The Mad Max franchise – with its themes of violent anarchy - seems a good fit for Avalanche Studios, whose Just Cause series share similar sensibilities. Warner Bros. offered us a glimpse today of Mad Max’s open-world, its combat, and its uh, American characters.

Loading

‘Physical’ Car Combat

That’s right, folks; the film series that rocketed Australian cinema onto the global stage, has received an American lick of paint. Mad Max: the video game will no longer be based in an Australian dystopian society, rather a universal wasteland filled, oddly, with Australian cars. He is no longer Mel Gibson, or indeed, an Australian anti-hero. He’s a gruff anti-hero. A description you could apply to the majority of today’s modern video game protagonists.That gripe aside, there are some interesting ideas in Avalanche’s new game. The studio is very clear that this game is in no way associated with the upcoming Mad Max: Fury Road movie starring Tom Hardy, that it is very much an original, standalone story, set in a standalone world.Combat across Mad Max’s giant, dusty world is split broadly into two camps: car combat and on-foot combat. While a lot of attention is being paid to four-wheel warfare, Avalanche also describes Max as a capable fighter, and he is. A brutal, physical one, with an unapologetic lack of finesse.In any given circumstance, Max can use his fists, his harpoon and his shotgun – which can be customized as he salvages scrap from the wasteland – and random objects littered throughout the world. Our E3 demo saw Max spear a wastelander through the stomach before blasting another one into multiple bloody pieces with his shotgun.This is a bloody game and Max fights dirty, so stealth is not a big focus, but if the situation presents itself Max still has the ability to sneak up on enemies behind and perform takedowns with his knife. One gets the feeling that keeping things quiet isn’t the focus of Mad Max, however.No Mad Max game would be complete without an elaborate car combat system. Thankfully the team at Avalanche agrees, putting it front-and-center in the game’s E3 presentation.Your fully customizable and upgradable rolling wasteland weapon has a variety of physical attributes including weight, horsepower, armor quality, tire grip and more – all taken into account when scrapping with other wasteland citizens. Rather than scripted or canned button presses (although Mad Max also has these), when two cars smash together the result is determined by each car’s stats and simple physics. The damage to your car, how far you’re tossed and the general severity of the aftermath could in theory be different in each and every collision.

At least, so said Avalanche in our hands-off demo. In practice, most enemy cars seemed to crumble like paper and explode like they’re jam-packed with gasoline. Ramming them out of the way looks like Takedown Mode in oldschool Burnout. A much better-looking Burnout, at least. Mad Max’s fire effects look truly next-gen, and plenty of details like elaborate debris and flying car parts give each explosion a level of fidelity that’s never been seen before. We’ll have to wait for a hands-on session with a farther along version of Mad Max to truly judge whether Avalanche has delivered on its promise of a more physical car combat experience.Mixing things up, enemies aren’t content to simply stay in their vehicle. They leap with reckless abandon from their own desert buggy onto yours, only to be dispatched a moment later with a bullet-time-assisted blast from Max’s trademark shotgun. Adding to the insanity, players also have a harpoon weapon at their disposal. It can be used to dismantle specific parts of an enemy vehicle (think tearing off a front tire), or just to yank the driver right out of his seat. Nice.After the carnage is concluded, players can scavenge parts or other resources from the wreckage and use the spoils to improve their ride. Giving extra attention to the aforementioned stats, of course. Adding a heavy-duty ramming grill to your vehicle might seem like a no-brainer, but it adds a lot of weight, hurting your performance.For now plenty of Mad Max details remain under wraps, but we'll undoubtedly learn more as the game nears its scheduled 2014 release. IGN will have more on Mad Max in the weeks and months ahead.

Lucy O'Brien is Assistant Editor at IGN AU. You can find her on IGN here and Twitter at @luceobrien .Justin Davis is Editor of IGN Wireless. You can follow him on Twitter at @ErrorJustin and on IGN