It’s not every day that you get to cover a game that promises to be quite a bit different to any you’ve played before, so my curiosity was certainly peaked when Avalanche Studios’’ magnum opus (gettit?) arrived.

Many of us will be familiar with the original Mel Gibson films, with others introduced to the series through the recent iteration Mad Max: Fury Road, which hit the cinema recently. However, for those unfamiliar with Mad Max, let me give you a rough run down (or you could just treat yourself to some cinematic fun by looking up the old films…);

The game is set in the post-apocalyptic future ™ and follows the escapades of the eponymous Mad Max as he pursues his own agenda of staying alive and furthering his desire for better vehicular transport across the harrowed landscape. Think fallout, but with custom cars; for this post-apocalyptic world has vehicles… lots and lots of vehicles. While you might have imagined that the post-nuclear society might be based largely on food, shelter or, perhaps, re-congregating communities, you’d be dead wrong. In Mad Max, the new world is based squarely on souped-up vehicles and a surprisingly abundant supply of gasoline. Who knew?

Such is the world of Mad Max and the game doesn’t stray far from the series’ thematic highway, if you get my drift.

You follow Max as he embarks upon a quest to build the Magnum Opus, his signature cruiser, with the help of the, we’ll go with ‘enigmatic’, mechanic (known as a Black Finger in the game) Chumbucket. Chumbucket, you see, believes you’re the embodiment of driving prowess sent to him by the motor gods to…. do something of some sort. The actual detail was slightly lost on me, I must admit, but he refers to you as ‘Saint’ throughout, so I’m pretty sure you’re the second coming of the Octane Jesus in his eyes.

Character motivations for Max are set up pretty un-subtly in the intro, which sees your existing car stolen by a gang run by the charmingly named warlord Scabrous Scrotus and you fighting him on the back of his truck, finally trepanning him with his own chainsaw. To be fair, the intro is as high-octane as the game’s premise, so fair play to the devs on that one.

You encounter Chumbucket, somehow convince him you’re an angel in dusty rags and you set off together to scavenge, steal and murder your way to a new car.

So, gameplay… Gameplay pans out as an odd amalgamation of potentially familiar mechanics. You view the world from a third-person over the shoulder position and combat is split into two very distinct sections; Vehicular and pedestrian.

Pedestrian combat is effectively a Quick Time Event (QTE) system, with enemy standard attacks countered with the press of a specific button (the same button every time), heavy attacks to be dodged (signalled by a red danger icon over the attacker’s head) and a few combos and finishers with weapons available. It’s pretty simple stuff, but satisfyingly meaty. You have a Rage Meter which builds up based on un-interrupted hits and activates a Rage Mode when full that tones the screen and increases your damage for a period.  The SFX and artsy application of slow motion combine effectively with well-crafter haptic feedback from the controller to make for an engaging, if not hugely challenging, combat system. You also have a shotgun which you can fire off for a quick kill here and there, though as ammo is hugely scarce it’s a few and far between solution and I often found myself forgetting it was there at all.

One light issue with the hand-to-hand combat is that your enemies tend to queue up and wait to take their turns running up and attacking your fist with their jaw, like they’re all waiting at a supermarket deli counter that you’re running and the only thing on offer that day are beatings. It’s something that blights most post-Arkham Asylum games that have taken influence from the Batman combat mechanics. While I can’t come up with a way of avoiding this issue and keeping the game cinematic and, honestly, playable, it doesn’t change the fact that the one-at-a-time aspect of the mob combat is somewhat unrealistic, as any self-respecting mob of goons would have group curb stomped my Max into the dust within approximately 10 seconds.

Vehicle combat, on the other hand, is what the game hangs its hat on really. What’s Mad Max, after all, if it isn’t about blasting through the wasteland, duelling with other smoke-belching hot-rods; smashing back and forth until one of you explodes in a cloud of fire, metal and body parts?

Weeeellllll, on that score the vehicular combat is a bit of a mixed bag, if I’m honest. First and foremost, a disclaimer: I’m not a driving games guy. Never really have been, so high-octane driving or modding of cars is not something to keep me engaged, so while I’ve done my best to look at these aspects of the game objectively, if you like that stuff you’re likely to forgive much more than I am, so take some of the following in that context.

At its core, the vehicle combat in Mad Max is enjoyable. Recalling games like Carmageddon and Destruction Derby, it tasks you with smashing up your opponent’s rigs until they explode. There’s nothing more satisfying to steam head-on into another vehicle and see it explode into a satisfying ball of flame. However, the issue is that it tends to degenerate into the same thing as the previously mentioned older games, where you and your opponents end up circling each other at low speed, trying to line up an attack, which is even less inspiring than it sounds. However, when you notch an enemy down to low health, they flee and that brings you into a full pelt chase, which is a bit more engaging. However, the game is pretty unforgiving vehicle-stability-wise and I found my car all too often being flung far off course by slight bumps and scenery, which while probably realistic, is a bit of a game dampener for me. Oh and infinite chasm’s to fall into, in a driving combat game are possibly the most annoying thing ever devised, especially in a game that requires you to rotate the camera to look behind you a lot.

Ah yes, camera rotation. It’s a bit of an annoyance too. I found it really hard to get used to the way it sometimes auto-rotated, but sometimes didn’t, which is, again, something of a hindrance as you blast through a landscape littered with slight bumps of doom that send you careering over death chasms…

However, as I said, I’m not a driving game guy, so I’m willing to assume that most of the above is caused largely by my ineptitude and that for seasoned driving game aficionados the vehicular combat will be equally challenging and rewarding and, indeed, for the most part even I, a fully paid up member of the disliking-driving-games club, found the driving at its worst bearable and at its best enjoyable. That’s something of an achievement for the devs, to make the game engaging enough for even someone like me to enjoy it.

The general gameplay is pretty varied, with a truck-load of side-quests of various types to engage in, from pulling down totem poles and clearing minefields to assaulting bases and floating up in air balloons to survey local areas. The game is vast and will fill up enough hours for even the barest of side-quest obsessives to get their money’s worth and more.

Mad Max is a bit of a Frankenstein of a game (and yes, I know Frankenstein was the doctor not the monster, but work with me ok?). It takes a little bit from lots of different games an mashes them together and shoots them through with a huge amount of energy to make something that, while not always the most sculpted and pristine of games, is huge, functioning and will definitely kick your ass. I had a lot of fun playing Mad Max and while it’s unlikely to convince any of us non-driving heathens to see the fuel light, it will definitely appeal to anyone with even a passing interest in motor-based gaming. Think Carmageddon/Destruction Derby mixed with Fallout or the often-forgotten Rage (with maybe a little Watchdogs thrown in) and you’re not far off.

Mad Max; you don’t have to be mad to love it, but it helps!

 

 

 

I’m sorry…

 

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