Mad Max was always a franchise that was ripe for a video game adaptation, with the setting, constant use of explosions, and interesting characters. Its actually what inspired Borderlands and many games like it so it was about time that Mad Max got its own game bringing its unique setting to game form.
Mad Max is a 3rd person action sandbox set in a post apocalyptic Australia like all Mad Max movies. The game starts with Max being ambushed by the local warlord, Scabrous Scrotus, and his War Boys. Max fights back but is ultimately stripped of his car, the Black on Black, and all of his worldly possessions and is left to die in the desert with nothing. Luckily, you survive and meet a denizen of the wastes called Chumbucket who says that you’re the prophesied Saint sent by The Angel of Combustion and that you could help him build the mightiest car of the Wastelands, The Magnum Opus. Since Max was just stripped of all his worldly possessions he really isn’t in a position to deny the miscreant so he decides to make an alliance with Chumbucket in order to build himself a new car that can match the Black on Black. Max’s primary motivation for wanting to build this new vehicle in place of his old one is that he wants to use it to find the mythical “Plains of Silence” that he believes will calm his madness.
The game takes place in a large open world that even though is set in a wasteland, has a lot of different locales and settings to it. Never did I feel like the setting was repetitive even though I am supposed to be in a desolate place, the developers created the world in such a unique way that it makes different locations and landmarks feel fresh and not boring at all. The characters are also unique and memorable in each hub area of the world with Max volunteering to help them clear their territory of Scrotus’s influence in order to get more pieces of the Magnum Opus. Since this is the wasteland, most characters show a little madness and its interesting to see the various ways people have adapted to survive in the harsh environment.
The Magnum Opus itself is a dream ride of custom pieces that you can unlock by doing various missions and reducing the threat levels for the different factions throughout the wasteland. The car has a wide variety of customizable parts and it lets you tweak the car to make it just the way you want it. The amount of customization is impressive and every part you add can increase or decrease a stat point making it purely up to the player to decide which stats they think are important.
Speaking of the cars, Mad Max has excellent car combat pretty much straight out of the movies, with you using weapons like a harpoon, a makeshift sniper rifle and even a rocket launcher called a Thunderpoon. Anytime you’re exploring the world you can come across random vehicles and since this is a post-apocalyptic game, they attack you on sight causing you to have to defend yourself and in response wreck their cars. You can even damage the cars enough that the drivers stop and get out letting you take their vehicle and add to your collection of cars.
Speaking of enemies, this is where Mad Max takes a downturn. All the enemies are separated into archetypes but unfortunately the factions are just repainted skins for the same archetypes so combat becomes easily repetitive. Even the bosses are just palette swaps with every boss having the same pattern and attacks. The story bosses aren’t much better either and at the end of the day I only encountered 2 different bosses just palette swapped a bunch of the time.
Combat is in the same vein of the Batman Arkham games where you have a strike button, a counter button, a dodge and for Max you can use a double barreled shotgun to instantly gib most enemies. I found that the counter button is very unforgiving though and even when I hit the button, an enemy would still get a hit on me a lot of the time making it frustrating to fight large groups of enemies where multiple people can attack you at the same time.
Progression is a problem as well as you can max out your character as early as the second zone if you do all the side missions and scavenging up until that point. After that you can essentially just power your way through the rest of the game and any additional resources basically become useless to collect and this can make the game’s progression seem almost negligible as a result.
Overall though, Mad Max is a decent open world game with interesting characters and superb vehicle combat that really is a must play for any Mad Max fans. The world itself is unique and interesting and makes you want to explore it and learn more, while the vehicle customization and vehicular combat are a superb part of the game. Unfortunately, the game is let down with its palate swapped bosses and lack of overall pacing. Mad Max is an enjoyable game for fans of the series and really captures the essence of the Mad Max movies for a game experience that while lacking in some areas, creates a really complete open world sandbox game that fans of the series as well as non-fans can enjoy.
An Xbox One review code for Mad Max was provided by Warner Brothers for the purpose of this review.