Mad Max

I got this game not sure what to expect as it was a game based on a movie and those usually turn out rather poor. However, I have always wanted to play a video game where I was Mad Max so I decided to give it a shot. Seeing as how I would always try to recreate his character in other games like, Fallout 3, I figured why not play the game where you are him and that features vehicles. In Fallout 3, you can get the character close to looking like Max, but there are no cool cars. Well, I played through this game and have to say I rather enjoyed it, more than I was expecting considering all the harsh criticisms I had heard about it. Not perfect, by any means, but the game does what I wanted it to and that is place the gamer into Max's world of chaos and anarchy. It is also a very lengthy world as it took me a long time to get through this one, but if you're not trying to complete all the tasks as you are going and only do story objectives it can probably be done somewhat quickly. The game could use a few more things to do considering the size of the world, but still offers a good number of things to do. You can drive around, raid enemy fortresses and scavenge for scrap to create the ultimate car for the wasteland!

The story has Max, losing his car and his shotgun right from the get go and fighting a hulking man named Lord Scrotus. Max soon finds himself in the middle of nowhere with no car and no water, but soon finds a man named Chum who tells Max that Max is the man to drive a car that he wishes to craft...the Magnum Opus. So Max drives this man's buggy to his hideout and soon goes on the search for a body for this new vehicle; however, Chum can only get his hands on a V6 engine and Max needs a V8 to cross the plains of silence so Max must find his way through the wasteland controlled by Lord Scrotus and various other factions, befriend camps of people not quite as crazy as the wandering gangs or the war boys and make his way to Gastown to complete his vehicle all while making a name for himself in the wastelands.

The game play is rather fun as you have hand to hand combat which was fun and consisted of countering, using knives and blasting away with Max's shotgun. Then there is driving where you can simply try to outrun the enemy or ploy right through them! The driving was good for the most part, as through most of the game you are in the middle of the wasteland; however, the Gastown race which is near the end was a very frustrating affair as you are placed in a race with horrendous corners and turns and that section of the game is the only one that had me cursing up a storm! Other than that section the driving was not too bad. Another minor complaint is the fact they were a bit to generous with the water and gas. When you first take control of Max, finding water and shells was difficult and made it more interesting as you would hold back using your gun or try not to use to much water. Instead of this being the norm, once you build up the ally camps, you get all the water and shells you need and gas too! Just made the game a bit less challenging. Still, overall it was fun just driving through the wasteland and ramming enemies who were parked alongside the road!

So, yes, I found this game to be quite fun and entertaining. I thought the ending was a bit of a downer as Max usually rights wrongs before driving off alone and into the nothingness, but for the most part the game got the tones of the movie right. I would have liked to have heard the theme from Road Warrior play though as that would have been cool and maybe an enemy or ally from the films would have been cool too. Perhaps a base run by Lord Humongous? For a game based on a movie though they did a great job of crafting a huge world where you could explore and make the wasteland your playground of blood chaos and sorrow!

Person responsible for stank gum race should not work in game industry... rest of the game was good.

This game shocked me by how good it is, you can customize your ride clear encampments scout out areas drive around kill people. You can drink water and collect it which I found really cool (most games don't let you do that). Even the combat is great. Don't even get me started on the visuals the sudden nuclear sandstorms the creepy underground slave stuff going on in the background man this game surprised me. This is the most underrated open-world game I have ever played.

Overall rating: 7/10 As a person who enjoyed the Mad Max movies, I have to say that this is a pretty well made game based of off the movies. The game is far from perfect, but it is not at all a bad experience.

• The wasteland map is pretty well done - every scrotus camp, scavenging location and even region mostly feels unique so that you can easily tell a difference that you are somewhere else.

• The story is... okay, I would say. The pacing seems a little bit off and the way that Max acts/speaks during cutscenes seems comical to me.

• Car combat is one of the best parts of this game. There are a bunch of different ways that you can approach attacking enemies with your car. Though as the game went on, I just stuck with using the thunderpoons to blow up the cars as it was easier and faster.

• Hand-to-hand combat is decent but it just felt a bit off sometimes. The controls felt inconsistent at times, for example, while fighting someone, you can do a certain move on them which is also indicated with a prompt above that enemy and when trying to use that move with the shown key, it either didn't want to do the attack or was very delayed so I had to spam the key until I got the attack to go through (even with the spamming, the moves did not go off some times).

• The Top Dog boss fights were just copy-pasted as the enemies had no difference except for their look. They were interesting but not as exciting as they could have been.

• Some tasks that you could do around the world felt a little bit pointles, for example, dragging out a car wreck from the sand as it just gave you such a small ammount of scrap. Same goes for the scavenging locations - they just feel like they dont give you enough to go to them and the rewards don't scale. For the last car upgrades, the 20-60 scrap for one location compared to a 2000 or 4000 scrap upgrade seems like nothing.

• I also encountered a few bugs that broke my emersion while playing. One of them was that some pop-ups were not showing anymore, for example, for completing a scavenging location or lowering threat in a region. I could not figure out what was the cause for this to avoid it. A few times I also had the sound breaking where some of the sounds just did not play. For example, hitting sounds did not play but the grunting or yelling from enemies played. These bugs were fixable by going to main menu and going back in game.

All in all it's a nice game, that is flawed but good at the same time, to play through once as it has very little replayability. But I have to say that it succeeded at making you feel like you're in the Mad Max movie post-apocalyptic world.

This one was never made to become a classic. This one was made to entertain. And it does not disappoint.

The only objective in the game is to strengthen and improve Max's car Magnum Opus. This may sound uninteresting, but trust me after the first few hours it would become your obsession.

The graphics are sleek. Looks quite stunning in PS4 versions. But the best part is the game play. It is fun and the fist fights dont become boring even after hours and hours of gameplay. There is option for Max to learn new skills as you progress and when Max is in a rage you really really feel the adrenaline rush.

The driving is perhaps the best part of the game. The car mechanics are admirable.

Overall this game shall not disappoint you. In my opinion this one went quite underestimated. It had the potential to do far far better.