Completed the main story missions of Mad Max after about 30 hours of playtime. Still have some wasteland missions to go.
WB Game studios do a great job with their IPs really leaning into the characterization of the protagonist as an S-tier badass. Whether it's Talion from the Shadow games, Batman from the Arkham games, or Max from this... you're a one man army who doesn't take crap from anyone.
The story, while very poorly paced, is pure Max. The life of a lone wanderer in a hellish post apocalyptic wasteland. Trust no one. Help only yourself. The strong Lord over the weak. Death is preferable to continued existence. Never rest. Keep wandering the plains of silence in the hope of finding peace.
Some people have suggested that Mad Max is an allegory for limbo, a place where the cursed go to either burn off their sins to enter heaven, or stack on more sins to descend into hell. Those like Max, tough but inherently good with a strong sense of justice, will ascend. Everyone else? One way ticket down. It makes as much sense as anything makes in the Mad Max universe (Max looks like he's in his 30's, but was alive when the apocalypse occured, but everything looks like it all went to crap 100's of years ago).
As a game Mad Max is like 80% of the way there. It's a great 10 hour game that gets diluted into a OK 40 hour game through open world cut and paste.
The highlight of the game is the vehicular combat and vehicle customization. There is a lot, it's quite unique, and it's well developed. Upgrades are unlocked by reducing threat in allied bases and completing main and side missions.
Max follows his own upgrade tree determined by reputation. Complete any one of a couple dozen repeatable feats and he will rank up (Do a perfect parry 5 times, kill 12 enemies in a row without taking damage, defeat 10 enemy vehicles by ramming them, etc...). It's a fun and clever system that avoids standard XP points and rewards clean gameplay. The game world also responds to Max's growing reputation as well with some flavor commentary from various wastelanders.
Hand to hand combat should be familiar to anyone who has played other WB "flow" combat games. It's a little rough here, Max does have some issues handling large groups of enemies since you cannot multi-parry forcing you to either take a hit or dodge away interrupting the flow of the combat. Button presses don't always register depending on where Max is in his current animation, causing some cheap hits etc. The game is pretty forgiving in terms of difficulty overall, and Max will eventually be upgraded into an unkillable juggernaut, so very rarely does this result in death.
Everything wrong with this game is everything wrong with mid-2010's open worlds. 90% of the game world is an ever growing list of grocery items and honey-do's. Defeat these enemy camps, climb these towers, collect scrap to upgrade your base/vehicle/Max.
Hell, even the mini-bosses that watch over camps look exactly the same and play exactly the same with virtually 0 variation between them.
The game tries it's best to have different regions of the map be different kinds of wasteland hell, but really it's all desert and there are only so many ways to skin that cat. A couple stand out locations like The Dump and The Dunes, but you really only encounter those late in the game.
Mad Max could have had it all. It was right on the precipice of open world gaming history but then just stopped and didn't take that extra step to add some surprises and keep the player engaged while completing their checklist of chores. The story missions (which did have some fun unique locations and gameplay) needed to be more spread out, and gate the open world a bit more to prevent players from burning themselves out.
As it is I'd heartily recommend Mad Max, but know you're getting a deeply flawed gem. Plenty there to enjoy, but plow through the story as soon as the open world starts to drag you down.
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