Mad Max

As you may have gathered, The Mad Max game opens within the vast wastelands of the Australian outback, where all manner of death and evil occur. We experience the events before the tremendously explosive film Fury Road, where Max Rockatansky crosses path with a ruthless gang, led by their leader and son of Fury Road’s villain, Scabrous Scrotus. After being beaten to a bloody pulp and left for dead, Max picks himself up and wonders the dessert. He comes across Chumbucket, a helpful and religious fanatic who mistakes Max as the messiah of the wasteland and together they will defeat the evils of Scrotus. Chumbucket offers his devotion to Max and has a handy trait of being a world class mechanic too (lucky). In return for being allowed to follow, Chumbucket will build Max his new dream machine of death, the Magnum Opus.

Mad Max shows a great depth of character development and mythos within this mad world, where characters such as Chumbucket, Stank Gum and the mysterious traveller Griffa will entrance you with their bizarre and bewildering personalities. The world itself, named the "Great White" has a strong personality with a diverse set of terrains and environments to traverse. Thankfully, the game pulls off a difficult job, by making a post-apocalyptic world look and feel fresh, organic and highly engaging.

However the main fault with the game's writing is the prolonged and simple narrative. I for one, love a lengthy campaign if it's filled with diverse and dynamic story and gameplay elements. But when it’s repeating major plot points over and over again, it gets a little dull quickly. Such as go to a friendly camp, help them out, build car a little more and repeat three or four times while killing off certain antagonists. It shows a lack of vision or skill to develop a story that’s as engaging as the characters or the world.

Still, a sandbox game wouldn't be complete without offering a huge amount of interaction and progressive skill trees and upgrades to keep you invested. Certainly Mad Max doesn't disappoint here. We are given quite the list of activities to experience where Max can exercise his skills in brutal combat, sabotage and above all, driving. Mostly driving. Max will have to complete side and story missions in order to progress, securing scrap metal used to build parts for your car and upgrades for Max. Along improving the numerous strongholds for your fellow allies in the wasteland. All of these factors combined make Mad Max rather engaging world to immerse in and will captivate players as any strong sand box game should.

What makes Mad Max such an proactive experience is how players can progress throughout the game in a natural manner without the dreaded feeling of needless grinding. It doesn't force players through the same process that Destiny did so badly and instead has the player build the important aspects of their journey in a manner that's more organic and with new objectives being added as the player does so. This helps to avoid any stop and start moments that demand you to partake in a rather tedious event to upgrade an certain aspect, solely to continue the game. Rage was the biggest culprit for this, along with Destiny as well. Mad Max makes the approach more interesting and natural to the player, rewarding them for hard work and not holding them back entirely for not putting in the effort.

At times, I felt as though I was slightly overwhelmed by the sheer number of upgrading systems there were. Some systems could have been left out and more of a focus put on others could have been implemented. The game is still highly gripping, and loaded with an arrangement of entertaining objectives.

The melee combat feels as intensive as the Hollywood blockbusters do, packing a barbed wire punch to the face. Taking elements from the Batman Arkham series, Max can ram his fists into other NCPs, linking combos, countering oncoming attacks and unleashing a form of Rage attack that kills everything within reach. It’s brutal, yet not at all cleaver or original as upgrades for combat are limited and overall fairly easy to win most of your encounters. I also found the lack of creativity for enemy types or that the boss battles also underwhelming as they don’t amount in scale, size or variation. The only time the game did really pull off an outstanding and memorable encounter was the climatic end. This spectacular finale actually makes the game feel close to the action of Fury Road, inducing an epic battle of explosive proportions.

Even though the Melee combat doesn't live up in some aspects, the car combat certainly does. Players will enjoy the visually stunning destruction while pulling off insane stunts and manoeuvres. It’s furious, brutal and thought provoking when you engage with other combatants with an array of amusing weapons, upgrades and tactics. This includes ramming into others with a spiked front ram, shooting exposed gas tanks on the back of an enemy car or harpooning the driver right out of the front seat.

As you expect, survival is a key factor in the gameplay. You’ll need water and food to restore health, so locating sources of water or eating rodents and freshly opened tins of dog food will help you in any time of need. Your car will also need fuel which can be scavenged from enemy camps and hideouts, making exploration a vital component to your time in the wasteland. This would make for a more thrilling and challenging survival game if this concept had more importance in the game rather than restoring health but a timed exercise to avoid death by hunger.

Mad Max is a hugely enjoyable game that offers vast amount of content that will surely last you around 30 hours of gameplay. The game does present some flaws with the repetitive nature in its melee combat, enemy designs and prolonged array of mission objectives that are varied but often go on a little too long. But overall, the game gives us a great deal of brutal car combat, a beautifully vast and open world that’s fun to traverse and that charm of the Mad Max we’ve grown to love in the films.
All I can say is “Oh what a game! What a lovely game!”

An Xbox One copy of Mad Max was provided by Warner Bros. Interactive entertainment