Once you've played through the game on Normal, an effort that took me nine hours by the Wii's clock, and that was with doing one level twice and one level three times, you can either go back and attempt the various DeathWatch challenges sprinkled throughout the levels, or you can try the game on Hard, sporting two new weapons for Jack's amusement: a katana and a double chainsaw. Make no mistake, Hard mode is Hard. Jack only has one life, enemies dodge and when simple enemies hit you, it hurts, which is nothing compared to when the bull-masked double chainsaw dudes show up. I'm not ashamed to say that on Hard mode I didn't even survive the tutorial. Ok, I'm a little ashamed. The point is that if you find your first trip through Varrigan City to be too short for your liking, there are plenty of reasons to take another trip, if only to see how many signposts you can shove in a faux-stormtrooper at once. The Bloodbath challenges are also available as two player mini-games, if you want to show someone else just how depraved you are.

There are plenty of jokes being told in MadWorld but I can't shake the feeling that the biggest joke is on us. After all, Jack's motivations for being in the games are noble but we're just in it to see how violent and graphic we can make the next death. In a story where those putting on the DeathWatch games are the villains, it doesn't paint us in a very good light that we're so eager to jump in and get our chainsaws bloody. Once the final cut scene runs and the ultimate motivations for the games are laid bare, it doesn't take much to realize that the players, and the villains, aren’t all that much different. For a game that is so entertaining, because of, or in spite of the copious amounts of gore, having a reason to pause and think at the end is the cherry on top of a brutally exciting, blood soaked sundae.

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