I've grown up with Nintendo systems all my life, and knowing the limitations the company originally put on more violent and extreme games, it's still sort of shocking to me when a game is made for a Nintendo console that is bloody and goes all-in on somewhat "adult" content. At the time, Resident Evil 4 felt like a jarring game to put on the Gamecube, while No More Heroes, with its gleeful embrace of childish humor, seemed like Suda51 making up for lost time all with one game.

One of the more surprising examples of Nintendo embracing more mature games during the Wii was MadWorld, created by Sega, which put players in the middle of essentially a murder game show. With its black-and-white aesthetic—with plenty of blood spewing across the screen—MadWorld was clearly inspired by the Sin City film that was released only a few years prior. Like Sin City, MadWorld felt like an attempt to push boundaries, and by that, I mean revel in violence, sex, and over-the-top characters and ideas. MadWorld itself isn't sexist, racist, and absurd, that's just the world MadWorld wants us to see, a ridiculous presentation of an already ridiculous situation. Riiiight.

I've had MadWorld on my to-play shelf for almost as long as the game has been out. I've picked it up here and there, and despite its short runtime, always struggling to get through a few levels. I finally decided to sit down and work my way through MadWorld, and I just couldn't do it. I couldn't care enough to make myself play through this monotonous, annoying, and poorly-handled game.

Like so many pieces of entertainment of the time, MadWorld seems like it's trying to be sO eXtReMe as to blow away players with how shocking it can be. Even when this game came out, I found this attempt to outrage so exhausting and stupid. MadWorld builds an entire game around this concept, and it's about as disappointing as one would imagine. That's not to say I don't like any games with childish humor and over-the-top ideas, but something like, again, No More Heroes, actually has interesting gameplay and ideas amidst all the blood and sex. It's absurd, but there are cool ideas underneath the absurdity.

MadWorld is not that deep. Go into an area, kill enough of the never-ending villains, fight a boss, and move on to the next area. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Repetition is the name of the game, right down to the two commentators (voiced by Greg Proops and Joe DiMaggio), who will repeat the same comments multiple times within the first few minutes of gameplay. MadWorld truly feels like Sega came up with the bare minimum of a game concept, then decided to loop this same idea over and over for several hours. There's very little variation or things of note to do here. Just kill and kill and kill, and find slightly different way to do so.

MadWorld might be bearable if the controls were somewhat intuitive, but more attention is paid to "cool" motion control kills than things like camera, or intuitive movements. But even if this game were to receive a remaster that made this game easier to handle, the general monotony of MadWorld's gameplay would probably still make this a chore to play.

When MadWorld originally came out, I was intrigued by the visual inventiveness and stark difference between the rest of the games Nintendo was publishing at the time. Yet whenever I tried to play it, including now, I just find this to be a game that is all style and no substance. MadWorld is a game that wants to be seen as extreme, and it's just mundane and bland, which is probably the worst criticism you could give to a game that wants to be seen as boundary-pushing.