Latest Wii, Nintendo DS, Game Boy, and GameCube news, screenshots, and game previews

Sega today officially announced the release date for MadWorld. The Wii exclusive will hit North American stores March 10th.

MadWorld is still awaiting its anticipated M-rating (mature) from the ESRB.

Tags: MadWorld, Platinum Games, Release dates, Sega, Wii

After reading our MadWorld post yesterday, a Nintenjo reader pointed me to a recent study showing that “contrary to popular belief, violence does not make video games more enjoyable”. In fact, they found that in some cases violence actually “detracted from the enjoyment reported by players”.

Through two online surveys and four experimental studies, the researchers showed that people stayed glued to games mainly for the feelings of challenge and autonomy they experience while playing. Both seasoned video gamers and novices preferred games where they could conquer obstacles, feel effective, and have lots of choices about their strategies and actions.

Scott Rigby, president of Immersyve and a co-investigator in the study, said the findings should be of practical help to the game development industry. “Much of the debate about game violence has pitted the assumed commercial value of violence against social concern about the harm it may cause,” explained Rigby. “Our study shows that the violence may not be the real value component, freeing developers to design away from violence while at the same time broadening their market.”

Thanks to ScotchTape for the news tip!

Tags: Blood, Gore, MadWorld, Psychology, Violence

Destructoid has an interesting preview of a game that’s been generating a lot of buzz lately.

Developed by Platinum Games and published by Sega, MadWorld for the Wii is an “ultra-violent” game making its way to the Wii in March. MadWorld features highly stylized visuals: everything is in black and white, with the exception of “gallons of red blood that will be spilled as you play”.

Killing is undeniably fun each and every time you do it. There are over 1,000 ways to kill people, from hazards in your environment to the moves that Jack can perform. If you beat up a guy enough, he will get dazed and players can perform finishing moves by using motion controls. Players can toss a guy into the air and stick their chainsaw into his belly as he comes back down, or do a back breaker on an enemy … the list of moves goes on.

Right now, my only complaints with the game are the enemy AI and camera. The AI rarely put up a real challenge as I fought them — they barely defended themselves, for that matter. The camera also needed some babysitting. There were a lot of times that I had to manually reset the camera to get it to snap behind Jack. It got pretty annoying having to do this every time, and I feel the camera would be much better suited if it was always positioned on Jack’s back.

It sounds like the game will be pretty fun — I’m definitely looking forward to it! MadWorld will no doubt continue to receive attention (both good and bad) as its release date grows closer.

Tags: MadWorld, Platinum Games, Sega, Wii