GTA in a desert wasteland? Sign me up!
Mad Max does a ton of things right. Driving feels great, especially once you have a few upgrades installed. Cornering feels weighty but responsive, and the boost meter fills up fast enough so that your thumb never gets too bored before it has another chance to hit A. Combat is also fun, playing similarly to Rocksteady's Batman games. It's not particularly deep and there are only a handful of enemy types, but it was plenty to keep me engaged and coming back for more.
While the fundamentals are strong, the other bits are hit or miss. One big sticking point is the in-game economy. Upgrades are purchased with scrap, which you find littered around the wasteland. You can pick up a handful of scrap from certain defeated enemies, and also travel to marked locations on your map to salvage it. The problem is that these marked locations often only yield scrap in single-digit quantities. When you need 2000 scrap to upgrade your engine, driving around the map and collecting 2 or 3 or 11 pieces of scrap at each location just feels weird. Ultimately, most of my scrap came from my strongholds, which when upgraded can collect scrap from wrecked enemy vehicles automatically and also make occasional scrap deliveries. Why drive all over the map gathering scrap when your base will deliver 500 pieces every 10 or 20 minutes? Thanks to these deliveries gathering scrap never felt like a grind, but it nonetheless felt poorly balanced.
There are plenty of other issues, too. While the desert is beautiful, character models -- especially the roadside NPCs -- look like they were ripped straight from the PS3/360 era. The story is neither here nor there -- it's not great but it also moves at a brisk pace with mercifully short cutscenes. Finally, the game is also notable for its lack of verticality, which is particularly strange given that this is the team that developed the Just Cause games. Then again, the driving and combat are so entertaining that I never felt like I needed to go mountain climbing.
I must also say that I love how my car always lands on its wheels. Realistic? No. But flipped cars are no fun.
Is Mad Max a great game? No, but it's still a good spot of fun. Check it out if you're looking for a mindless open-world game that mostly respects your time.
Mad Max does a ton of things right. Driving feels great, especially once you have a few upgrades installed. Cornering feels weighty but responsive, and the boost meter fills up fast enough so that your thumb never gets too bored before it has another chance to hit A. Combat is also fun, playing similarly to Rocksteady's Batman games. It's not particularly deep and there are only a handful of enemy types, but it was plenty to keep me engaged and coming back for more.
While the fundamentals are strong, the other bits are hit or miss. One big sticking point is the in-game economy. Upgrades are purchased with scrap, which you find littered around the wasteland. You can pick up a handful of scrap from certain defeated enemies, and also travel to marked locations on your map to salvage it. The problem is that these marked locations often only yield scrap in single-digit quantities. When you need 2000 scrap to upgrade your engine, driving around the map and collecting 2 or 3 or 11 pieces of scrap at each location just feels weird. Ultimately, most of my scrap came from my strongholds, which when upgraded can collect scrap from wrecked enemy vehicles automatically and also make occasional scrap deliveries. Why drive all over the map gathering scrap when your base will deliver 500 pieces every 10 or 20 minutes? Thanks to these deliveries gathering scrap never felt like a grind, but it nonetheless felt poorly balanced.
There are plenty of other issues, too. While the desert is beautiful, character models -- especially the roadside NPCs -- look like they were ripped straight from the PS3/360 era. The story is neither here nor there -- it's not great but it also moves at a brisk pace with mercifully short cutscenes. Finally, the game is also notable for its lack of verticality, which is particularly strange given that this is the team that developed the Just Cause games. Then again, the driving and combat are so entertaining that I never felt like I needed to go mountain climbing.
I must also say that I love how my car always lands on its wheels. Realistic? No. But flipped cars are no fun.
Is Mad Max a great game? No, but it's still a good spot of fun. Check it out if you're looking for a mindless open-world game that mostly respects your time.