Mad Max

I grew up with the Mad Max films, I love the post apocalyptic road warrior genre, and I absolutely loved Fury Road. But where the Mad Max movies were far ahead of their time, the game came a tad too late to the dance.

It’s worth note that almost ALL road warrior/apocalyptic games are inspired largely by the dystopic world of Mad Max. Borderlands and Fallout being the most popular of the aforementioned statement. So when I play a free roam game that’s about trudging through a wasteland, making right what was once wrong and bringing peace to the land, the comparison to previous similar titles is an inevitability.

THAT BEING SAID

As a fan of Mad Max, the idea of pounding the desolate dunes of the Great White in my very own customizable Opus Magnum whilst harpooning and spearing the mad dogs of the wastes for water and fuel was a very drawing concept for me. And for me, it works, make no mistake, Mad Max is absurdly true to the lore of the genre and the films. It is by NO means ANYTHING like Fury Road, so if that’s what you’re expecting, you’ll end up more than disappointed.

The graphics are a TAD subpar for such a next gen and well-funded WB game, that’s not to say they’re bad, they’re just not necessarily stunning, either. The wastes oftentimes seem a tad TOO plain for one’s liking that it gets pretty lonely driving down bland acres of monotonous dunes, and unfortunately, the random events are a bit too few and far in between in comparison to Fallout (See? Inevitable).

The combat system too, gets pretty monotonous once you’ve mastered the incredibly difficult (sarcasm) “Counter with Y + button mash X = Win”, but an easy combat system never really ruined a game for me (I’m looking at you, Arkham series and Assassins Creed) if the substance is rewarding enough, and for a fan of the genre, it is.

You take on the obvious role of Mad Max, who just had his famed car, the mythical Black on Black, stolen and stripped down by a band of unruly waste rats, beaten and left for dead, he comes unto a hunchback who has seen him in his dreams, and was foretold that he would deliver unto the saint a Magnum Opus that puts his old one to shame, and thus begins your journey to build the perfect car. This requires a lot of looting, pillaging, killing, liberating, desecrating, harpooning, sniping, and drinking water to recover from multiple stab wounds and spiked mace bludgeonings.

Throughout your journey you level up, unlocking a library of different attributes (Both practical and aesthetic) for both Max and the Opus, using scrap collected from the wasteland as currency.

Fuel is a worshipped entity in the Mad Max lore, and the Opus Magnum doesn’t run on sand, you DO need to refuel every now and again. MY only issue is, you never really fear running out of fuel because fuel is so readily available everywhere, and when you return to your homebase, the gas tank is filled to the brim at no cost. Ammunition is a bit of a commodity and you won’t always come by it which encourages hand to hand combat, so there’s THAT element of scarcity that you can appreciate if you’re a canon whore like myself.

Finally, the car battles can be VERY intense and depending on the state of your car when you’re thrown into one, VERY punishing. But sometimes finishing off an enemy is as easy as harpooning the driver out of their vehicle, so the most important aspect of a Mad Max game for some is the BIGGEST hit or miss factor. Because there are fights where you’ll genuinely pat yourself on the back for how much of a badass you were for surviving, whereas others will see you sitting quietly in your chair with naught but the smell of you and your cats farts.

In the end, I like this game, it’s far from perfect, but it’s not terrible. I liked it more than I like a lot of games this year, and I’m hoping for an array of DLC from WB that will change the scope of some of the things I’ve mentioned, but that remains to be seen.

Happy wasteland hounding, have a lovely day!