The first title from Platinum Games has arrived. A producer gave us the things we've got to try in the ultra-violent action game exclusive to the Wii.

***

SEGA's Must-Do List For Players of
"MadWorld"
(Wii, March 2009)

As written by SEGA's senior localization producer Patrick Riley:

1. Always remember that Jack can dodge enemy attacks by shaking the nunchuk. Not only will Jack avoid taking damage that way, but if timed correctly, Jack will instead dive to the side and roll behind the enemy setting Jack up in a good position to counter-attack.

2. To score lots of points, find an area with a lot of environmental kill objects placed close together. Move an exploding barrel to that area, and find that level's lure object. Then get a bunch of enemies to follow you back to the area where you dropped the exploding barrel, and throw the lure object. And when the enemies gather around the lure object, throw the exploding barrel at them.

3. If you are looking to earn the most points possible, always complete the DeathWatch Challenges.

4. If the bat is available in the level, save it for the boss fight.

5. Try to use environmental kills that will let you recycle the object that you shoved into the enemy. Stuff like the dumpsters or the electrical signs instead of throwing people into the out-of-play area kill spots (the river in Downtown or out of the dining room window in Courtyard).

6. When trying to complete any of the time-sensitive DeathWatch Challenges, skip any Blood Bath Challenges to save time.

7. Always look inside crates and other objects. You won't find anything solid in there, but plenty of other goodies await you!

8. Happy Onions refill the health and chainsaw gauge. They also keep Jack happy. And when he's happy, you're happy.

9. The more the merrier! Be sure to kill several enemies at once to obtain a higher score. This is bound to be quoted on the 10 o'clock news somewhere...

10. You can pierce an enemy with up to five different caution signs. Some people call it excessive. Jack calls it a work of art.

***

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The reviews are in for "Resident Evil 5." The box art review, that is. The game might be awesome but see if its cover made the cut.

***

"Resident Evil 5" (PS3, Xbox 360)
What the Box Art Tells Us: A man and a woman stand back to back holding their weapons and poised to shoot. They stand amidst a flaming orange backdrop with illegible writing scrawled madly all over it.
Pros: Though simple, the cover stands out with orange on black, as well as a man and woman just standing there looking bad-ass. Also, the way the "5" was done looks cool and is subtle enough to not intimidate people new to the series.
Cons: What's this "Resident Evil"? I just see two good-looking people with guns. Nothing evil about that.
Love It or Leave It: Love it.

"MadWorld" (Wii)
What the Box Art Tells Us: A crazy-looking bald man grits his teeth and swings around a bloody chainsaw.
Pros: The black comic book-like drawing of the man stands out on the all-white cover. As does the blood-red... blood. I also love how "World" is wrapped by a chainsaw blade.
Cons: Needs more chainsaw. (You can never have enough chainsaws.)
Love It or Leave It: Love it.

"Dream Day Wedding Destinations" (DS)
What the Box Art Tells Us: The cover depicts the torso of a wedding dress-clad woman holding a bouquet of flowers... and standing in the middle of the ocean.
Pros: The wedding dress indicates matrimony, and the palm tree implies a tropical destination, so it's literal.
Cons: The gameplay is explained in a circle full of text, telling us that we can "find hidden items to complete this romantic adventure!" But there's nothing romantic, adventurous or interesting about the cover.
Love It or Leave It: Leave it.

"Boing! Docomodake" (DS)
What the Box Art Tells Us: A frowning, anthropomorphic fungus hauls ass, apparently running away from a village populated by other mushroom people.
Pros: I've expressed my love of anthropomorphic food before. This immediately caught my eye, along with the bright colors.
Cons: Is it a platformer? A puzzle game? There are a lot of DS games with cute but generic characters on their covers, so this wouldn't stand out among the rest.
Love It or Leave It: Love it.

"Codename: Panzers Cold War" (PC)
What the Box Art Tells Us: The box tells us the title of the game, framed by tiny helicopters, planes, tanks and barbed wire.
Pros: It's not like other war games, where they simply show soldiers with guns or a giant tank blowing something up.
Cons: But the cover is still largely uninteresting. My eyes could easily glaze over this in a game store.
Love It or Leave It: Leave it.

The best thing about Sega's "MadWorld" is it's potentially Wii-best graphics, but now that I've played it, I can finally say something about its controls and gameplay.

***

I first saw "MadWorld" last spring during a May showcase of Sega games that introduced the collaboration between Sega and Platinum Games. Back then, the game's director, Shigenori Nishikawa, told me that game was inspired from comic book series Sin City and the slapstick violence of Tom & Jerry cartoons.

Yesterday, I got to play it.

Like many Wii action games, "MadWorld" is meant to be controlled with small shakes of the hand. The game's hero has a chainsaw-arm and a brutal disposition. So, with the nunchuk in my left hand to control walking, I could make him throw an uppercut with a wiggle of the Wii remote. I grabbed enemies with a press of the A button and then chucked them. I hurled men into sharp propellers. I held down the remote's B trigger and swiped my hand to saw enemies with the chainsaw-arm. Horizontal swipes triggered horizontal cuts. Vertical slashes sawed enemies down the middle.

Remember, the game's supposed to be funny, if you find hyper-violence funny. The whole set-up involves being trapped in a demented kill-crazy game show. But the Sega event I attended was too noisy, and I couldn't hear the play-by-play.

I was thrown into the level I played yesterday, unsure of any goal other than to kill. So I chopped enemies up, threw them into dumpsters lined with razor-edges and tossed some guys onto spikes. Every action induced red blood splatter and yellow or orange comic-book illustrated sound effects.

Nothing I did felt as violent as my actions in the Wii's M-rated "Manhunt 2," because that game, unlike "Madworld" was designed to map the player's gestures to the character's actions. With "MadWorld," my gestures had some of the energy of the crazy combat on the screen but none of the vibe that I was acting out the kills.

I didn't know what to do in the game besides kill every enemy who ran at me. Maybe there aren't any other goals. The game has a "Grand Theft Auto"-style mini-map. Icons appear on the map indicating newly spawned weapons (shears, a bat covered in spikes, etc.), health items (shaped like red balloons), and bonus "Bloodbath Challenges." When I walked to the Bloodbath Challenge I triggered a score-based contest requiring me to toss enemies under a spiked ceiling that then lowered and pulverized the enemies caught under it. I carelessly wandered my guy under it a couple of times, got spiked, but quickly re-spawned each time.

During the end of my 10 minutes with the game I did something that activated the arrival of a fat man with a double-bladed chainsaw. Thankfully I had also done something that had spawned a bat covered in spikes. I could hold down a button and make big swipes with the bat. The fat man fell quickly and the bat burned a single flat shade of crimson.

When an enemy dropped a barrel or tire around my guy, icons prompted me to shake the Wii remote and nunchuk to get it off. I'm told that when I can perform finishing moves, icons will show me how to swing the controllers to commit those actions. But what I played yesterday involved basic actions. This game may well shock people with both how good it looks and how gory it is.

But it doesn't quite make its player gesture like a butcher. It's another Wii game of small shakes. It plays well in small moments. So far, so smooth.

Now let's find out whether the game is interesting in long sessions.

"MadWorld" will be out for the Wii this March.

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We've got fancy Nintendo DS game boxes and Sega fortune cookies in today's Lunchtime Video, but the most important thing is that I show you how I played the Wii game "Madworld" (and how a Sega rep wears her Wii remote). [NOTE: Sorry about the video problem earlier today. It should play fine now.]

(Videos not viewable by users logging in from Canada or the U.K.)

But, since the Wii launched in 2006, the company has had a hard time attracting the hardcore gamers who enjoy things like "Halo," "BioShock" or "Call of Duty."

Nintendo itself, former publisher of "GoldenEye," hasn't even made a game for that crowd since, arguably, the summer of 2007 when "Metroid Prime 3: Corruption" was released.

Is Nintendo not seeking that "Halo"-loving customer?

Nintendo executive vice president of sales and marketing Cammie Dunaway told me last week that the company can get those gamers and has software coming in 2009 that will do the trick:

The following is an excerpt from interview conducted in person last week at the Grand Hyatt hotel in New York city.

Multiplayer: Your company has the Nintendo faithful locked up, as much as they might complain about a given E3 presentation [Dunaway laughs]. They're going to be around for the next "Mario" and the next "Zelda." You guys have done a magnificent job in reaching the more expanded audience.

But those people who are invigorated by the most hardcore games like the graphically rich "Call of Duty" -- to draw a distinction since I know you also have "Call of Duty" support -- or a "BioShock" or a "Halo" or a full-fledged console "Grand Theft Auto" ... it seems that Nintendo hasn't found a way to address those fans specifically in a long time. And it doesn't feel like they're being addressed by Nintendo that much this year.

Is that a market that you see Nintendo, with the power level that the Wii has, being able to reach more effectively in 2009?

Cammie Dunaway, executive v.p. of sales and marketing, Nintendo of America: Well, certainly, I feel there are titles that should make that group stand up and pay attention next year. If you look at something like [Sega-published first-person shooter] "The Conduit," that's really pushing the edge of graphic capabilities on the Wii and doing things that people didn't think were possible. And I think, one, that makes other developers stand up and take notice. And two, that makes consumers say, "Huh. Maybe there's something to this." Or if you look at [Sega-published brawler] "Mad World" [you can see] just the sheer creativity of that graphic style and the impact of the black and the white and the red.

"Next year you're going to see the tide turn a little bit, in terms of people realizing that the Wii can have something of interest for everybody."

I think that next year you're going to see the tide turn a little bit, in terms of people realizing that the Wii can have something of interest for everybody.

Multiplayer: You mentioned two third-party titles. But maybe not since "Metroid," which was last August or September, has Nintendo internal created a title that we would probably agree is squarely targeted at that audience I spoke of. Does that need to happen more with first-party development?

Dunaway: You tell me… I would assume that a title like [Nintendo-published 3D shoot-em-up] "Sin & Punishment" -- and bringing that [intellectual property] to the U.S. for the first time -- would start to get at that action-seeking, thrill-seeking need that that audience has. "Punch-Out," while it may be more of a Nintendo fanboy [kind of game], still, I think, gets at that need for action.

Multiplayer: Right. It has a bit of aggression to it.

Dunaway: So, yeah, I think next year is going to be a pretty good year in terms of the breadth of offerings that are going to be out there for a bunch of folks.

***

If you're a hardcore gamer that Nintendo hasn't successfully wooed yet, let us know if Dunaway's plans make you stand up and notice.

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We don't need a "Sin City" video game. We already have one: "MadWorld."

"MadWorld" might be one of the most ridiculous games I've ever had the pleasure of seeing. I mean that in a very good way.

Platinum Games and Sega seem ready to deliver one of the most unique (and violent) action experiences ever -- Wii or not.

Sega still won't let us play "MadWorld," despite the interface and motion controls already looking great. But you can garner much from observation. "MadWorld" doesn't look deep, but that's not what the game's about. "MadWorld" wants you to embrace its absurdity and laugh as you dismember an enemy with a chainsaw.

It remains to be seen whether "MadWorld"s hooks hold up over a few hours, but Sega did show me a brief vehicle level that hints there's more to the game than what we've seen so far. Now, I just need to play the damn thing!

Is it great for casual gaming? Sure.

Is it great for black-and-white gaming? Shigenori Nishikawa, developer of 2009's violent "Madworld" told me last week that the Wii is perfect for that.

"The Wii is the ideal console to express white and black graphics," he told me during the announcement of the partnership between publisher Sega and the Platinum Games studio where Nishikawa, formerly of Capcom, now works. "For consoles like the 360 and PlayStation 3 the level of high-quality graphics is so extreme. I wanted things to be simpler than that." He said he had been told that he needed to make a Wii game. "We thought about 'What can we do that's new on the Wii?' And we came out the white and black graphics."

Since its debut last week, "Madworld" has drawn comparisons to "Sin City," the famous graphic novel that was also rendered primarily in black-and-white. Ishikawa says the comic was just one inspiration for the game. "' Sin City' is really what graphic novels and American comics represent," he said. "So, yes, ''Sin City' was one of the graphic novels we looked at. But the direction 'Sin City' goes and 'Madworld' goes are completely different.

One direction that is shared between comic and game is extraordinary, unusual violence. I wanted to know more about that and got some colorful answers…

Nishikawa literally wore proof of 'Madworld''s distinct brand of aggression on his chest. The shirt he was wearing during our conversation featured a signature move from the game: the impaling of an enemy's face with the post of a street sign. I asked Ishikawa where that move came from: "There's a lot of those games out there where you use daggers to stab people," he explained -- cheerfully mind you. "But stabbing daggers through people is so normal and everyone does it. So we were thinking if we put a sign on it, an everyday signpost, it would be more fun and more creative."

The "Madworld" pitch is that the game is intentionally ridiculous. Jesting, I asked Nishikawa if he was a violent person. He laughed. "We're not trying to be extremely violent. Where we started was U.S. cartoons like Tom and Jerry. What you're doing may be a little violent, a little cruel, but it's all in good fun and it's all amusing and funny."

He told me that Nintendo has been fine with the game so far, though he said he hasn't heard their feedback about the sign-stabbing move yet.

He also mentioned to me that the game will be scored primarily with hip-hop. His favorites are Kanye West and Jay-Z, but he didn't say they'd be part of the official soundtrack.

"Madworld" hits the Wii some time in 2009.

[EDIT: This story originally mis-identified Mr. Nishikawa as Takanori Ishikawa. My sincere apologies.]