Mad Max was easily my favorite film of 2015. Everything about it was perfect, and I’ve seen if five times, and each time I watch it, I see/catch something new. Not many movies can keep showing you different things after that many viewings. A couple years back at E3 (the annual gaming convention) the game was announced, and I was instantly excited. I grew up watching Mad Max, I remember when USA or TNT used to always play those movies, and my brother and I would be glued to the screen, and fascinated by the post-apocalyptic world that George Miller brought to life. Mad Max is actually the series that started my love for the post-apocalyptic film genre. To this day, my brother and I will watch any movie that falls in that genre, no matter how bad or cliche it is. But luckily, Mad Max: The Game, doesn’t fall into that category of bad or cliche.
According to MadMaxGame.com the plot to the game, is as follows:
In a world gone mad, only the savage survive. In the Wasteland it’s every man for himself. Playing as reluctant warrior, Mad Max, you must embark on a treacherous journey to build the ultimate war vehicle, and leave the madness behind.
Overview:
I would say that I have logged in at least 15 hours of game play in the last two weeks. I’m not a hardcore gamer, and that will show in the review, hence why I’ve only logged 15hrs of gameplay. But, in those 15 hours, I have had a blast playing as Max Rockatansky facing off against the savages that occupy the wasteland. The game is a fun “sandbox” game, which means it’s open world and has a ton of activities that you can partake in, besides the main story quests. The main objective of the game is to build the ultimate “Magnum Opus,” which is the ultimate war vehicle. After your Interceptor was stolen/destroyed and you were left stranded and forsaken in the desert by a group of Warboys, (run by Immortan Joe’s son Scabrous Scrotus) you meet a character named “Chumbucket,” (no, he’s not Plankton from Spongebob…) who is a zealous blackfinger (mechanic) and believes you are the chosen one to harness The Angel of Combustion. He then helps you rebuild your car, the Magnum Opus, in order to make the Wasteland a better place, you must team up with survivors and defeat the warlords of the Wasteland on your journey to the Plains of Silence.
Gameplay:
The gameplay is awesome. As I said above, I have been a Mad Max fan for years. Honestly, I never dreamed of the day when I could play an open world game as Mad Max. As a kid, I always pretended that my Hot Wheels were either cars from James Bond or Mad Max, so it’s a special feeling to be 22 and playing a video game that you imagined at 8 or 9 with toy cars. The gameplay reminds me a lot of two previous video game franchises that I think people will be able to relate too: Twisted Metal, and Batman: Arkham.
I mention Twisted Metal because of the vehicle dynamics. I would dare say you spend about 75% of the game driving in your vehicle, and waging war on patrolling vehicles, and war parties. The further you go into the wasteland, the more powerful the vehicles become. So, it’s very important to always level up your vehicle. The way of leveling up consists of destroying enemy vehicles, or enemy building, and collecting the scrap metal from explosions. The more scrap you collect, the more you can upgrade your Magnum Opus, and Max himself. Most upgrades cost between 300-600 pieces of scrap, which can take anywhere from twenty minutes to an hour depending on where you are searching, or how many vehicles you encounter in the wasteland. Like Twisted Metal, this game is all about destroying the enemy’s vehicle. From using the Harpoon Gun to rip them out of the vehicle, throwing boomsticks at enemies, and
sometimes being forced out of your vehicle and fighting in hand to hand combat with Warboys.
This is when the Batman: Arkham series tie into the game. The fighting combat is very similar to Batman, where you are prompted before counters and the flow is very similar to the feel of that game. The fighting scenes can be absolutely brutal in the game. There are moments when Max will pick a character up and drop him on his head, causing his neck to snap, other moves involve your iconic sawed off shotgun being pressed into someones stomach and you just blow them away. One of the most painful moves would be the bone breaking counter, which snaps the bone out of a warboy’s arm and leaves them stunned for a moment, and while stunned you can stab them in the back of the head with a shiv, similar to something you would see in one of the prison scene on Sons of Anarchy. The game is absolutely brutal when it comes to fight scenes and when Max reaches Fury Mode, all hell will break loose. And leave all enemies dead on the ground.
Final Thoughts:
If you have seen Fury Road, or any other Mad Max films, this game is a must have for a fan of the series. The game takes place somewhere between Beyond Thunderdome and Fury Road, so seeing Fury Road isn’t a requirement for the game, but it will seriously make things flow easier for you. The game is very much like the movie where it’s all out crazy and far from sanity. From one of the first cutscenes to much deeper in the story, my stomach has turned and I’ve witness gross things in the wasteland. This game truly takes a savage to survive. From eating maggots in rotting corps to stay alive, to fighting warboys and vultures, you will always be left wonder what’s going on, and wandering the wasteland. Two final notes that are worth mentioning, since the game takes place in Australia, the driver side of each vehicle is on the right side of the vehicle. EVERY TIME I enter the vehicle, I get in on the wrong side, and chumbucket was mentioned this multiple times in the game. Also, always keep a spare thing of guzzoline in your magnum opus because the vehicle WILL run out of gas. It’s a very neat, but also frustrating aspect of the game. But, in a world where guzzoline rules the land, if you don’t have it, you won’t survive.