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REVIEW

Mad Max Review

by Ian Stokes, September 21st, 2015

Set after Fury Road, Mad Max see’s our hero beaten, left for dead and without his prized Interceptor. Max reluctantly joins forces with Chumbucket, a blackfinger (mechanic) who promises to build him a vehicle so powerful, no one would stand in his way, the Magnum Opus.

So once more into the breach we can open-world gaming. I have to confess that Ubisoft have kind of driven the genre firmly into the floor with their formulaic approach to almost every title they release, but how does Mad Max fair? Eh.

Graphically, Mad Max is hardly stunning but that’s not to say it isn’t gorgeous. Art style can go a long way towards making a game look beautiful and Mad Max nails the look of the universe down to a tee; get lost in one of the sandstorms and you’ll swear you’re in Fury Road. The colour pallet creates such a vibrant vision of what is essentially just a big old desert with a load of rusted junk in it. Truth be told, it looks pretty good for an open-world game, but Mad Max is unfortunate in its timing and comparisons with Metal gear Solid V: the Phantom Pain leave Max more beaten and bloodied than anything he’s suffered in the wastelands. Still, art style over pixels anyday so kudos to Mad Max on this front.

It’s not just the look of the universe that Mad Max knocks out of the park though, the feel and character of the post-apocalyptic wasteland is bang on; you can really tell that Avalanche wanted to do the world justice. It’s a shame they weren’t too bothered about doing the gameplay much justice though.

 

 

Woah woah negative nelly I hear you cry out. OK fine we’ll start with the good, for there is plenty here. Combat is your typically Arkham Asylum style, hit X to whoop ass, hit Y to counter an ass whooping affair. It’s as simple as it comes, with all the upgrades in the combat tree only adding minor variations on a theme, like being able to counter someone with a knife instead of having to run away like the big baby you are. Whilst I’ve seen a lot of complaints about Mad Max’s combat, I actually enjoyed the simplicity, and more importantly, the brutality of it all. Max isn’t some namby pamby billionaire with a conscious like Master Wayne, so when he goes for a finisher he doesn’t knock people out, he breaks their necks or stabs them in the face. Yapper on about glorifying violence all you want, but the harsh brutality of life in the wasteland is core to the Mad Max universe, and I’m glad to see no punches were pulled here.

Vehicular combat is where Mad Max comes to life though, especially with all the customisations you can make to your Magnum Opus. Battering rams, bordering spikes, flamethrowers and the fantastically named Thunderpoon are just some of the toys at your disposal. Oh and before you ask, Thunderpoon is thunder from explosion and poon from harpoon…it’s a rocket launcher, not a terrifying vagina that you attack people with. Truth be told, vehicle combat gets a little easy towards the end, especially when you’ve fully upgraded your poon *sniggers*, but it never stops being great fun.

Where Mad Max falls flat on his big Aussie face is in the mission design, or lack thereof. The missions mad Max actually gives you are pretty good to be honest, with one fantastic standout in a place called the Underdune that I won’t ruin for you. Suffice to say, it’s wonderfully paced and creates tension and atmosphere without just throwing tons of dudes at you. Unfortunately, mad Max is that special kind of bad open-world game, the kind that gates your progress in the story at certain intervals until you’ve reduced the enemy presence by doing all the Ubisoft checklist rubbish that litters the landscape.

It’s ridiculous the amount of generic rubbish mad Max has littered around its world passing itself off as content. Gotta take out all the scarecrows…by driving past them and harpooning them. Gotta loot all the scrap locations…which give you about 10 scrap each when upgrades can cost several thousand scrap each. The worst ones are the minefields which have to be cleared by taking Max’s dog out in a crappy little buggy so the dog can bark at the mines to locate them for you. Mine-detecting dog aside, the buggy is absolute rubbish and who wants to drive a buggy when I’m busy building a rocket-powered super car? No one, that’s who. Developers of the world I implore you, stop looking at Ubisoft as an example of open-world gaming done right.

Whilst copy-pasting their open-world design over from Assassin’s Creed Unity, it seems they also copied over the ridiculous amount of bugs as well. Audio glitches are abound, with words in spoken dialogue skipping several times on multiple occasions. I also had a hybrid Magnum opus at one point because the engine didn’t make a sound, a bit late to be going green considering the world had been obliterated in a nuclear war but good on you for trying though Max. Oh and the killer for me is the bug which means I can’t open a cargo container with a bit of scrap in it, meaning I can’t 100% the game until it’s fixed. Ignore the score, don’t buy this game until this bug is fixed. I’m standing on principle. This is our Alamo people.

So in short, some great work into building a world, and some competent gameplay mechanics to go into that world, drowned under a mountain of needless open world jibberish and bugs. If you’re a fan of the universe, I can still recommend Mad Max to you; I’m a huge fan and despite my moaning I had plenty of fun with the game, but I see a lot of squandered potential here.

Disclosure: An Xbox One review copy of Mad Max was provided by Warner Bros.

6
A decent effort with some moments of greatness sprinkled in there, but the generic open-world and bugs aplenty really hamper the experience. Mad Max fans will appreciate the effort that went into the world, and the story hits the right notes, but there is too much filler.

Filed under: Avalanche Studios Mad Max PC PS4 Warner Bros Xbox One

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