Welcome to the wasteland, time for some good old fashioned revenge. Enter Mad Max, the grizzled, apocalypse surviving ex-cop with a bad temper, and even worse demeanor. Brought to us by the folks at Avalanche Games, Mad Max is a terrific open world action game with various RPG elements thrown in to boot.
Dropped in the middle of the wasteland, you take over Max after he’s been beaten, abused and robbed of his beloved V8 after one of the most epic opening scenes experienced in recent memory. The gist from here is simple. Get a new ride, and take out the guy who stole it from you.
If you are familiar with games like Assassin’s Creed, Shadow of Mordor or Batman: Arkham Asylum you’ll fall right in line with the basic game-play for Mad Max. You roam around in third person in a massive, fully explorable map. At any time you can view this map for insights as to special locations throughout the world. These locales can be discovered similarly to Assassin’s Creed, by finding view points and explore the world, only this time they come in the form of hot air balloons.
There is a wide variety of missions you can take on, from simple scavenging quests, to races, to taking down powerful convoys, or even invading fortified bases and taking them over. There is always something to do, and even these similar tasks are made less repetitive by changing up the layouts or objectives in each area.
Each of these will involve combat of some type. Ammunition is extremely limited early on, so most of this combat will take place either on foot, or in your vehicle. Ground combat is theatrical thrill, and takes more than a nod from Batman and Shadow of Mordor, with it’s button clicking, counter timing style. The speed, variety of enemies and attacks, and pure adrenaline it inspires from it’s theatrical approach however makes you completely forget any of the before mentioned similarities to other games. Combat here is simple to learn, but just a ton of fun to take part in, as Mad Max takes on dozens of enemies at a time with his bare fists, or weapons found laying about. Later combos also let you perform magnificent kill shots, and use the environment around you to assist in a multitude of ways.
If you aren’t fighting on your feet, you’ll be fighting on your wheels, in your own customizable death machine, better known as the Magnum Opus. You’ll spend most of your time in your vehicle, building it up from a scrap pile of a dune buggy, to a monstrous machine of death, spikes included! You can customize and upgrade your vehicle with an assortment of armor and weapons, or configure it into special Archangels which will give you various bonuses to driving or combat.
Early carnage (pun intended) starts with simply ramming objects and other vehicles, but you quickly gain useful accessories, like a harpoon able to rip pieces, or even people off of opposing vehicles, and even taking down towers and snipers and other stationary targets. Later additions like a rear mounted sniper rifle, and explosive harpoons add to the mayhem.
Throughout the game you will upgrade your vehicle and Mad Max himself by collecting scrap strewn throughout the world. You can also gain scrap by taking over opposing camps, and building relationships with the leaders of the mighty strongholds. Managing your scrap intake is a big key, especially early on, to upgrading Max’s abilities and customizing your ride. For the most part though, besides a few visual choices, most players’ Mad Max will more or less play like everyone else’s, there is simply just not as much uniqueness available in the skill sets, and you can eventually just buy everything, or gain it through either in-game quests, or your notoriety which will raise as you complete quests and accomplishments.
These small misses are generally completely wiped out by the pure scale, scope and feel to the giant, and quite literal, sandbox laid out for you to explore. The Wasteland is vast, beautiful and treacherous. You can explore nearly every mountain, valley or distant point with no fear of any invisible walls, or dead ends. The lack of any loading screen only makes this world seem more massive.
And the Wasteland isn’t just a pretty place to look at. There are various dangers out there just waiting to kill Mad Max. Massive dust storms throw debris everywhere, tornadoes appear out of nowhere to knock you off of cliffs, and massive scary as hell thunderstorms destroy nearly everything in their path. The surroundings are beautiful and deadly, and you’ll never know when to expect attack from roaming patrols, or snipers.
The only major downfall to Mad Max is the story. After the initial awesomness, the story falls to the background and there is little motivation to proceed with it, except to unlock new upgrades for yourself, or your Magnum Opus. Though the story does pick up again in the final chapter, you’ll have more fun just exploring the world, blowing up things, and knocking out bad guys. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Regardless of any of it’s shortcomings, Mad Max is a huge amount of fun to play. There are a couple of different ways to go about the combat, and there is always something else to do. Completionists will find a ton of items to collect, scrap to find, and historical relics abound in the massive and beautiful environment. Fans of the movies will also see a variety of call-outs to the series as you explore, though there is an obvious disconnect from direct references to any of the movies. By far if you are looking for a fun time-killer, and love over the top action and beautiful explosions, Mad Max is a fit for you.
As always, thanks for reading and be sure to comment and like below. Also, check out my YouTube channel for Let’s Plays and stream highlights for Mad Max.
MicBeMac Games 