The Mad Max film franchise of the late 70s and early 80s brought a fresh-faced Mel Gibson to the role of Max, a lawman in a post-apocalyptic world striving to protect his family and gather resources. Whilst the trilogy ended in 1985 it remained a cinematic touchstone for the genre and period despite the lead man’s subsequent fall from Hollywood grace.
Thirty years after the release of Mad Max Beyond The Thunderdome, Warner Bros. Games brought out their adaptation of the franchise with Mad Max, an open-world adventure similar to their Batman: Arkham series prominent at around the same time. The Arkham games were front and centre of the gaming zeitgeist of that period. Strangely, I never knew Mad Max existed until it was recently mentioned on a Youtube countdown list of the ‘Best Games You’ve Probably Never Played’, or something to that effect.
I don’t know why Mad Max didn’t come to my attention sooner. Its release coincided with the cinematic reboot of the franchise featuring Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron that exceeded any reasonable expectations over quality and profit when it came out. I’m glad of the delay. I picked up a copy of the game for £10 from CEX when No Man’s Sky was beginning to get tedious. I have been playing it regularly for a month-or-two now. Here’s what I’ve taken from it so far.
You play in the third person as Max whose story objectives are to reassemble his precious car and kill the war lord Scrotus. The developers crafted three modes of intertwining gameplay for the player to fulfil these objectives; driving, combat, and scavenging. You and your 300-esque sidekick Chumbucket set out to rebuild the car, called the Magnum Opus, customising its engine and tyres as well as adding weapons such as harpoons and side-shooting flames. You drive from location to location, destroying landmarks and convoys, infiltrating enemy strongholds, slaying everyone within, and stealing every blue-glowing item of value you can find. That’s the game. I haven’t yet finished the story but set-pieces aside, I doubt there will be any significant developments in this regard from now on.
While somewhat simplistic, Mad Max has been a welcome change from the intense frustration/reward pinwheel of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and the creeping tedium of No Man’s Sky. I had hoped the latter would provide relaxation after Kuro’s demise but the sheer size and length of the game pushed me to impatience. Meanwhile, Mad Max takes place within a sizeable yet manageable map where little more than quickly-achievable level-ups and story checkpoints block your advancement.
Initially I found the driving in the game to be spongy, with a frustrating imbalance between speed and steering that made all vehicles difficult to control. However, as you progress through the game and upgrade the Magnum Opus the driving experience improves noticeably, if never reaching GTA IV levels of enjoyment.
The combat system is basic. On the Xbox One you press/hold the X button to attack, Y to parry, A to execute finishers with hand or knife, RB to roll, LB to auto-aim and B to fire your shotgun. Enemies are kind enough to attack one at a time even when swarming in large numbers, though the time between their attacks decreases in correlation with the number of enemies present. You can stand still and time your parries and counters if you want but it is much easier to move around so the enemy targets separate themselves from the pack before attacking you. There are often a variety of weapons lying around. My favourite is the Thunderstick; a javelin with an explosive trapped to it. You can figure the rest out. You won’t die very often during combat. You are far more likely to meet your demise stepping off a relatively small cliff. For all his toughness fighting maniacs to the death Max is strangely susceptible to falls from medium heights.
Scavenging is by far the most time-consuming aspect of the game. Every mapped location containing enemies also contains scrap, aka loot. Locations vary in size. There are remote outposts which are empty save a photograph (history relic) and a single piece of scrap. There are towering strongholds with gangs guarding every section, the gauntlet before you reach the Top Boy (mini-boss) or blow up some fuel tankers. There is every size and difficulty of location in between. The bigger the location the more scrap there is and the trickier it becomes to find it all.
There are also Insignias to destroy, these flaming red wheels with Scrotus’ face moulded into the middle. In a large stronghold there could be eleven pieces of scrap, two history relics, and four insignias to find. Most of these you will find along the way as you clear enemies from one section after another. But some -and there are always some- of the items will be hidden away in obscure corners, behind removable walls, or on top of high objects. Finding every item takes such a long time. It’s distracting. I spent so much time collecting scrap et al. in Jeet’s territory I largely neglected the story mode, causing me to forget (presumably) vital plot points. My obsessive treasure hunting did have an unexpected benefit though. By the time I resumed the story mode Max was hugely overpowered, making an already manageable game that much easier.
If I spent £50 on Mad Max when it was released I would have been gutted. The game just isn’t worth it. It’s too repetitive and there is a sense of imprecision that pervades the entire experience. Interacting with items and objects is particularly cumbersome. However, seeing as I spent one-fifth of that and had rather low expectations to begin with, I declare myself satisfied. I will complete the story mode before deciding whether I want to spend the time collecting every single item on the map. I want that Crash Bandicoot satisfaction of completing a game 100%. I just don’t know if I want to repeat the same process for hours and hours on end.
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