MadWorld came out in a day and age where, for whatever strange reason, the gaming world yearned for mature violent games on Nintendo consoles to bring balance to its ecosystem after decades of family-friendly games and lack of third-party support for 'adult' games. As silly as that sounds, I'm kind of glad things turned out the way they did because Sega and Platinum games delivered one of the most unique over-the-top gory, violent, and fun games of its generation in MadWorld.

Its presentation is great featuring black and white characters and backgrounds with the exception of blood and perhaps some in-game text here in there. This almost 'monochromatic' presentation makes the gore stands out more than your average game with the red blood providing a good contrast. The gore and violence are magnified by the use of over the top combat and execution moves that make use of different character abilities and the environment to finish off the enemies in an ample variety of violent and grotesque ways. This experience is also, to an extent, enhanced by the motion controls of the wiimote which work great for the most part but do have some shortcomings as they do with other games.

The story of the game is surprisingly entertaining and it has some interesting developments towards the end of the game, something I was not expecting. Soundtrack is good, providing some hip-hop type of tunes.

The game itself is fairly short and this was one of the main criticisms when the game came out but I can't complain too much since most beat em ups and brawlers that I have historically played have been shorter games since they were arcadey in their nature (Final Fight, Cadillac & Dinosaurs, etc). With that being said, the game does provide the ability to go for higher scores, extending its gameplay time and replay value.