User Review : Mad Max

One week in Avalanche Studios' post-apocalyptic wasteland. How did it fare?

When I sat down and watched Fury Road as someone who’s never seen a Mad Max film before, I felt confused. Sure, George Miller’s amazing filmography kept me at centerfold of the movie’s fiery panoramas, but I had no idea how any of the movie’s universe actually came to be. After locking myself away for a week to venture through Avalanche Studios’ dusty dystopia, I can safely say that is no longer the case.

Mad Max the video game is Warner Bros’ follow up to its critically acclaimed Hollywood counterpart, perhaps in an attempt to expand and capitalize on the latter’s success. I was mesmerized by its showing at E3, so much so that I went and picked this game up in spite of being lost when I checked out the movie in theaters.

My first impression was the beautiful optimization for PC. This game ran flawlessly at 60 FPS everywhere – from the dynamic cutscenes that show your car and character in their current state to the actual gameplay itself. The game wasn’t the clunky, badly optimized mess I expected it to be following WB games’ Arkham Knight controversy and I was impressed at how seamlessly I was able to transition between each element of the Mad Max experience. I encountered very few glitches and, from a technical standpoint, the game felt complete.

In fact, on the outside, this game is so well-polished that it separates itself from its generic, half-assed confreres in the ‘movie game’ genre. As you drive down the road, you see the thick, feathery texture of dust clouds and the sun gleaming off the rusted edges of your rattling death machine. Combat looks just as fluid, with Max busting out some impressive flying armbars, MMA takedowns, and bone-crunching counters that are chained together like a sequence out of the ending scene of Tony Jaa’s The Protector. From the ashen, malnourished War Boys to the sand-covered landscapes and dilapidated, half-buried buildings, I completely appreciated the aesthetic that Mad Max had to offer.

Ironically, it’s on the inside where the game struggles. You have yet another basic Mad Max tale, with Max (this time) seeking out Plains of Silence to clear his head before he’s drug into conflict by a powerful warlord named Scrotus. From then on, you play as Max and embark on a journey to become the post-apocalyptic equivalent of hood rich. This is done through allying yourself with strongholds and taking over territories, all of which is made possible through a vapid oversaturation of side missions, random encounters, minefields, races and scavenging locations. Seriously, once you’ve taken over your first territory, you’ve seen everything this game has to offer. Literally. Everything.

And that’s my biggest gripe with Mad Max –the lack of variation, the Assassin’s Creed-esque approach to side quests and other such misfortunes. It’s clear that Avalanche Studios wanted to avoid having a 4 hour game, so their solution was to expand it into a repetitive 30 hour spectacle that quickly dwindles into an endless monotony. After the first two territories, the game’s redundancy makes completing it feel more like work than play, but if you can get past languidly searching around random corners for pieces of scrap and taking over the same enemy camp at least twenty times then you’re in for the time of your life.

There are plentiful car customizations, though Mad Max doesn’t focus on personalizing your car so much as it does upgrading it. While you have five car bodies and a few paintjobs, decals and ornaments to choose from, car creation is to this game what attribute points are to an MMO character. You’re basically building a rust bucket into a flaming chariot with amazing RPG stats. Toward the latter half of customization, there is an observable difference as your car grows faster, stronger, and more durable. While you can pack on enough armor to be a heavyset juggernaut on the road, your Magnum Opus (as it’s called) is never fully invincible. Enemies on the road pose a constant threat, even when dealing greatly reduced damage.

Max can be upgraded too. His appearance, shotgun (he only carries a shotgun…I’m guessing it’s his trademark or something), armor stats and damage stats can be upgraded. Fighting in this game generally works around the X to punch – Y to parry style popularized in the Arkham series. I found that Mad Max does a good job of punishing you for trying to parry mid attack animation, which Arkham was much more lenient on. You don’t float from opponent to opponent like you do in the Batman games and are, instead, forced to rely on the invincibility frames of your A-mapped dodge roll. Ranged combat is centered on an auto-aim mechanic that awkwardly snaps onto the closest target and can sometimes be difficult to put up with during skirmishes -- even in slow motion.

The slow motion effect when aiming in or out of a car makes these mechanics feel like they’re made to be abused, but they’re fun nonetheless. You fight maybe five easily identifiable enemy archetypes throughout the game, and boss fights are basically the same. Every boss, the main antagonist included, is a large behemoth who recklessly charges at you to kill you and leaves himself open when you dodge his easily-telegraphed-but-unblock able strikes. Seriously, all of them. Between those and your standard War Boys, buzzards, weapon wielders and shield-brandishing weapon wielders, you have every enemy A.I. in the game.

At times, Mad Max can maintain its charm, pacing itself like a horror game and making even the least threatening hostiles worthy of a jump scare. I found that the game’s luster was mostly in its story missions, which, due to my commitment to clearing all of the icons on the map, felt few and far between. I was also drawn into the “history relics,” photographs from the past that tell the story of how civilization fell from the perspective of regular people – good and bad alike. It explained much of how the universe came to be and, coupled with Max’s grim dialogue, conveyed that gritty sense of despair and melancholy that left our hero in shambles, feasting on Dinky Di’s dog food and maggots to survive.

At times, I wondered why Max even bothered continuing to live.

Mad Max’s story wasn’t groundbreaking, but it kept me intrigued between the bouts of ‘why am I doing this’ that plagued me while I was peering behind corners for what must’ve been my hundredth piece of missing scrap. Technically, this game is marvelous, running with immaculately smooth frame-rates and few if any glitches. The weather system is extraordinary, from the miniature tornadoes to the biblical thunderstorms that actually have the potential to strike Max and the Magnum Opus. The thought department, however, is lacking. This mash up of Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, and Arkham has enough filler for a mouth full of cavities, and that’s putting it lightly.

As a game that captivates with its vivid depictions of hope, desperation and an undying will to live, even its best moments are trumped by its glaring flaws. But with a little less of the same and a whole lotta different, I’d say that Mad Max has the potential to be WB’s foray into video game greatness.