It’s quite evident that the makers of MadWorld love future dystopian fiction. What’s not evident, though, is what, if anything, they bring to the genre.

MadWorld puts players in the role of Jack, a generic badass protagonist who smokes, rides a motorcycle and has a chainsaw attached to his arm. Jack trudges through an island city that has been turned into one huge kill-or-be-killed game show called Death Watch so as to rescue the mayor’s daughter from a group of terrorists.

If the plot sounds familiar, it’s because the game has been pieced together using tropes from a plethora of other works, including The Running Man, Escape From New York and countless other sources. There’s an isolated island city that’s fallen into chaos, a lone hero sent to bring order, an all-powerful government/corporation manipulating things from behind the scenes ... one may wonder when the giant robot army is going to show up to enslave humanity.

Even apart from the basic premise, the game cobbles together tired clichés from other videogames. Jack himself is practically interchangeable with Marcus Fenix from Gears of War with his take-no-crap attitude and gruff look, and he fights the usual cadre of enemies, including street thugs, ninjas and zombies. What, no pirates?

This rehashing of clichés is forgivable to a point, though. MadWorld never once tries to pretend it’s a serious game. It’s meant to be over-the-top violent, profane and sadistically fun. By staging the game in the all-too-familiar third-person action scenario of a linear series of levels punctuated by minigames and boss battles, the makers of MadWorld get to throw in every crazy idea for violent deaths they can muster.

Jack dispatches enemies any way he can, often using the trap-laden environment to assist. Throw a tire around an enemy’s waste, stick a road sign through his head and, for the coup-de-grace, toss him against a wall of spikes. It’s oddly satisfying, in a sociopathic kind of way.

But it’s only satisfying the first dozen or so times. By the time I got to the fifth level and was still dispatching enemies in a nearly identical fashion, I began to yearn for some variety. The game tries to offer respite from the repetitiveness with minigames, but these most often simply involve killing as many enemies as you can within a time limit. The boss battles were a welcome change of pace, but they were often too short and too easy. Despite being the toughest baddies around, the bosses almost always failed to counter my ingenious strategy of using the chainsaw over and over.

The game’s not all bad, though. The graphics are presented in stark black and white, with red and yellow to accent certain elements (most often blood spraying everywhere). Cutscenes are presented in a comic book style with visible words popping up to represent sound effects (for example, VROOOOM popping up when Jack revs his chainsaw), and off-screen characters pop in and out of the action via framed portraits. I get the sneaking suspicion that the designers were trying to compensate for the Wii’s graphical shortcomings by limiting the amount of animation, but they make the comic book style work to their full advantage.

There are also several notable voice performances in the game, most notably by comedian Greg Proops and ubiquitous voice actor John DiMaggio, who both play the in-game announcers. They give running commentary as Jack slices his way through enemies, and it’s consistently vulgar, crude but undeniably hilarious.

Still, the pluses are not enough to outweigh the minuses. MadWorld is, at its heart, a repetitive, mindless beat-’em up with nary a challenge to speak of. Enemies pose little challenge, and after you’ve thrown your thousandth generic baddie against a spiked wall, you’re going to be begging for something else to do. The game’s length is pretty short (only six to eight hours), but it feels like MadWorld ran out of ideas before Jack even gets to the island.

If you need a bit of violent action via your Wii, this may be something you want to buy. But I suggest a rental before forking over the full price.