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Republished on Wednesday 28th March 2018: We're bringing this review back from the archives following the announcement of April's PlayStation Plus lineup. The original text follows.
With the recent cinematic success of Mad Max: Fury Road, there has never been a better time for a game based on Max Rockatansky's particular brand of vehicular chaos. With Avalanche Studios – the masters of mayhem behind the Just Cause series – handling development duties for this PlayStation 4 title, confidence was high that this mix of source material and talent would result in an experience that was much more than the usual licensed game – or identikit open world.
Not directly based on the recent film, the game tells its own tale, while still borrowing the odd detail from its cinematic sibling. Haunted by the loss of his family as the world fell, Max travels the wasteland searching for the Plains of Silence. This isn't a journey of hope but one of survival, as for this unhinged hero, driving in search of the plains – which may or may not exist - is all that he has left. Unfortunately, the brakes are put on his search when his car's stolen, and he's left for dead following a run in with the unfortunately named Scabrous Scrotus. Never one to take this sort of thing lying down, Max must work to rebuild his car and get the V8 engine he needs to continue his journey.
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It wouldn't be much of a Mad Max game if you spent it running around on foot, so it's not long before you come across Chumbucket – an exiled mechanic from nearby Gastown – who sees Max as a saint who'll help him build his 'Magnum Opus', a car that'll be the best the wasteland has ever seen. Starting with a basic chassis, most of the game is spent working to add more and more parts to your increasingly powerful ride. As a result, there's a decent level of customisation available, and you can go whichever upgrade route you want, whether you're after a fast, lightly armoured car or the four wheeled equivalent of a tank, that's a beast to try and keep on the road.
Fortunately, you're never locked into one type of car, and can switch out individual parts easily depending on the situation, even changing your whole ride between different unlockable car templates – known as 'archangels' – if you fancy big change. While you can also steal cars from the war parties you battle, you'll be spending most of your time in your own personal ride, as you'll have invested a significant amount of time in making it more like a car Mad Max would drive by adding weapons and modifications.
Upgrades to both your car, as well as Max's own equipment and fighting moves, predominantly require scrap – the game's currency – to unlock. Some have other prerequisites, such as reaching a certain character level or completing a particular mission – but mostly you'll be paying out your hard scavenged metal to acquire them. With some of the later upgrades going for a steep price, there'll be times where you feel like the wasteland's main advocate for recycling, as you dutifully stop and pick up all of the scrap you've created during your battles. This unsurprisingly manages to become a little tedious, and while you can unlock clean-up crews to automatically hoover up the scrap that you've created, you'll still spend a hell of a lot of time on litter duty.
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As you work your way through the main story missions, you'll start to unlock access to strongholds run by some friendly factions, who are happy to see someone standing up to Scabrous Scrotus. These factions also offer their own missions, as well as the chance to find parts littered around the wasteland that complete projects at each of these bases. These projects are a big help, whether they're for the previously mentioned clean-up crew to automatically pick up scrap or for replenishing your limited supplies of ammunition, water, and fuel. As such, it's worthwhile spending some time building them up.
As you explore the map, the sheer volume of quests, activities, and locations becomes quickly apparent, and your early impressions are likely to be good, as you'll have fun visiting scavenging locations to collect scrap, using balloons – the game's equivalent of climbing towers – to survey points of interests, and destroying enemy camps and watch towers, which have the added bonus of lowering the presence of enemy war parties in a region. The trouble is that most of the side activities become very repetitive, and after a few hours none of these tasks will offer much of a surprise, with only the convoys – with their breakneck vehicular battles – keeping you coming back for more.
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This would be fine if you could choose whether you wanted to engage with the side content or not, but at various stages in the game your progress in the main story missions becomes blocked until you've satisfied certain criteria. This can be anything from collecting an amount of scrap to lowering the threat level in a certain region, and can be quite annoying if you just want to move the story forward.
This is a real shame as the game's core mechanics are actually pretty good. Racing around in your supercharged death machine, drifting all over the place while smashing your rivals up, is very satisfying, and with Chumbucket riding in the back of your car, always on hand to provide some much needed repairs, it helps to keep you in the action for quite a while. Things get even more interesting when you get your hands on the harpoon, which lets you rip panels, wheels, and even the driver from a car, while also tearing down weaker enemy structures. Pulling a sniper from atop a tower using the harpoon then dragging them behind your car before flinging them far into the distance is a level of mayhem that anyone can get behind, and when you add the thunderpoon – which fires explosive tipped harpoons – to the mix, the level of destruction you can perpetrate gets even greater and more enjoyable.
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As mentioned before, there are also a number of enemy camps to destroy, some with lieutenants known as 'top dogs' for you to takedown. Destroying the perimeter defences to these bases requires the use of your vehicle, but to finish it off you need to head in on foot for a bit of fisticuffs. Anyone with familiarity of the combat system from the Batman Arkham games will find themselves right at home here, with a combination of light and heavy attacks, finishers, as well as the ability to counter enemy attacks, by pressing the triangle button just as they're about to take a swing at you.
The similarity to the combat found in the Batman games only goes so far, though, as it doesn't come close to having the same level of depth, which makes these hand-to-hand encounters a bit one note after a while. Fortunately, all is not lost, as what they do have is the brutality that you'd expect from a man called Mad Max. There's no finesse to his attacks, they're all about laying into enemies with as much force as possible, and this can still make your rampage through a camp fun – even if the fighting system ultimately turns out to be far too repetitive.
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In terms of its graphics Mad Max succeeds more often than it fails, so while the character models aren't great and the framerate struggles at times, when you're tearing through the wasteland in the Magnum Opus it manages to look absolutely stunning. Dust trails signal the path of enemy war parties, cars explode into fiery pieces, and the sight of a storm racing towards you as you head for cover is a real sight to behold.
Creating a visually interesting open world when all you've got to work with is essentially a wasteland is quite hard, so Avalanche Studios should be commended for creating a playground that's varied, taking you across a landscape that has you racing through rocky valleys one minute and over a sea of sand dunes the next. That said, there are occasional bugs that have an impact on your time in the world, and while most are minor, there was one that broke the scripting in a particular camp that left us unable to complete it – even after reloading the game.
Conclusion
Like the titular hero's travels across the wasteland, Mad Max has a fair amount of tedium, punctuated by bouts of exciting action. Having a huge amount of side content is never a bad thing, but the moment that you're required to dive deeper than you'd like is when it becomes a bit of a turn off. As you wander the desert on the lookout for pieces of scrap, your enjoyment will feel like it's on a downward trajectory the longer that you play. As a result, you'll try to spend as much time as you can racing across its beautifully realised wasteland, while avoiding anything that pulls you from behind the wheel.
Comments 43
Great review! I might pick this up down the line. I always enjoy a nice post-apocalypse, and I'm inclined to give Warner Bros. the benefit of the doubt when creating an open world action game, especially after Shadows of Mordor turned out to be one of the best games of last year. That said, this certainly doesn't sound essential, so I think I'll wait for a price drop before taking that journey - assuming that price drop happens before Fallout 4 comes out.
I won't waste my time with this game.
Surprising really, as I have heard many a good review from people from amazon and even on push square in the what are you playing comments.
I will get this when the price comes down.
I love this game, it may not be the most inventive but it's just pure fun. Liking the survival aspects too
Might get it from the bargain bin in a couple of years. Maybe. Not to worry Diablo 3 & MGS are keeping me very busy at the moment.
@Unashamed_116 WB is the publisher, not the developer. Monolith created Mordor and Avalanche created Mad Max.
Anyways, great review.
@DominicanGlory
That is true, I was more pointing out that Warner Bros have published some pretty good open world games recently - Shadow of Mordor, Dying Light, and (so I hear) Arkham Knight, so I kind of trust them as a publisher to deliver a pretty fun title
I've been playing this for over a week now. I think the fighting and driving is a lot of fun and I like the look of the wasteland camps. I have to agree with the reviewer about the repetitive tedious requirements to move forward in the story and to fully level the car. The game will require you to lower the enemy threat in certain areas before moving forward or ulocking an upgrade. This becomes a very long and boring process. The gameplay and looks of the game do make it worth playing though.
It sounds like a decent game let down by Open World 101. No thanks, I'm bored of that nonsense.
great game, must admit can get tedious if you plan on collecting everything. Open World 101 syndrome. I've found a happy medium. I don't bother with all the scrap locations. I do everything else, I have more than enough scrap from everything else to buy whatever I need. Leave out all the scrap locations and this game rises to a good 7.5-8 out of 10. Sure if you pass clean thru one stop, why not but otherwise leave them out and the game flows far better imho.
I'm still looking forward to it, I feel it should have erred more towards a survivalist rpg than a bog standard open world action game.
Only people who buy and play every Assassin's Creed and Far Cry think this game is good.
I'm tired of these type of copy and paste open world games and unfortunately they ruin what could be a good game. Shadows of Mordor is a good example which had some really great ideas but I couldn't get into it because it felt like I was just playing far cry or assassins creed with batman controls taped on. So I'm trying to avoid most of these type of games and only dipping back in for open world's that have there own ideas and identity such as Metal Gear and the upcoming Fallout 4, games which are built from the ground up not just using the current popular template
@DominicanGlory @Unashamed_116 : Thanks! I'm glad you enjoyed the review.
its good its very good
@AlexStinton The similarity to the combat found in the Batman games only goes so far, though, as it doesn't come close to having the same level of depth, which makes these hand-to-hand encounters a bit one note after a while.
I'm not a fan of Batmans fighting, so this is gonna be lame.
Will probably give this game a miss, I cant even force myself to play creed unity. The open world template needs trimming, more games like the Order 1886 are needed!
@themcnoisy If you don't like the Batman combat then this certainly won't be for you.
Not sure if we need more games like The Order: 1886 though! It's the poster child for repetitive gameplay.
Woah, that score is too low in my opinion! I played alot of this and actually really enjoy it. Guess everyone's got their own opinion
It really does sound like Ubisoft: The Open World Game, in that it (and all of them) focus on giving 'content' without giving any thought to making that content actually interesting.
That said, I felt the same way about Shadow of Mordor, and I fully acknowledge that if you're going to be derivative, that's how you do it, because it was enjoyable, just over-familiar.
It's Shadow of Mordor in the Mad Max setting. If that sounds like fun to you get it and if not pass. I actually like it better than Shadow of Mordor myself.
Just because a game doesn't reinvent the wheel doesn't mean it can't be enjoyable...
Bought it day1 through a PayPal promotion dirt cheap. Unfortunately it is now sitting in my Steam library while all my time goes to MGSV TPP. Did not even launch MM once. Hopefully I'll get to play it after MGSV but I'm afraid that by that time Fallout 4 is out:(.
IMHO This game had a very unfortunate launch windows. If it would have come out two or even one week prior MGSV then many, many more people would have played it.
@Splat MM does not have the nemesis system like that Mordor game had? I loved SoM for that particular feature.
I really enjoyed this game... actually enjoyed more than MGS, but i am at the beginning of MGS..
BTW when you upgrade the stongholds the tedium disappears.. As scrap is auto picked up and you generate scrap over time..
@SteveoKenobi That's true. I made sure I had the clean-up crews, and a few other projects built at the strongholds, however the scrap they generated wasn't enough - in my opinion - to avoid having to scavenge yourself if you wanted some of the better kit.
I don't agree with score TBH, but it your choice I love this game myself
@Wonlee i thought this game is 7.5 Good not Amazing
It seems like this game is the video game version of Marmite you either love it or hate.
I personally like it.
The Total Biscuit video about the large contrast between critics and general gamers in their reception to this game is very interesting. I recommend people check it out on YouTube.
Actually loving Mad Max - if you've enjoyed any of the films (and I'm a big fan of them all) - this is a dream come true... Would recommend without hesitation - this open world apocalypse is just the job till Fallout 4!!
This or Fallout 4, this or Fallout 4, this or Fallout 4... Obviously Fallout 4 hahaha. This looks ok but with so many top games in my backlog and on the horizon I think its just going to have to wait. I'll probably pick up Mad Max when its cheap and quite on the release front.
@Matroska just watched that video. It's very good. Have to agree.
I bought the game a few weeks ago. No word of a lie, I am having a blast playing it. It's addictive and fun to play. 8/10 for me.
The jumping could be a bit weird. Sometimes a small rock won't let you pass and you have to find a way around it. That for me it's the only bad thing about this game. The driving, combat is superb!!
This game deserves more glory
Reading this review and the comments, I’m surprised at the mediocre reception this received upon release. ...The 6/10; The comments about the game being a copycat borefest...
I was excited to have it as a PS Plus game but now I’m more hesitant to invest my time.
I'm excited to play this game again. I got rid of it when I needed to do so to get other games so I'm really lookin' forward to messing around in this open world again
I personally found it a blast.
Save your hard drive space not sure its worth a 6
I absolutely LOVED this game ... It scratched a lot of my gaming itches. One of my most-played last year for sure!
went nearly insane going for this platinum, never a good sign lol
Bad review. The game is great.
@AyeHaley Wrong. Period.
@RoyalD One crate that cannot be opened is all that’s keeping me from the Platinum! It’s so frustrating and WB don’t give a f...!
Late in the day but my son has just started this (stuck in lockdown, no college, no new games) and it’s reminded me how much I enjoyed it. This review score is too low in my opinion. It should be a 7 minimum, a score at which I will buy a game if I am interested in the style of gameplay, or the world in which it is set, with the idea that the reviewer may not enjoy those aspects but can still give the gameplay and mechanics a 7. The melee combat is chunky and brutal. The driving is responsive and fun. Add to that crunchy vehicular combat and you’re onto a winner. I accept the criticism that it can be repetitive, BUT, as you improve Max, improve your vehicle and improve the Strongholds, the rewards always feel worth it. I enjoyed the rhythm of the game. It never became a grind. For me it’s an 8 but with a warning! If you are a Platinum hunter (PS4), I have found this unobtainable because of one glitched container. Upsetting to be so close to Platinum only to find it’s locked out, and that at time of release WB didn’t give a f...! No patch was forthcoming and to this day it’s broken. It won’t ruin the story or the fun you have, but you will have to award yourself an unofficial Platinum once you get to that point.
I haven’t finished it, but so far 8/10 as a minimum. Has great atmosphere and is perfect for short play sessions.
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