Sega's presence at the show may have been minimal, but what they lacked in quantity, the made up for in "Ooh, I want to play that." Case in point, the Madworld demo. Sure, I could have played House of the Dead: Overkill or Sonic and the Black Knight, but the stark black and whites of Madworld sang to me like a siren on the banks of a jagged reef. Seriously, the guy has a retractable chainsaw attached to his arm, how can you not want to play this?

By far the game I got to spend the least amount of time with on Friday, Madworld didn't have very long to make an impression on me. Luckily, it was as if the game gods knew how little I would get to play, and wanted to provide me with the choicest of cuts, so as to not dissuade me from instantly falling in love with the game.

I was handed a Wii controller after some guy just gave up and decided to move on. I wasn't really sure what was happening, but I was confident enough in my Wii skills to know I could handle whatever Madworld had to throw at me. In no time, I was hacking and slashing with the best of them. One of the good things about the Wii only having four primary buttons is that there are only so many possibilities as to what those buttons can do. Jump and camera focus were mapped to the two buttons on the Nunchuck, while punch and grab were tied into the A button (you tapped it to punch, and held it down to grab). Popping out the chainsaw was relegated to the B button, and using it meant swinging the Wii controller in various directions. It didn't seem to matter which way the controller was waggled, as long as you kept holding the B button in, you character would slash away in every direction.

As you can see in the video above, I took over the game during a timed event where I had to get as many goons into a spike trap as possible. Once I figured out how to grab guys, I tossed a few into the pit by jerking the controller in the direction of the trap. Though once I realized I could also hold a man by his neck, and force him into an oversized sawblade, the trap became meaningless. The actual combat itself wasn't too bad, and the controller movements didn't really bother me. I was reminded more of No More Heroes while playing than I was of Rygar, so that was a good thing. Ultra-streamlined controls definitely help make Madworld more enjoyable, and the intuitiveness of the action had me immersed fairly quickly.

Trying really hard to look like the Sin City graphic novels doesn't always come out right. Especially for a game that has so much movement and animation on the screen at one time. To be honest, there were moments where so many opponents, traps, and other moving parts were on screen at the same time, I couldn't really see what was happening. A few random wiggles of the Wii controller splashed the screen red with my enemy's blood, and within seconds, my character came back into focus. For the most part, the style of the game works. I'm a little wary about those moments I mentioned being too frequent, but sweet visuals go a long way to making up for that.

With its simplified color palete, easy controls, and over the top violence, Madworld could quite possibly be the best reason to use your Wii this year. I also might be blinded by my unabashed fondness for the Running Man and Army of Darkness, so I guess we'll all just have to wait for the final version before declaring this game King of Wii 2009.

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