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MadWorld


marcel

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Loved the commentary for man darts on the sports trailer video.

 

"and hes dead on the bullseye....literally"

 

Hopefully theres plenty of different commentary like this and it doesn't get too repetitive.

As for the new video...it's looking brilliant ain't it. :yay:

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Uhh no. Proops is funny(but he looks a bit douchey), but DiMaggio has done much better roles, and so many more.

 

Very true. However I just feel that Proops has a voice I can listen to more. Not that DiMaggio's grates, it's just I think Proops is better suited to somthing like this.

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Very true. However I just feel that Proops has a voice I can listen to more. Not that DiMaggio's grates, it's just I think Proops is better suited to somthing like this.

 

DiMaggio has a lot of different voices though, although in games they're mostly the same. Marcus/Announcer/Random Extra. Bender is quite different, and I'd never guess that he was Schnitzel from Chowder.

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Can't wait to get my hands on this game! I don't watch all the videos to avoid being spoiled too much.

 

The only thing I don't like is the music. Seriously, hip-hop don't fit with a chainsaw (and is just an awful "music" genre). Chainsaw mass murdering is meant to be with some manly and hairy heavy metal (and the concept art gave me the same feeling)... Music on SD card support would be much appreciated.

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Platinum Games Blog: The Challenge of MADWORLD.

 

Hello everyone! Allow me to introduce myself. I am the ‘demented director’ of MADWORLD, Shigenori Nishikawa.

 

A few minutes ago, I was playing MADWORLD and shoving signs into enemies. I had sign-planted five enemies in a row, when my producer, Atsushi Inaba, came up to me and said, “If you’ve got time to play MADWORLD, you have time to blog.”

 

So here we are. I hope my blog will give you an idea of what it took to make MADWORLD, as well as what I think makes MADWORLD great, all from a game director’s perspective. Hopefully you will read it and think “I want to play MADWORLD now! I want to use the Caution sign!”

 

I think it is pretty obvious, but MADWORLD was a game of many challenges. I’d like to explain two of them here.

The Challenge Of Making Original Action Game That Stands Up To The Black, White, And Red Style

 

We had decided on the black, white, and red graphics from the outset, so that hurdle was clear. Or so I thought. What was really hard was coming up with a fresh game concept that held up to the graphic style. Making an action game on the Wii is also a challenge in and of itself, but I was constantly running through my head how to make the game feel “fresh” and “original”.

 

What gave me a hint on how to proceed was one of the colors from the black, white, and red palette. You see, as the color of blood, red could be splattered around everywhere until the stages were literally dripping. The problem with that was, it would just end up being another crappy violent video game. So I hit another wall and had to keep on thinking… Instead of a game about killing, what if MADWORLD was a game where killing and being killed were made completely over-the-top and unrealistic? I thought, if we did it that way, then how would turning the stages red with blood come off?

 

If we made a game that was based around over-the-top, slapstick violence, you would be laughing as you did all these crazy acts. There’s never been a game like that before…

The Challenge Of Making A Fun Game With Adult Humor

 

Just like I outlined above, MADWORLD is a game born from over-the-top violence.

 

Once I had that set, the first element that I put into the game was shoving a sign through an enemy’s head. In a regular fighting action game, you would use weapons like a sword or a knife. But that wouldn’t be over over-the-top, so I went back to my own special profound state of worry.

 

As I was taking a stroll outside in said worried state, I just happened to catch sight of a traffic sign. An idea shot out at me. If you pulled this thing out of the ground and shoved it into an enemy’s head, and they walked around all staggered, that would be really cool! So I pushed the team to make it for me.

 

When they were finished and showed it to me, I laughed and said “Cool!” But what worried me was that I could sense the team all looking at each other and saying, “Huh!?”

 

However, I realized that the signpost would get old after a while, so I forced the team to come up with ideas that we would make and test out over and over again. Their direction was to “come up with funny ideas that you’ve never seen in a game before now.”

 

This is where I think that MADWORLD really took form. But I have to admit that the team not being into it at first really shocked me. Even though they were Japanese like me, I wonder if I have my own special way of looking at things…

 

It made me really worried whether we could actually make a game that would make people all around the world laugh. But I’ll save that story for my next post.

 

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A shot of Jack using the sign post from early on in development.

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A few minutes ago, I was playing MADWORLD and shoving signs into enemies. I had sign-planted five enemies in a row, when my producer, Atsushi Inaba, came up to me and said, “If you’ve got time to play MADWORLD, you have time to blog.”

 

I loll'd at that.

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Matsuno working on Madworld.

 

 

One special point of interest is that Madworld's story was developed with help from Yasumi Matsuno (the game designer behind Vagrant Story and Final Fantasy XII) who, it turns out, was tapped by his friend Atsushi Inaba of Platinum to work on the game's scenarios. Given all the experience at Platinum, as well as the experience that Matsuno brings to the table, we're anxious to see how this craziness is going to play out.
Source

 

....I can't wait anymore I WANT THIS GAME NOW!!!!

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new screens

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IGN's MadWorld Month: The Storyline

 

"It's certainly true that Jack is a man of many mysteries," says MadWorld director Shigenori Nishikawa. "What I can say is that he isn't someone that you could call a hero in the typical sense."

 

We're forced to agree. After all, we can't recall any heroes who unflinchingly chainsaw their enemies in half, slam them anus-first onto rusty spikes or lock their heads to the ground with a firm foot and then swing away with a golf club. But Jack is a hero all the same -- one who finds himself competing in a gruesome sport whose roots stretch back thousands of years.

 

Varrigan City has been taken over by a secret organization. All exits have been blocked off -- there's no way in or out. And when the local police department tries to intervene, its helicopters are shot down in a bold show of force. In a public speech, the President addresses the issue, saying only that operatives have been made aware of the situation and that actions have been taken, but with no specifics and seemingly no immediate help on the horizon, the innocent civilians of Varrigan City are left to fend for themselves.

 

To make matters worse, the city's new keepers have no pity for those left stranded. They talk of a game called Death Watch -- a fight to the very end for all inhabitants. They encourage all residents to take arms and begin murdering those around them for notoriety. Family members and close friends, they add, are good starting points. And why should anybody take part in such reprehensible acts of violence? Well, because they'll have to if they want to live. Death Watch organizers reveal that they have released a deadly virus into the city and that everybody is infected. Only those who compete in the game will be given the antidote.

 

"The Death Watch show has a long history, but it is a shady underground event much like back-room wrestling. The organizer's identity has not been revealed," says Nishikawa.

 

Jack emerges from the darkness, a cigarette in his mouth, and punches out a potential game participant without a second's hesitation. It's here that he meets XIII, who represents the sponsor of the same number. Nothing is known about XIII or his backers, but he knows the rules of Death Watch and sets the musclebound Jack on his way.

 

Meanwhile, crude commentators details Jack's every move, adding color and humor whenever possible. Who are these commentators and will Jack ever encounter them?

 

"The commentators will not meet with Jack directly," says Nishikawa. "Why? Because the commentators are viewing the show at a different location via network feeds. For that reason, Jack has no idea what people are saying about him, nor does he care."

 

As we've played through MadWorld, we've found ourselves continually surprised by the storyline, which is more layered and complex than we had suspected it might be. And according to Nishikawa, there are more twists to come.

 

"With any story, one should expect the unexpected," he says. "The theme for MadWorld is to challenge the limits, and that challenge extends to our story. Count on it!"

 

IGN's MadWorld Month: The Weapons

 

MadWorld is the most over-the-top, all-out violent game we've ever played. However, because the overblown gore is so ridiculously rendered, you will find yourself laughing at the brutality just as much as wincing at it. Aiding Jack in his ongoing quest to mutilate his enemies is a wide arsenal of weapons, from street signs to golf clubs and much, much more. We've detailed three of Jack's favorite go-to killing devices below along with brief descriptions of each.

 

 

Chainsaw

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A custom-made chainsaw that can be deployed and stowed at will. It is usually stowed inside the prosthetic right arm. Intuitive controls for hack-and-slash mayhem. Hold the Wii remote's B-trigger to deploy the chainsaw. Shake the Wii remote vertically to slash vertically, or sideways to deliver a horizontal slash. You can do a horizontal slash while jumping for aerial beheadings.

 

Spike Bat

 

A brutalizing baseball bat bristling with extra-thick spikes. Its special decorations enhance the viewing pleasure of the Death Watch audience. Swing the Wii remote to batter the enemy or even crush his head in a single shot. Hold the B-trigger, assume the batting position, then swing away for a home run. Watch the hapless victim sail over the horizon!

 

Daggers

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A pair of large daggers with outrageous sharpness. They deal out flurries of vicious attacks that can dismember foes with ease. There are many kinds of finishing moves unique to this weapon such as an exhilarating beheadings and wicked bisections. Shake the Wii remote to unleash savage spinning attacks. Become a whirling dervish that lops off arms as if they were twigs—you're the human buzzsaw.

 

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PG Blog: Drawing In Black & White

The first concept we started out with from an art design standpoint was creating graphics that would reinforce that player would not feel guilty for the brutal things that happen in the game, but instead would be able to have fun and laugh.

 

However, for me as a designer, my goal was to create art that would make you stop the page if you saw it in a magazine, or click a link if you saw it on the web. It was to make art that instantly caught your eye and stayed with you.

 

So the the background artist and I secluded ourselves in a small room in the office. We initially had three ideas, and we approached each one by one.

 

(An early Jack design.)

 

If you are trying to express brutality, completely realistic graphics would be visually stimulating. However, even if you succeed in going down the realism route, it will probably be lost in the shuffle of other games being announced at the same time for more powerful hardware. We thought that hardware specs cause very little variance in the kinds of things you can express with art, so we started our drawing with our goal being a hand-drawn comic book feel.

 

We worked on our first proposal for two weeks, when a programmer walked by and said, “This is great! It feels fresh! I’ve never seen a game like this!”

His words were enough to know that the first proposal, black & white, was what we should go with. Even though we didn’t explain a thing about the design, those words made us feel that we had gotten the feedback toward the art that we had been after. We didn’t really work on the other ideas much after that, instead we focused on the furthering the black & white designs.

 

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(The first black & white test.)

 

Once our design was set, we started implementing the Black & White art into the game. We chased after that comic book feel that would become a signature of the game. Shadows, outlines, effects, textures… We decided that everything should be made two tone. It was based on a single key phrase- An artist could have sketched this.

 

No one had really seen black and white in a game before, let alone tried to play a game that way. I thought that someone must have thought of it somewhere, sometime, but there must be some kind of stumbling block that has prevented people from doing monochrome up until now. The truth is that there are many stumbling blocks. First, your eyes might get sore. Or you might not be able to figure out where the enemies are. Or you might not understand where the pathways are. Even if you progress through the stages, there won’t seem to be progression. Everything is hard to see pretty much sums it up.

 

There were times when I thought to myself, “Ahhh… I wish I could use some grey…”

I even tried it in a few tests, but it just didn’t look good. It looked like just some picture that someone had drawn without color. It had completely lost the contrast and solidity you get from two-tone images. I rethought things, and realized that I had to put all my efforts into making black and white two-tone work. For instance, even though your human eyes see the two-tone as black and white because of the contrast, we actually put desaturated yellow into the game. We would also up the contrast on the far reaches of the background instead of obscuring them. We used lots of little tricks like this.

 

 

(Testing adding yellow.)

 

However, even with all the trial and error, it didn’t take a very long time to arrive at something that made me feel, “This is awesome!” I achieved what I was going for as a designer, and once we added the red blood to the black and white, and then added the comic book text sound effects, we achieved what we were going for from a game standpoint- brutal and fun.

 

Looking back, I am proud to say that we never strayed from our initial concept in making the graphics for MADWORLD. We hope you play our “playable comic” and love it as much as we do.

 

Masaki Yamanaka

Lead Character Designer & Art Director, MADWORLD

 

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(The final Jack design.)

 

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A pretty obvious statement, but always nice to here...

 

http://kotaku.com/5155400/maybe-there-will-be-another-madworld

 

*Maybe* There Will Be Another MadWorld

 

According to the game's producer Atsushi Inaba of Platinum Games, "Platinum Games has several rights so we'll be developing something new after this, but if there is a lot of interest in MadWorld then maybe we will make another one."

I'll be buying!

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