Finished the game and

that has the be the shortest game released in a while. My clear save was 3:15 ^^;
Still, was a lot of fun. The boss fights were great though a little easy. The 100% invinicibility backflip was a little
too powerful as a defensive mechanism as you just flipped every boss attack and then countered with chainsaw slices in the frames between their attacks when they rest. The QTE mechanics were good. Waaaaaaaay better than the QTEs in RE5. Felt very satisfying to pull off cool QTE finishers.
I really liked the cutscene direction. Very stylish and well paced. Matsuno's work on the script totally showed. It's not Shakespeare, but the actual plot is better than most games. I HATED the commentary as it was just totally juvenile and XXXtreme to be XXXtreme, but I mainly tuned it out while playing. The art direction was pretty nice.
Overall I think Platinum Games did good for their first title. Especially one directed by one of the smaller guys at the company. If Bayonetta and Infinite Space are just as solid or better, it'll be a nice lineup.
Madworld does seem like it was PG's 'small' starter project. It feels pretty low budget, but not in the "things are rough" low budget, but rather just the game has a very small scope. It's super, super short and there's hardly any meat to it for replay (according to gamefaqs you get nothing? by beating hard mode); it just feels like a small polished project that the team worked hard on to get out as soon as they could.
I think given another 6 months development Madworld could have made classic status like God Hand. Maybe Madworld 2. But considering how few decent beat-em-ups exist anymore, it's still great for a weekend. 8/10.