Resident Evil series. And Mad World, helmed by Nishikawa, who is on hand at a SEGA event in San Francisco on Wednesday night to pull back the curtain on the Wii-exclusive -- yes, built from the ground-up for Nintendo's console -- action bloodbath.

"We felt that the Wii Marketplace had too many of the same type of games - there was something missing in the line-up," ... "That's why we created such a game as Mad World." - Shigenori Nishikawa Director, Mad World Wii.

The last of the three titles announced by Sega and developed by the old ones of Clover Studio, now Platinum Ranges, MadWorld Wii will be following the example Killer 7 a title with the rather original design with a prevalence of black and white, except with regard to the blood whose red will burst with the screen. The range designer of the title is the same one as that of Resident Evil 4, therefore Shigenori Nishikawa. Exit planned for 2009. Let us recall finally that Platinum Games develops a fourth titrates still unknown.

/define:titrate
To gradually increase (or decrea
se) the dose of a drug./

MadWorld Wii Screenshots.

Holy **** -- this is on the Wii?! you say. Looks like they finally found a decent follow-up to Manhunt 2 and No More Heroes.

MadWorld Wii is surely set to be next year's absolute best ultraviolent, stylized, graphic-novel-inspired, God Hand-like game, and to demonstrate this, we will stack adjectives until they clatter to the floor in a heap. Initially, we were given only a peek at the awesomeness: a grainy scan and a few tantalizing screenshots. But now a few more have turned up, and the slow reveal of Platinum Games debut is the news equivalent of unwrapping a particularly delicious piece of candy. Satisfy your craving in the gallery below.

MadWorld Wii Art Style.

"MadWorld Wii looks Frank Miller-esque with heavy Sin City influence, holy shit" - A comics fan with a smarties sugar rush.

MadWorld's black and white visual style has clearly been inspired by Frank Miller's Sin City, a truth that Platinum Games Nishikawa admits. The look is beautiful and boldly different than any other video game presentation, hardly surprising from the talent pool responsible for such artsy graphic styles as those powering Okami and Viewtiful Joe. What strikes us immediately is just how can be seen and identified within the industrial city streets despite the monochrome color scheme. There's a great deal of definition to the bulky main character, Jack, and his foes. When Jack walks into a well-lit area, his face becomes white with the illumination. In the darkness, its black with white outlines. Even with massive particle bloodshed and camera sweeps, the framerate is rock solid.

"Chainsaw arm. Hail to the king, baby. Its Running Man's Buzz Saw meets Evil Dead's Ash"

Later, when we have a chance to sit down with all four on-hand Platinum Games employees and we ask Platinum Games Inaba if Wii's inherent technical limitations had anything to do with MadWorld's ultra-stylized look. "It actually had nothing to do with the limitations of the Wii hardware," he explains. "In fact, we're not using the Wii hardware to full capacity just yet. It was unrelated to technical limitations, but more of a lineup issue. On PS3 and 360, there are a lot of action games, but on the Wii we felt we could really make a difference in the lineup and provide something unique to the user."

The Wii thrives on more stylistically-driven titles such as these. It's good for the Sin City cell shaded look, because the Wii can't compete with 360 or PS3 when it comes to hi res textures and power, so sometimes, for good detail and a good looking game, a stylized approach is much better for Wii. Stylized games are something I personally welcome as I grow rather weary of more realistic approaches that end up looking tired and uninspiring.

We've often stated that Wii developers need to push the console from a stylistic perspective since they will not be able to compete with the sheer horsepower of systems like Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3. Having seen MadWorld Wii up close, we're thrilled that one of the best software houses in the world completely agrees. Platinum Games has with its first official Wii effort created not only one of the console's most beautiful games, but one with real gameplay substance and seemingly smart controls. Here is also a project unabashedly centered on the hardcore audience. MadWorld Wii has skyrocketed to the tip-top of our most wanted list and we are officially putting all Wii owners on (blood) red alert: prepare to go 'Mad' sometime next year when this is released.

MadWorld Wii Concept.

What is black and white and red all over ??? MadWorld on Wii that's what.

MadWorld is an inventive hyper-violent third-person action game with a unique monochromatic black and white style depicting an incredibly sharp backdrop that straddles graphic novels and 3D worlds. It's over the top, heavily stylised violence and we love it!

"MadWorld Wii is made up of two concepts," says Nishikawa of PlatinumGames. "The first key concept within Mad World is the stark black and white graphics. This is to further emphasize the violence, as represented by the stark red blood. The other key concept is that we didn't want to create a game that was depraved or perverse, but rather, featured comical, over-the-top violence so that anyone could enjoy it."

Its smirking attitude towards violence and high-contrast black-and-white color scheme hint that something very special is on the way. Mad World Wii Looks like one of the most brutally violent games made is coming to wii, an M game on the Wii that we get has to be extremely bloody. Like, unusually violent. Like Quintin Tarantino has been producing these games or something.

MadWorld Wii Gameplay.

I can already see my most used weapon being the Caution Sign..

All you know is this: MadWorld Wii = Black and white Sin City graphics, with red blood. Ultra ultra violent. Fatality moves like shoving a post through someones head. Chainsaw on your right arm. Want more? Well there is more.

In MadWorld Wii, the main character tears through a hyper-stylized black and white city and impales his enemies on a wall of spikes... five or six times in a row, puling them off to fleshy, sucking noises and then tossing them back on again in a gruesome display of blood and gore. He hurls an opponent into a nearby dumpster. The man falls forward, his upper body hanging out of the receptacle, and then the lid comes slamming down, cutting his torso in half as blood rains down upon the streets. He grabs hold of a nearby sign post, which reads, ironically, 'caution,' and he stabs the bottom end of it through another character's eye, walking the agonized foe around the street before launching him into the air and against a nearby wall. And then he fires up a chainsaw, which just so happens to be connected to his right arm, grinding the blade into the head and then body of an unlucky antagonist. Suddenly, a gigantic dartboard rises from the street and the main character begins swinging away with a baseball bat, violently knocking foes airborne and at the board for points. "Splaaaaaaaaat!" reads a comic-book-like font as characters are sent spinning toward the giant target. This is a mini-game and it's called Man Darts. No -- seriously this is In MadWorld Wii style carnage at its fullest.

MadWorld Wii Video.

"In the trailer the main character pulls a dude's heart out and then crushes it in his hand and sticks a road sign through another dude's face. This is relevant to my interests." - An internet sadist.

The video begins with the caption "CHAINSAW," followed by a beefy guy in metallic, future-armor putting a chainsaw through another guy. There's a high-contrast, almost black-and-white look to the visuals. The video then cuts to "ROSE BUSH" and our hero pushes an enemy into an array of horizontal spikes. Then "HEART SURGERY" and a Kano/Mola Ram heart-ripping maneuver. The character walks toward the camera as a list of wrestling-esque move names fills the screen: "Flat Tire," "Spike Press," "Death Express," and others. Then the logo appears ("World" is inside a chainsaw blade shape). The video ends with the caption "CAUTION SIGN" followed by a clip of a guy being beaten with a sign.

some would say - wow that looks awesome, I've never seen a street sign pole rammed through someones head before. I say - You've obviously never spent the night on the town in Leeds.

That trailer got me wetter than Tina Avanti at a grunge club. Don't Google that, its my pretend girlfriend, from my mind box.

MadWorld Wii Storyline.

Looks like good ol' violent fun with it's own twisted brand of humor.

On the story, there's signs in the background of the trailer that say Shock-TV, plus the IGN preview hinted at a Running Man-esque storyline, so I think we can all draw the right conclusions there.

We ask Inaba about the MadWorld Wii storyline. We've seen an incredibly amount of blood and guts, but we don't know yet know why chainsaw-equipped Jack is on the gory rampage. "It's a story that we feel will motivate the player to move forward and keep the same comical, over-the-top nature and while we are preparing a very fun and interesting story, we will talk more about that in the future," he offers, holding back on further details for the moment.

Nishikawa adds a little more. "The game is not just about killing people. We're looking to create the most interesting and unique gameplay experience that we can. One of the key elements in the game is an entity called the Death Watch and within that context, we're trying to create the most interesting rule structure so while you're going around beating the hell out of people, you're also fitting in with the game world itself." He can't just bring up this 'Death Watch' and leave it at that. We press him for more on the subject and he pauses for a half minute as he tries to explain it. "It's difficult for me to explain without going into a lot of depth about the game itself. But a very simple analogy is to compare Death Watch to a baseball game and the key player is Jack, and the actions that he makes fall within the realm of this sport activity. So there are people watching and there's a scoring system involved." We ask, like the movie Running Man? "Something similar to that, yes."

So what is Jack's motivation? How did he get himself into this predicament? These are details that Nishikawa guards a little closer. "Jack himself doesn't just jump in and start killing people. There's actually a story involved and he does have a personal motivation for why he's in there. And there's a certain element that he's in there because he has to be and not necessarily because he wants to be."

In the demo movie, Jack seems highly destructive with melee weapons, but we haven't yet spotted any guns. We ask Nishikawa if the character will be able to use projectile weapons and if so, will he be able to dual-wield them? He doesn't yet know. While the staff has bombarded him with ideas, he's still considering the possibilities. "One of the things that's really guiding my decision process is, whatever weapons Jack uses, how will they be seen within the game's context? So for a gun, you're just going to shoot it but you won't really see anything necessarily. So I think there's a gravity toward melee types of weapons. Not just melee weapons for the sake of it necessarily, but something that is a little more visually appealing."

MadWorld Wii Gameplay.

MadWorld is a bloody, futuristic action game that looks more like a brawler than the kind of operatic sword maneuvering we know from Devil May Cry. We hate to mention it again (because we always do when talking about Clover), but it evokes a futuristic, really bloody God Hand.

MadWorld Wii Controls.

MadWorld will focus on using the Wii remote's accelerometer. The game actually does not use the infrared pointer. We didn't want it to be a game where you had to very carefully point and click. Because it's an action game, we felt that the motions were much better suited. Controls are being tweaked, but from the looks of it, Jack is controlled through the world with the nunchuk's analog stick. The camera follows him via a traditional third-person behind-the-back viewpoint. As the characters draws closer to enemies, players can press the B-trigger to kick-start violent death sequences. Some of these waggle. For instance, gamers will flick the Wii remote forward to send bodies flying in Man Darts. (That really is what it's called.) Meanwhile, we presume taps and combos influence other stand-offs. Jack approaches and dukes it out with another foe during the demo. He punches the character twice in the stomach and on his third blow, his fist rips through his enemy's chest, where he grabs the beating heart inside, pulls it out in a disgustingly gruesome showcase of blood splatters, and then squashes it in his hand. And from what we've been told, this exaggerated level of violence is only the tip of the iceberg.

MadWorld Wii Conclusion.

I'm so excited and I just can't hide it!
I'm about to lose control and I think I like it.

Madworld? Chainsaw? Visceral Carnage? Crazy amounts of Blood? You bet.

This is a game that I'd kill for.
Kill or be killed, pure and simply.

It is MadWorld Wii.