Mad Max

Plot : The last of the V8 Interceptors is destroyed and Max needs a new car. You get a replacement immediately, but wouldn't you like to grind hours for upgrades so it's slightly less terrible? Gameplay : Drive from A to a huge range of B locations, left click until the nutters at B are pummelled into submission (ocassionally right clicking to parry, for variety). Walk up to anything with a hotspot icon and hold the Action button to do a thing. Repeat for a hundred hours. Plot (B) : It's a game about 'Mad' Max. He's going to survive, but not develop or advance in any meaningful way. There will be a hint or two at the possibility of a redeption arc, but it's going to end with Max in exactly the same place he was as in the beginning. Nothing you do matters. Difficulty : Almost nonexistent. Your car gets repaired to full if you sit in Park for thirty seconds. Fighting is just left clicking, with some very easy right-click timing to avoid taking damage. It never gets anywhere near as complicated or engaging as in something like Hand of Fate. If you do manage to 'die', you respawn nearby without penalty. The World : New-Max, with a stable-but-oppressive wastelander society you slap around a bit. Very "Fury Road". Big chunks of the map are gated off with equipment requirements, access to which are in turn arbitrarily gated by Max's level, so you can't just drive to the obvious Heart of Darkness without a certain arbitrary amount of faffing around for XP. Summary : Although it's 90% just holding "W" down, driving around the wasteland is pretty and feels good. Combat is one-button Simon (right click if the enemy's "I'll hit you soonish" icon appears), but flows reasonably well. It is easy to zone out and ... enjoy?... the moment to moment play, despite how little anything matters in any way. It's a time killer, but not really anything else. 3.5 stars, rounded down for unskippable splash pages and long load times. TLDR - Play "Brutal Legend" instead?

Game is fun and the world building is enjoyable. However, close to the endgame (SPOILERS) there is a single race that comes out and is just utter trash design. Developers really screwed the players at this point making a game mechanic very frustrating, and almost unwinnable REQUIRED to proceed. There are other challenges that are surmounted prior to this point, but this one option throws all your prior work out on its face and laughs at you. Get it on sale for the world and game play up until this point, or pass completely if you are someone who has to finish a game completely.

This game has a cult following. I suppose it scratches a certain itch that Fallout and other post apocolyptic games miss. However, the game is very shallow and is a low effort movie tie-in. It's basically a Mad Max coat of paint over Arkham Knight.... without a good story, characters, interesting objectives, rewards, etc. It's a hollow shell made to promote Fury Road and it shows. You will have seen all the game has to offer in about 2 hours. Oh, and it has progression blocking bugs. That's a BIG problem YEARS after its release.

The settings and artwork absolutely capture the Mad Max vibe, except there are far more fresh corpses than the wasteland could support. The cars are cool and the landscapes nicely open-world. The inclusion of melee is also excellent. ...but... The vehicular combat is less Interstate '76 and more "mindlessly steer at other vehicles in hopes you can bash them in an unrealistic fashion". It's difficult to exert car control and the game-controlled cars routinely out-drive you, all while you're being exulted by the NPCs as a "great driver". Your saving grace is the completely overwhelming firepower you have. Never mind that you can only get the V8s at the very end of the game, and then you get all five pretty much at once, after suffering through the entire game with the V6s. That's bullcrap. I have three V8s in various states of rebuild in my garage right now, plus three more in vehicles. The only V6 is in my wife's car. GIVE US THE V8s! The melee controls are absolutely horrible. In theory they're great, but in practice they just don't work. It's far too common that a finishing move on an opponent pushes you past secondary enemies, but you can't get turned around to face them, and they punch you in the back while you're wailing on air. One of the "Legend" achievements is to defeat 12 enemies in a row without taking damage. I'm sure somebody's done it, but I'd click for a parry - with the parry icon active, but Max would just stand stupidly while someone punched him. Or some idiot would make a move that has to be dodged and Max just refused to move. Or some fool would throw a rock at Max. The boss fights are god-awful. You MUST defeat them in certain ways, and often the game just refuses to act in a way that makes that achievable. You MUST get Scrotus to attack barrels, but it only works in 1 attack in 10, but he can kill you in three attacks. Do the math on that fubar. Hitting him, even with a weapon, does no damage. This could have been so much better.

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