The game that really struck me as awesome, the one I was craving since its announcement, was MadWorld. Platinum Games is made up of the guys from Clover, the developers most famous for creating Viewtiful Joe and the amazing Okami. Another game they made before Capcom squashed the studio was God Hand, a wacky, awesome beat-‘em-up on the Playstation 2 that let you create your own combos. I feel like I’m the only person who played that, and it ranks with Okami among my favorite PS2 games.Anyways, I’m digressing. MadWorld had awesome, artistic visuals like the Viewtiful Joe series and Okami, coupled with crazy beat-’em-up action like God Hand. I was sold. By now I’m sure many of you have seen screenshots or videos of this game: black and white cel-shading, with yellow sound effects and red sprays of blood. And oh, there’s so much blood. The gist of the game is this: You are Jack, a burly biker dude with a robotic right arm that has a chainsaw attached, and you are in the middle of Varrigan City, which has been taken over by terrorists who are running a mad reality game show called Death Watch. The rules? Kill every motherfucker you can, in as many crazy ways as you can. Sure, you can rip through enemies easy with that chainsaw attached, but you won’t get many points that way. What you’re going to want to do is rough that guy up a bit with your fists, slam a trashcan down over his head so he’s staggering around blind, shove a few signposts through him, then pick him up and impale him multiple times on that wall of spikes over there.
Admittedly, this can get repetitive. There’s only so many things you can do to kill the enemies, and most of them revolve around shoving light posts through them and impaling them or throwing them into grinders and the like. Other reviews have had a problem with this, but I myself got so much glee from it. This game is the perfect thing to take your frustrations out on. Anyways, get enough points, and you get to play a minigame known as a Bloodbath Challenge, in which you do fun stuff like playing golf with the heads of zombies or running over as many aliens as you can on your motorcycle. Keep racking up points, and then you get to the positively awesome boss battles. They may not have as much personality as the bosses from God Hand or No More Heroes, but they’re still bloody great.
The controls are great, though the game has a hard time telling if you wanted to slice that guy vertically or horizontally with your chainsaw when you swing the Wii remote. This can get problematic, and the camera is not the greatest, nor is the lock-on (which I never used, myself). These are negligible, though. The biggest flaws, in my opinion, are in the story. It starts off with promise, but eventually gets too complex and tries to shove some kind of moral down your throat. It also does not help that the cut scenes have NO music whatsoever and few sound effects. I mean, no footstep sounds? Are you serious? What the hell?
Also, the game doesn’t take terribly long to beat, and when you do, it’s going to feel kind of empty.
However, Jack is voiced by the same guy who was the voice of Tom, the robot on Toonami! And that’s awesome. So is the hip-hop soundtrack and the commentary by Gregg Proops and John DiMaggio that’s dirty, raunchy, wrong, and yet so hilarious. Though it too can get kind of repetitive…
Was it worth the $50 I spent? Oh totally. Will I play it again? I hope so. But it just leaves you feeling like there was a lot of wasted potential. That’s what sequels are for though, right? Provided it sells…
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The other game is House of Dead Overkill, a first-person rail shooter, just like its predecessors. The House of the Dead series has quite the reputation as a series of arcade light gun shooters. I own House of the Dead 2 on the Dreamcast and I can’t tell you how many dollars in quarters I’ve pumped into the arcade machines, so I love them to death.House of the Dead Overkill is a little bit…different, though. While the previous games have been known for their horrible voice acting and cheesiness, they had a naïveté about them. Overkill is self-aware, and goes for an incredibly goofy and over-the-top Grindhouse-style presentation and story. The two main characters are Agent G and Detective Washington, and they never really stop bickering over the course of the entire game. Washington loves the word “motherfucker” and uses it any time he can. Like the commentary in MadWorld, the dialogue between our two heroes and the other characters who appear in Overkill is incredibly profane, juvenile, and funny. Also like MadWorld, the plot serves no purpose whatsoever. You just shoot stuff.
The gameplay is different from its predecessors as well. One neat touch is that when you point the reticule of your gun to the far left or right of the screen, or top and bottom, the screen will move to show you what’s over there. You’re still strictly on rails, but you can get a look around at least, and you’ll need to pick off stray mutants (“Mutants. They’re not zombies, they’re mutants. How many times do I have to tell you that?” Agent G quips in the first level) and to grab powerups. The previous games never really had any powerups, but here you can pick up screen-clearing grenades, collectible golden brains (ten in each level, snag them all!), and a strange green thing that activates slow-motion, letting you pick off at a huge pack of mutants with ease. The scoring is different as well, with a little revolver icon at the corner of the screen by your score and health. The more kills you score without missing a single shot or getting hurt, the more points you get, eventually reaching what is laughably called a “GOREGASM,” in which the revolver is replaced with a waving American flag and you get an extra thousand points with each kill. Because nothing is more American than blowing twelve consecutive heads off with a shotgun, right? Yeah, you can get a shotgun, or an automatic rifle, or some other weapons. You’re not limited to a standard handgun like in the arcade games, and it makes things a bit easier, actually.
The soundtrack is interesting, dirty, guitar-heavy stuff. Not rock, more like surf rock or something along with a lot of disco-sounding music that fits in perfectly with the grindhouse style, and it’s quite good.
It too is not without its share of flaws, though. The graphics could use a bit of polish, especially with some framerate issues here and there that crop up, the bland character models, and levels that aren‘t terribly interesting. It is nice when you blow away the mutants, as they explode and splatter blood all over the place that makes headshots that much more satisfying. What irks me though, is that you’re ONLY shooting at mutants, with the exception of one level that has some buzzards and dragonfly things. One thing the earlier games had that this one doesn’t was a greater variety of enemies. The first level alone in the first game had zombies, hellhounds, some swamp monster-looking-thing, bats, EVIL DEMON MONKEYS, and more! And anyone who’s played one of the arcade games knows of and hates those damn frogs and leeches that leap at your face. Why are none of them in Overkill? Why am I limited to just shooting at mutants? That’s just stupid! The bosses themselves aren’t so great, either, which is a damn shame.
And while the grindhouse style (even going so far as to pull a “Reel missing” gag) and self-awareness lead to great moments (I love the conversations G and Washington have at the end of the game), it really lacks this…charm that the arcade games had. Playing this really just made me want to play the previous games more than anything else.
Don’t get me wrong, Overkill is hardly a bad game, and unlockable art, videos, and music will keep some gamers coming back for more, but it’s just not the same as the earlier games. If you don’t suffer from nostalgic memories like I do, you shouldn’t have a problem.
(Note: After beating the game’s normal mode, a more difficult “Director’s Cut” mode is unlocked, and while I have yet to beat it, all it seems to do is lengthen and change up each level just a little bit, but the gameplay remains the same and therefore so does my review. I will make changes if I discover anything new, though.)
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So there you have it, Sega has released two crazy, yet flawed, M-rated games for the Wii. Are they selling well? Probably not. It seems that the Wii is just having too hard of a time trying to shake it’s image of being a crappy little white box with last-gen graphics and lots of lousy kids games, but there’s still hope for it yet with EA releasing Deadspace: Extraction later this year, which appears to be another on-rails shooter like House of the Dead, though EA is calling it a “Guided First-Person Shooter,” whatever that means, but it shows a lot of progress. And hey, there’s a sequel to No More Heroes coming next year! And on top of that, Bethesda, the guys behind the Elder Scrolls games and Fallout 3, have announced that they’re developing something called “Brink” for the Wii!
See, the Wii’s not a crappy kids-system. It’s a cult system with games that will be, in my opinion, cult classics further down the line, and these two games just might be counted among them. Trust me.
[Brett]
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