It creates a narrative bias towards the game’s negative features in justifying why it falls short of, say, Shadow Of Mordor or Far Cry 3. And in recognising why other games are better, or indeed did exactly the same thing earlier, it’s necessary to identify how Max is so similar or worse. But there are many, many games that are similar to it, and a lot better than it.
But another part of it is born of a critical issue with a game like Mad Max: It’s fine, and occasionally lots of fun. Polygon’s 5/10 is on the borderline, sure, and everywhere else has marked higher. Much of that comes down to misunderstanding – given a binary choice of Yes or No, the Rotten Tomatoes syndrome, even the most critical reviews would still fall into “Yes”. There’s been a lot of discussion over the apparent difference between critics’ response to Mad Max, and that of Steam users, etc.
Its own is a very familiar place of your Far Cries, Mordors, Assassin’s Creeds and so on, where you dart about the sprawling world to find hidden treasures, clear out enemy bases, and very occasionally remember there’s a main quest of no import. However, with a solid car, a stronger main character, and enough gadgets to make vehicular combat and base infiltration more interesting, the game finds its own. Fifteen hours in and you’ve got special abilities coming out of your ears, your car a tank, and Max’s two sets of upgrades pretty much maxed out. At first you’re maybe upgrading Max’s punch, or adding some defences to your car, but not both because the game’s in-game currency, Scrap, is too scarcely added. What makes things less flimsy is the upgrades, which initially dribble in slower than a junkheap fresh out of gas, and then suddenly pile on top of you in an avalanche. His role is useful – he fixes up your car whenever you get out of it – but his unending stream of drivel is beyond maddening, constantly barking out the same damn lines about the same damn things, or nagging you to get on with the dreary main quest when you’d rather be having fun looking for underground tunnels. You immediately meet a mutated creature of pure tedium, Chumbucket, who unfortunately accompanies you absolutely everywhere for the entire game. Everything is immediately far too simple, far too flighty, far too tissue-thin. It’s in everything from the story to the fighting to the driving to the challenges. And as you get deeper in, the game’s opening flimsiness begins to slightly solidify. But it’s wormed its way in to that part of my brain that enjoys hoovering up itty bitty activities marked on a giant map. I wrote previously about how flat I found it. Along the way people ramble unintelligible nothingness at you in Australian drawl, which invariably ends in your being asked to drive to somewhere on the map, hit something or pick something up, then drive back. To get there, you need to improve your car such that you’re capable of tearing down defences that obstruct your larger path. Your goal, appropriately vague for the franchise, is to reach the other side of the map.
A third-person open world game built of very, very many little ideas, but no big ones, it provides you with a vast post-apocalyptic playground, thousands of things to do, and a gradually improving combination of melee and vehicular combat – and yet no real sense of purpose. Mad Max is the most peculiar combination of the compelling and the mundane. After some impressions of the first few hours of Avalanche's Mad Max open-world action-me-do, I return having spent another week with the Road Warrior, ready to tell you wot I think.