Maturity is a funny thing, possessing two somewhat conflicting connotations when applied to entertainment. One suggests a level of sophistication and eloquence that younger audiences could not appreciate, while the other suggests such an extreme lack of sophistication and eloquence that younger audiences would be traumatized by it. Since Nintendo’s Wii is pegged as a family-friendly console, whenever a “mature” title is released it often causes quite a stir. However, most of these titles typically fall under the second version of maturity and MadWorld is only intermittently an exception. A fun and incredibly stylized beat-em-up, MadWorld is every bit as masterful as it is puerile. It offers a fair amount of versatility and creativity, but in such a way that only gore fiends will appreciate; it tells an engaging story, but peppers it with bad sex jokes and excessive profanity; and the basic mechanics display some of the most refined usage of motion controls to date, but in other ways will make you relive the awkward adolescence of 3D gaming.

The most immediately striking thing about MadWorld is, of course, its visual style, which looks to be borrowed from Frank Miller’s Sin City series. There has quite simply never been another game that looks like this and, since videogames are animated by nature, it actually captures Miller’s art style even better than the live-action Sin City movie. More to the game’s credit, though, is that nothing ever feels stale. Despite the limited black-and-white color scheme, the different environments successfully evoke different atmospheres and the various enemy types all have their unique quirks. This isn’t just for show, either; it serves a very functional purpose, in that it helps emphasize certain things the game really wants you to see. Button prompts, for example, are bordered in yellow and stand out amidst the monochrome. More noticeable, though, is the blood. It sprays out of enemies, stains the walls and floors and paints the game a distinct shade of red. This is really the whole point of the game’s incredible aesthetic: to accentuate the violence and evoke some laughs from the player as he feeds a zombie to piranhas.

That’s not to say this is a bad thing. Mindless fun is fun all the same and MadWorld is a lot of fun, in large part because it usually knows how to play to its strengths. You control Jack – a hulking badass with a chainsaw strapped to his arm – as he battles his way through the reality TV version of a gladiatorial arena: a big city filled with thugs, ninjas, werewolves, zombies, aliens and stormtroopers. The city is broken up into five districts, each with three levels. The levels themselves are basically just playgrounds, open areas that just keep throwing out enemies for you to dispatch as gruesomely as possible. To this end, each stage is filled with all sorts of unique environmental hazards – ranging from spikes to electric chairs – and weapons that you can mix and match to completely devastate your foes. For example, you could just throw a guy under some rocket thrusters or you could trap him in a tire, impale him with a stop sign and then repeatedly smash him on a wall of spikes. You could also throw a box of cash under a guillotine and lure a bunch of enemies to their doom. Or you could just use the chainsaw strapped to your arm. The more variety you incorporate into any individual kill, the more points you gain, which you need to progress to the next stage. This system does try to pigeonhole you a bit – as the trap/impale/smash method will always net the most points – but it doesn’t really matter because no matter how you play the game, you will have no trouble reaching the point quota within each level’s time limit.

Even if you do choose to follow the game’s prescribed path, there are other methods for accruing points: optional objectives and mini-games. The former are quietly initiated at the start of the level and include such tasks as: “Impale a Specific Enemy with Five Lampposts” or “Destroy All Aliens.” The mini-games have a bit more flash and are introduced when you obtain a certain number of points. These usually break down to “kill as many people as possible in this specific way” and include throwing enemies at dart boards, golfing their heads through hoops and running them down on your motorcycle. They are pretty simple, but welcome dalliances from the level proper. They also represent the entirety of the game’s multiplayer component.

So, as you unlock points, you get new weapons and healing items and ultimately access to the level boss. These boss fights are typically one-on-one affairs against other contestants with excesses of personality. They each have their own attack patterns, mid-fight quick-time events – or “power struggles” – and finishing moves. These are usually pretty good, but not as fun as the level that preceded them. The power struggles are often repeated more than once in each fight and thus lose their charm. The finishing moves (also quick-time events) are appropriately gruesome, but not all of Jack’s actions involve player input and a couple finishers are just straight-up cutscenes. A bigger nuisance that comes up is the game’s use of extra lives. These are a bit old-fashioned, but understandable given the open nature of the point-gathering portion of the levels, where checkpoints would be awkward. However, this means that if you fail a boss then you have to do the whole level over again, which can be upwards of thirty minutes of gameplay. This is minor as most of the bosses are easy enough that they will never kill you, but it still would have been a simple matter to include a checkpoint that remembers the current status of your health and lives as you enter the fight; this would have reduced tedium without impacting the challenge.

On the topic of grievances, the camera is god-awful. Those who remember the grandscale industry shift from 2D to 3D graphics engines will see something horrifically familiar here, as the camera bips and bops around, frequently obscures the action, focuses on Jack instead of what Jack is fighting and displays an uncanny ability to sense exactly what you want to see and then point you in the opposite direction. You have really no control over the camera, save for a fussy lock-on system. This is useless in levels, though, as no individual enemy stays alive long enough to be a reliable focal point and while it’s better on most bosses, it automatically shuts off after every power struggle. It’s funny really: the game’s best asset is its appearance, but its undeniably lowest point is your ability to look at it. It’s not game-breaking by any means, but it is much more frustrating than it needed to be and quite frankly amateurish by modern standards.

Apart from the camera, the controls are typically responsive and make good use of the motion sensors. These are used to swing Jack’s chainsaw, which will move in the direction you swipe the remote, as well as for dodging and headbutting, quick-time events and various weapon-specific moves. For example, stop sign impaling works by approaching a guy and swiping down with the remote. No waggling, no mindless shaking – motion controls are taken as seriously as any button-based command, with a specific movement resulting in a specific action. So, even though MadWorld is structured as a ridiculous, goofy smorgasbord of over-the-top violence, it actually displays some thoughtful reverence for the Wii’s unique controller and does an admirable job of syncing your movements with your avatar’s.

The story shares the gameplay’s weird hodgepodge of crass brilliance. It is paced perfectly, absolutely perfectly, to keep you intrigued and eager to learn what exactly is happening. Once you get to the end, though, and everything is revealed, the narrative becomes an underwhelming mix of action/horror movie clichés and a bunch of trite cynicisms about the darkness of the human soul. It makes the ending a tad tedious. More problematic still are the color commentators who ramble on about your actions in levels. This is where the crass part comes in because they offer nothing but a bunch of unnecessarily vulgar high school humor. This is disappointing because the game’s TV trappings benefit from the presence of announcers and bawdy humor in general is not without its appeal, but it – like most humor – tends to be better if written by people who are actually funny. This is not the case here. To be fair, they do have a couple decent lines and if you don’t like them you can turn them off, but it is a wasted opportunity.

Ultimately, MadWorld is what you make of it. For some, the bad sex jokes, over-emphasis on blood and violence and maddening camera will make the game seem either too childish or too inappropriate for children and they will be grateful it isn’t very long. For others, the unique visuals and free rein afforded by the level design will offer an engrossing and captivating spectacle that will keep them coming back again and again. And, of course, there will be those who just get that giddy thrill from turning random goons into blood fountains and who will laugh out loud at the announcers’ crude jests. And there’s certainly nothing wrong with that. In fact, even the haughtiest of us will find himself choking back the occasional chuckle and succumbing to a certain secret delight when he discovers upon beating the game that he can now play it again with two chainsaws.