Madworld’s Laugh
We all know that satire is just a fig leaf over our desire to see somebody take one on the chin. We dress it up as a form of justice or acceptable revenge, but it’s just a funny way to justify our basest urges. We’ve been watching the clips of Jon Stewart dressing down Jim Cramer, not because he spoke truth to any real power, but because we want to watch a jester beat up a clown. And in the same way, Madworld – the new, blood-soaked beat-em-’up for the Wii – uses tricks like satire to give us permission to enjoy throwing a man against a fence of foot-long spikes again, and again, and again.
Don’t get me wrong, Madworld is good gaming. It turned my stomach a few times in its first ten minutes, as I realized the whole point of each scene was to treat the enemies around you as nothing but meatbags that have to be tortured as creatively and as extensively as possible to maximize your score. You’re don’t just get past these guys. If you pin a goon in a tire, impale him with a traffic sign, and then throw him in the “human garbage” waste basket – or smash him against the “rose bush,” the thing with the thorns – the combo score shoots through the roof. The story walks you through why the mayhem is necessary, but that doesn’t justify the exercise. Sometimes doctors perform late-term abortions, and I don’t see anyone making a game about that.
Okay, I know I sound like a scold. But don’t start giving me your reasons why it’s all justified: the game gives us plenty of reasons already. For one thing, like I said, it’s positioned as a satire of violence. The whole massacre takes place in a kind of televised game/reality show, complete with two sportscasters. (We learn that to film it, they’re using the tens of thousands of security cameras this city installed, back when they thought they could maintain the peace. Clever.)
The violence is cartoonish. For example, each level wheels out a Bloodbath Challenge, where you get to beat people into a giant dartboard, or stuff them into cannons and shoot them out like firecrackers. Each one is introduced by pimp caricature Black Baron, and at the end of each of his spiels, his darling assistant steps into the scene and proceeds to kill him with the mayhem machine that he just told you about. But even though you see him die, he comes back the next time. This is just Wile E. Coyote/Roadrunner stuff, kids; it’s not real, dig?
But what convinced me the most was probably the sound design. The audio has three threads going at once: a high-energy soundtrack of hip-hop songs that I didn’t recognize; the two sportcasters giving macho spew, much of it hilarious; and the sound effects of the grunts and punches and most of all, the chainsaw, which also comes out your Wii-mote. The mix is stellar: bosses are introduced with a tight sequence of commentator jokes and musical cues, and levels sometimes end with one last off-color joke to take you out to the bodycounts. The whole stream of invective and beats sounds chaotic and fun, rather than, you know, horrifying. For contrast, imagine if they just had the sound effect and nothing else. Or if you just heard everyone screaming.
As the game goes on, my qualms about the killing went down. The enemies started fighting back. The story in the cutscenes gets more interesting, and Jack grows more sympathetic. The pace is fast, the scenery keeps changing and every once in a while a boss throws a helicopter at you. It’s all good fun.
But not clean fun. I’m not here to wag my finger. But we can’t be brainy bloggers if we don’t call this what it is: a totally pointless game about torturing and killing hundreds of idiots. The script has plenty of misogyny and homophobia, but I can’t even complain about that when the whole premise is to turn human lives into rotten hamburger. Yes, it’s a good game, and it’s good because it makes you feel so good about what you have to do. But isn’t that bad?
If us brainysphere/ludodecahedron types are going to think deeply about the games we play, then we have to judge everything we play. If a game that lets us take a little kid’s hand or shoot a flower petal over a lawn makes us feel extra-good, shouldn’t Madworld do the opposite? Because these are our actions, not just our experiences. And the minute we get past the tutorial, we implictly agree with every single horror that happens afterwards.
15/03/2009 at 8:48 pm Permalink
You’re right. “It’s just a game” doesn’t wash, and I hope we start to actually apply that, like you suggest.
Can we disagree with the premise of a game, however, and still find it’s mechanical gameplay attractive? I honestly don’t know - I was kind of turned off Gears of War 2 by the violence and gore, but at the same time also found the playing of the game rather average. If the content remained the same, but was more physically enjoyable, would I have stuck with it? Maybe…
15/03/2009 at 9:17 pm Permalink
Haven’t played Madworld, so can’t comment on specifics.
It’s all about the presentation.
Games such as “flower” aren’t necessarily games at all. They’re lack of authoritive guidance in the form of text or voice or points provide players the ability to explore and interpret on their own grounds. To think about what they’re doing or become absorbed in the process. This is similar to games such as Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, where you are not explicitly told what to do, where to go and how to do it. You learn for yourself and are left to be. We act on instinct then question why we acted in such a way.
Games such as Madworld which present you with an explicit goal, a point scoring structure and “over-the-top” commentary shift perspective. We’re no longer asked to “think” about what we’re doing but rather to act on impulse. Our drive isn’t narrative, it’s objective. You want more points. Does it matter what you have to do to get them? Not particularly. As such, it doesn’t really matter whether you’re splattering people against a spikey fence or, to draw in another example, exploding asteroids with a rocket ship, the goal is not to question what you’re doing but to increase the score. It’s a matter of goal and presentation.
Mind the pun but a game that wants you to think about the act of murder would be less black and white (and red), it would be grey, or muddy, with more focus on those you’re killing with pause for reflection minus the pumping soundtracks, loud commentary and other such noise — whether audio or visual, such as generous layers of bright red blood splatter and combo counters — which actively drown out your thoughts.
16/03/2009 at 1:17 am Permalink
If it gets me looking at my Wii as a serious gaming console, then just maybe that’s a reason enough to look at Madworld.
16/03/2009 at 9:16 am Permalink
@DM - It’s a good game for the Wii, but thanks to its low horsepower, I found the stark black-and-white visual design to be a little blurry and indistinct (and I’m not a perfectionist). The audio impressed me more than the visual.
@Daniel - I agree with you that Madworld doesn’t expect you to think about the mayhem that got you those points. But should we only play the way the game wants us to? There’s a risk of “reading too much” into the text, but the text doesn’t even specifically concern me so much as the way I acted with the text. I spent a chunk of time last night trying to bowl one guy into two other guys to get a threeway impale. I still haven’t hit an “ultraviolence” kill, and I want to. Why not step back and tell myself, “Hey. You’re a bit of a sicko.”
@Ben - Agreed, and make no mistake, Madworld’s well-done. If I gave scores Madworld would get a B+ for appealing (but not perfect) mechanics, low repetition, and fast pacing. But even though the script and plotting show some intelligence, I feel like the intelligence just gives us another excuse to get shoulder-deep in gore: our lizard brain can say, “There must be a good reason behind this, so let’s have fun here, yeah!”