I am nothing but the sound of my tires on the endless sand. The screams of Warboys echo all around me as I draw closer to the convoy I’m hunting. The Magnum Opus struggles for grip as its wheels slip off the flattened route. The convoy splinters as I draw near, cars slowing and shifting so they can ram me off the road. The next few minutes are a maelstrom of fire, metal and blood as the convoy is burned to the ground. This is the end of the world. This is Mad Max.

The car is king here and you’d better take good care of yours. Fuel has become level with water; if your car cannot drink neither can you. If you don’t have a car then you can’t scavenge, you can’t protect yourself and you cannot establish control. That last part is perhaps the most important. The world of Mad Max is one of continuous power struggles. Each region has its leader and it all takes is one spark to set things off.

In this case it is a rather reluctant spark. This is something I enjoyed about Fury Road too; Max has no reason to help people. He’s not a good man, always out to help people. He’s just trying to survive. He outright tells people that he won’t help them unless they reward him. It’s a refreshing personality change from the goodie-two shoes protagonist. It does take way too long for him to become interesting as a character though, mostly he gruffly dismisses everything he comes across. The ending does go some way to redeeming the problem though. Besides, the focus is more geared towards the world so I didn’t mind too much.

The world itself is very interesting. The world has ended, presumably through a nuclear holocaust, and the survivors are mutated and sick. There’s no government or system or order. If you’re strong you’ll rise to the top. It follows Fury Road’s lead and follows it well. You move from region to region and the people in charge are all interesting to meet. I wouldn’t say they’re friendly, one has to stick arrowheads through the skin of his head to control himself, but they’re willing to work with you. They each control strongholds that you can upgrade to help them (and by extension, you) out. I found it nice to feel like I could construct a base of operations under the guise of helping the desperate. Felt very Max-like.

Max also has a number of skills that make him some use to the leaders. Otherwise he’d probably be lying in a sand dune somewhere with most of his face missing. This isn’t Sad Max. His main assets are his fists, which are good for driving and for punching. The melee combat makes up roughly fifty-percent of the game and is handled well. It’s Arkham style, so you’ll be attacked from all sides and need to be quick with your counters. I found it more enjoyable than other games that use the system though, partly down to the effective use of sound and camera work when you hit someone. It makes hitting someone with a heavy attack feel very visceral, especially when Max goes into fury mode. Smashing a frustrating enemies head into a wall and watching him slide down it to the ground is grand for stress relief.

Of course, it wouldn’t really be a Mad Max game without the driving. There are a blistering number of cars, many of which your enemies will be driving until your faithful hunchback Chumbucket harpoons them out of it. The driving itself feels great, hence my excitement at chasing down convoys. Ramming other cars is one of the best ways to take them down and Mad Max conjures up the perfect feeling of speed for it. Your signature car, the Magnum Opus, can be upgraded how you like, and I really enjoyed feeling it become stronger and more responsive the more I played. The upgrade system is split down into component parts (exhaust, suspension, engine, etc) which I found really neat, as I could focus in on what I wanted the most. Speed, usually.

Unfortunately, there’s not a whole lot of interesting stuff to drive to. It is a wasteland but if I’m destined to drive over a desert for hours on end I want some pay-off. All of the objectives are pretty much: destroy the thing. Be it camps, scarecrows or snipers. I found it got repetitive fast, as ninety-percent of things could be brought down with a single harpoon shot. Camps have at least some variety, though there are really only four types. They’re fun to clear out though, as they’re essentially giant arenas full of bad guys and things to hit them with. But the world struggles to feel alive, which I guess fits thematically but makes it quite dull to traverse, only really coming alive when you spot an enemy car.

It doesn’t help that the main story is fairly dull as well. Max is trying to get across the Plains of Silence, when he is ambushed and his car stolen (which happens again in Fury Road, that poor Interceptor) by Scabrous Scrotus, the leader of Gastown. Max sticks a chainsaw in his bonce and from them on his quest is to build a new car that can cross the Plains of Silence. This amounts to not much more than a slideshow of leaders and villains and a big punch up at the end. The sidequests are so much more interesting, and lead to a lot more places, a common problem with open world games. Particularly of the Bethesda variety.

Still, Mad Max does go some way to making us feel like we’re in a post apocalyptic wasteland. Water is the best way to recover health, so after a long fight the desire to scavenge is strong. You also need scrap to upgrade you and your car, which encourages exploration early on, even if it is liberally handed to you towards the end of the game. Fuel is my favourite bit though, as you tool up your car you’ll start to burn more of it. I always kept a can in the back of the car. Either to fuel us up or to blow my way into a stronghold. Whichever came first.

The world of Mad Max is probably the best bit in this regard. It’s a broken wasteland full of broken people, Max among them. I would prefer it if there was a bit more to do in the world outside of missions but it’s still fun to ride across the open sand, smashing Warboys out of your way as your car spits fire. It does give you pause for thought though. I wonder how the world got so messed up, you think, as you slice another Warboy’s throat with his own shiv.



Pros

-The world is great conceptually

-Hunting for water, fuel and scrap is great

-Driving works really well, as does vehicle combat

-Melee combat is great; fluid and powerful

-Secondary characters are interesting and give good side missions

-Looks rather spectacular



Cons

-Max himself takes too long to become interesting

-The open world is devoid of interest for the most part

-Main storyline is fairly dull, just a framing device and nothing more



Mad Max

Developers: Avalanche Studios

Publishers: Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment

Release Date: September 1st 2015

Play it on: Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One

