This is the game everyone was raving about?!
First you're spit out onto the most boring and ugly open world ever conceived. While the minimalist comic-like art style would've worked out nice (you can tell that's what they were going for) they managed to botch even that. The repetitive cars look like papercraft and the repetitive people don't do anything except walk in the same zombie-like way. This wouldn't be so bad if you could beat them all up with the sword, but you can't. Really the whole open world seems like it was half realized before Suda51 gave up on it yet included it anyway. If someone had told me that this was the alfa build of the game, I would have believed them immediately.
Soon you'll be itching to fight another boss battle, but first you have to play a minigame or two. You may be used to minigames on the Wii but these have to be the most boring ones on the console: and that's saying something. What's unfortunate is that they failed to capture the excitement and thrills of cutting the grass, picking up litter, and pumping gas and I don't think it's because of the Quick Time Events, though I do hate those. The biggest problem however is that you have to do these minigames to pay for your chance to fight the next boss or to make money in more exciting ways, like fighting a handful of guys.
After playing a couple of Boss levels, you'll realize why they made the sandbox so boring and tedious, because if they didn't, the boss levels would seem boring and tedious. Most of the time, you start off on a linear path repeatedly slicing up or pile driving groups of opponents. Sometimes a finishing cut will give you a powerup but it's timed and that usually happens when there's nobody left to fight. Occasionally the battle will go beyond the typical formula but these instances are few, far between, and not good enough to make up for the rest of the slop. You also occasionally fight an interesting boss but those too are few and far between formulaic clockwork bosses and frustrating quick time event bosses.
What ended this game for me was when I got to a Boss level that consisted in a single long grey corridor with the occasional cookie cutter opponent only to end in a cutscene where you don't even fight the boss. That's when I got rid of this game.
So why do so many gamers like it and why did it get such good reviews. I'm not quite sure how games get so overrated but I imagine that this one was raved about because at the time of release it was one of the only original Wii games to have blood, cursing, and lewd innuendo. The game also has a pretty good sense of humor. In fact the excuse most commonly given by fans of this game is the the director, Suda 51, was trying to make a humerous statement which is all fine and good but when you sacrifice fun for a statement in a game, you lose me. So all the flaws, glitches, and lazy development was a joke? The real joke seems to be on us. So go ahead and rent it, but be ready with something else in your Q because you're probably going to get sick of this one real quick.