Console Corner: Mad Max review

The game has a vast open world with lots of things to do. But not me. I’m playing the game that has been entirely overshadowed by Big Boss and FOX, the one based on a huge movie license that could be either awful or fantastic: yes, I’m playing Mad Max.

That translated into serious piracy numbers, with Mad Max: Fury Road taking the top spot at 22.90 million shares on torrent networks.

The game begins with Max facing off against Lord Scrotus, an utterly handsome name, and as you may expect Max essentially loses everything including his beloved Interceptor. Now, if your name’s Mad Max you can imagine how madder you’d get with your auto stolen.

This is also where the game starts to become a bit uninteresting. Set in a post-apocalyptic world, the landscape is populated with deserts, canyons and most of all, wreckage. How much you enjoy these activities depends on your preference but if you enjoy them, you definitely wont run out of things to do. Speaking of the harpoon, make an effort to level that up as early as possible, because not only is it helpful for pulling down towers and skewering snipers, you can also use it on other cars during vehicular duels. Luckily, the hand-to-hand combat is not necessarily the ultimate focus of the game.

The other firearm available to Max is the sniper rifle, which lives in the back of the auto, and can only be fired while perched over the roof of the vehicle. In the end, the real fun in “Mad Max” is found by exploring the wasteland in your souped up war machine, listening to the rumble of the V8 and getting into scraps wherever and whenever you can.

What i did like about the combat is how the enemies just go all in and aren’t afraid to fight even in groups forcing you to learn to parry and counter; which are done by pressing the triangle button. Starting from your stronghold, you pick a vehicle and head into the desert.

Most of that on-foot combat happens while trying to take down enemy bases. Once you deal with these you can choose to either storm the main gates or find a hidden entrance, hoping to ambush your enemies. Camps essentially lead you around by the nose until you take control, either by killing everyone or destroying something important.

Though, “all guns blazing” was probably an overstatement in hindsight. One college student is now finding his own fame online, after tricking out his wheelchair – and himself – in a “Max Max” costume.

One thing I appreciate about these enemy camp sites is the game keeps track of everything you collect so you really don’t have to go insane thinking you missed everything. Ripping off doors and wheels, and blowing up tires, drivers, and gas tanks. Once all the outer defences are down you’re free to drive up to the front door and rip it off with the grappling hook, or simply smash through it with your auto.

Who chose to let Bret Hart design a vehicle? There’s no point in not getting the maximum upgrade for your vehicle, meaning aside from purely cosmetic elements, your auto will have a lot in common with your friends’. Yes, Max is back, and that’s definitely a good thing. To start, as soon as you’ve got inside Jeet’s base and completed the first mission, ask him about improving the base.

And then there’s the bugs. Other times, I just watch them run. It’s extremely powerful in high speed bouts and can usually take out enemies with one well placed shot. Work is complicated. Mad Max has become the milkshake that helps me wash down the day. The open world may not be the most interesting, the characters may not be all that memorable, and the quests might not exactly be inspired, but this is a very competent game made by an obviously talented team of developers (Avalanche Studios; you know them for Just Cause) and they honestly blew my expectations for a Mad Max game out of the water. He revealed on Reddit that the latter only took a couple of weeks to construct, “because we already had the mounting plate built for our full vehicle rig, and the rolling platform we built for fun about a year ago”. That makes sense, but it also sounds like it will strip Mad Max of the parts I love, swap out the rusty rough edges for polished chrome.