Mad Max Reviews
While Mad Max promises thrills and violence, it only delivers on decent driving mechanics.
Mad Max is bloated, full of busy work, and keeps women locked in chains. Fury Road this is not.
Despite a lack of innovation and some repetition, Mad Max is a consistently entertaining and utterly stunning open world game that will keep you driving late into the night.
Mad Max feels like a polished title, one that tries to be a comprehensive sandbox game that, like its titular character, is able to hold its own. However, as fans of the films will know, in such a crowded world, not all can survive.
A game that should become a cult/sleeper hit of 2015. Not perfect by any means, but great fun for the most part.
Mad Max is a delight to play and will have you chant "what a lovely day!" across the fury road, but once the dust settles, you'll find deep down a hollow and dull open-world, with a somewhat mediocre and grindy core design doing nothing original. It's only redeemed by its vast sandstorm swept visuals and well executed vehicular combat.
There's nothing inherently wrong with Mad Max, it just doesn't excel in enough areas to really stand out from the crowd. The cost-per-hour brigade will find plenty to love I'm sure; Avalanche have created a game where there's tons to do, but Mad Max is open-world by numbers, following the Ubisoft template too rigidly for comfort. Shadow of Mordor has already filled the hole Mad Max is trying to occupy, and for Mad Max to really succeed it had to bring something new to the table, which it emphatically hasn't. If you're still not tired of the collect-em-all open-world formula then you'll definitely get a kick out of Mad Max, but for the rest of us it feels like an opportunity wasted beyond the first few, sweet, hours.
An enjoyable game with a stunning world, familiar combat and interesting driving. Falls short on the story development and somewhat repetitive gameplay. Worth a shot after the slower summer days if you're waiting for some other games to release closer to the end of the year.
There are moments when I f***ing adore Mad Max, and it feels awkward to attack it for trying too hard. But I really think The WB Open World Game is the wrong genre for the license, or at the very least the wrong application of genre.
More than the carefully constructed language or the fidelity to a story that doesn't need to be told, Mad Max is at its best when it offers some of that silence its hero swears to seek. It's when Chumbucket shuts up, when no deals need to be bartered, when you can just drive—just you belching out fire and black smoke across the highways, shiny and chrome.
Whilst it may not initially be obvious, open world games have dramatically evolved in the last 5 years. I was once happy with mindless collectatons, but I've grown to want more. The best open world games nowadays are an expansion of the form, but Mad Max is highly regressive in far too many areas to be meaningful. Everything I experienced during my time with the game felt like it came five years too late to the open world party. Those with any interest in the genre will have already trod similar ground long before. We've seen all these tricks done dozens of times – so much so that all the props that were once cleverly hidden away are now clear to see.
Max, in the game, could be anyone. There's no story. He's just a reason to drive around a desert, crashing into things, blowing things up, and fighting. Not that I've got anything against that. Mad Max provides plenty of enjoyable hours of crashing into things and fighting. But, for a desert wasteland there is an awful lot of gasoline, I never got close to running out.
While Mad Max avoids being the disaster that the development hell storylines surrounding it suggest that it could have been, it's an absolute testament to mediocrity. Its characters and the world itself provide a great deal of intrigue, and they will keep some players interested, but there are too many flaws to consider it a solid video game.
A solid sandbox adventure, lacking in the chaos and madness that the title and license would suggest.
It's not that Mad Max is bad. It's just the latest in a long line of Ubisoft-template open-world games.
Mad Max is obviously a licence close to my heart, and The Road Warrior is my favourite tale in the franchise, so it could be considered unfair to have judged the game how I have, but there are definitely some glaring issues here that make the product schizophrenic in its licence representation. When applying played-out tropes, however, it actually works through the game's size and goals, and is easy to enjoy -- just as long as you forget the past and embrace the present.
Mad Max seemingly had it all but ultimately stumbles in the worst way possible - by not presenting enough interesting things to in its open world. Side mission and story quest design aside, there's a whole of repetition and not a lot of substance to the game's madness. Good for the odd casual playthrough but imminently forgettable.
Light gameplay and good graphics, average game
For me, the monotonous grind is satisfying because each small measure of success reaps a tangible reward in the form of a personal or vehicular upgrade. This may not grant each player the same pleasure, thus I would recommend Mad Max to fans of the series and those who enjoy what fruits and failings an open-world action game offers.
If you allow yourself to get lost in the world of Mad Max, you could easily spend around 40 hours in this game as you explore this world, search for valuable scrap and upgrade your abilities as you seek our additional quests and bonuses. Even though the third person mode as Mad is a little dull at times, the hand to hand combat is flawless as are the spectacular vehicle battles. In the end, Mad Max is a great addition to the open-world action adventure genre that is as slick and memorable as the Hollywood blockbuster film, Mad Max Fury Road.