Mad Max

I guess it was again time to play Warner Bros. games I was never going to if a Humble WB Bundle hadn't been too good to pass. As the first one of this bundle to play I chose Mad Max. It's not a game adaptation of Mad Max: Fury Road though it was still released in the same year as the movie.

The game was developed by Avalanche's Stockholm studio. It doesn't have the technical issues of the company's other 2015 title, Just Cause 3 (developed by the newer Avalanche New York). It's hard to say if that is because of more proficient developers, different version of the engine, or just the fact that the wasteland has a lot less stuff going on in it. Or maybe all of them.

A beautiful open world driving/action game

But Mad Max sure does run well. It also looks quite nice. Particularly the sky is very pleasing to look at. It's a shame the game's audio is severely lacking. Mad Max really would've benefited from nice ambient sounds and good music. They should've licensed Fury Road's music.

For instance, how incredibly cool would it be if Brothers in Arms started playing every time you engage a convoy? And then the track would be centered on the convoy's lead vehicle and fade away if you got too far away from it. It's such a missed opportunity.

Uninspired on the inside

Shameful too is how Avalanche felt the need to fill the open world with repetitive tasks. It was to be expected, though. Scarecrows are there just for busywork but even worse are minefields. The intention for them seemed to have been a place to refill your ammo. But in order to find the mines to disarm them, you need to bring your dog and to do that you need to drive your sidekick's buggy from a stronghold since the dog can't ride in the Magnum Opus car. The buggy of course has no upgrades or weapons, thus the only reason to drive it are the minefields. The worst thing is that if you have the appropriate stronghold upgrade, your ammo gets refilled when you visit it, making the minefields lose their purpose.

The stronghold upgrades overall diminish the feel a post-apocalyptic world where supplies are scarce. Sure you have to work for the upgrades by finding each project part, but after doing that you can just fast travel to a stronghold to get your fuel, ammo, water, and health refilled. I think the game would've been more interesting with survival being more in the focus. Like if there was no fast travel and you'd need to go for a scavenge hunt on foot to find more fuel.

Being able to store more stuff in the car would've also been cool. I really liked how Max can physically place a jerrycan at the back of the Magnum Opus. Maybe the same could've worked for food, water, and melee weapons.

One thing I liked was clearing the various enemy camps. Even though they are ultimately built from the same parts and there ever was only dull collectibles and scrap in them, exploring was still fun as they each have a unique layout.

Avalanche used the Arkham style combat (maybe due to the publisher?) for on-foot fights. It's unfortunately poorly implemented. Enemies don't take turns as smoothly as in the Batman games nor is there a multicounter move. It's not too difficult but sure lacks the fun of Batman: Arkham City and Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor.

The combat is why I played the game with a controller. (Menu interface seemed like a poor fit for a mouse too.) It had slightly different control scheme than I've used to. You don't run using A but the RT. I guess that is because you can then control vehicle speed. It took me a while to get used to.

Mad Max is also plagued by the annoying interface design in modern games that makes you hold down a button to do stuff. I don't think just pressing A ever does anything so the requirement for having to hold it to pick up something etc. was put in solely for annoyance purposes.

I wasn't expecting much from the story but I still found the ending unnecessarily shitty. To waste all you worked for the whole game uselessly like that was just dumb.

Updated 2018-11-19: Notes on game controls