Mad Max

Of a deeply flawed game. The pacing of the cutscenes and narratives is terrible, everything is extremely guided and linear at the start, there's a complete lack of player agency. The gameplay is satisfying and the car combat is good, but mechanically it has a ton of issues, for example: There's a system in the game called "fury mode" it's a type of rage mode that Max gets after scoring numerous hits and combos, etc. Problem is, you don't get to control when this triggers, it happens automatically. When Max enters fury mode, he starts performing numerous brutal attacks on enemies around him, some of which are non-cancellable, meaning you can't counter when -for example- Max decides to perform a suplex on an enemy. You also don't get to control when he does or doesn't do this, so you're left in this situation where you're going to get hit if Max chooses to suplex a guy in the wrong place and at the wrong time. The game is filled with stuff like that, just seemingly small issues that end up collectively bringing the game down at all times. Want to fill up your canteen with water, wait a couple of seconds until this happens, why can't it be faster? Want to collect scrap to upgrade your car, you have to wander around camps with ton of verticality and intertwined narrow pathways where the scrap might be placed in obscure locations; wouldn't it have been bad to mark these on the mini map? The game also doesn't have any sort of replayability, no NG+ of any kind, nothing; yet the game has a huge focus in upgrading your stuff, so you're left with a ton of upgrades by the end, but no activities to use them on. Sigh... The game is also not that challenging, it's a fairly easy experience.

This game is so much fun and you can easily lose yourself for hours on end just causing vehicular mayhem alone. Be Mad Max and make your enemies suffer!

When this came out it was most comparable to Arkham Knight, with its high octane vehicular combat and its somehow higher octane beat em' up game play where you brutalize crowds of mooks like Bat-man. No those comparisons never stop, but I don't mean it as a denigration. Mad Max takes the Arkham style of fighting and tunes up the punchiness of combat, with more clearly violent and bloody punches with the intent to kill. It looks and plays the same as Arkham, but feels like you are hitting much harder. You're main gadget isn't sticky grenade flips or batarangs/freeze ray/taser blasts or any other quick stun, its shooting the pain in the ass enemy in front of you with a shotgun and blasting his face off into a spray that mists his buddies. The car combat is a brutal mix of racing, aiming, ramming, and explosions as you use a mix of harpoons, explosives, and guns to rip up an enemies ride, tear their gunners/drivers out of their seats, and ram their car to hell without being blasted to it yourself. The story is mildly lacking, but in your explorations of the waste you hit setpieces and characters that perfectly fit the world of Mad Max. Story isn't the point, its wandering the salt flats of an endless desert and finding a massive battleship perched in the clips above you, laughing at the absurdity as the desert leeches your moisture out of you. Its the insane and desperate people you meet, terrified at how much more dangerous Max proves to be than them. The feeling of finding the Shaman and having Max grow through out his journey is a more moving plot point, than even the main final confrontation where you rekill a man with a chainsaw seperating the lobes of his brain. This game is a vibe, it is gorgeous with vistas stretching beyond the miles of road you traverse. it is vast and always full of something to find. It's gameplay is polished to a fine shine, and has all the intensity you would want from beating a man bloody into the dry dirt. 5/5

An absolute classic game. Hugely enjoyable. If you have any interest at all, do not hesitate - especially when it is virtually being given away for free in sales. The driving and combat mechanics are incredibly fluid and user friendly. The story is interesting and the character development is awesome. Damn, I've played it several times and now Iwant to play it again.... 6 stars out of 5

Too many same bold heads, but fun so far.