The animations are the first peculiar aspect of Mad Max. At first I thought the Animations where one of the game's weaker limbs. But after I focused more on them and not the incredible particle effects, I started to notice the great use of poses the animation department subtly mastered. The cars and people move in a very similar matter, slow and mechanical. Obviously this would be a negative thing to say about the movement of people since they are not mechanical, normally. In this wasteland however, everything has become mechanical by nature, especially the people. Reduced to their basic needs to eat, drink, and survive, it only makes sense that those who inhabit this world move in ways that reflect that. Moving as little as possible to avoid exerting energy, while still maintaining enough power to kill the other person in the room trying to end your life.

The actions and movement of the characters and vehicles always accurately reflect what is happening in the games system. The Riggers clearly went to great levels to rig what must have been some daunting animation tools for the rest of the team, as the car rigs movement and suspension help recreate the grand illusion keeping you immersed in the world. But that doesn’t mean these animators have overvalued realism, far from it. Movements and key poses are fairly exaggerated to keep the spirit of animated material, animated in its nature.

The normal maps, bump maps, diffuse shaders and specular effects come together perfectly to forge a world of color and sand. Filled with emptiness and life all around it, with subtle clues placed around to let players guess what the surrounding area may have been in the world before everything died.

This is another strange area of the game. Yeah I’ve seen better character models in games before, and yeah some of their geometry looks a bit unnatural. But the texture work remains amazing, and the main characters all look different enough to tell them apart, even if all the war boys tend to look the same. But there are quite a few different kinds of enemy types and factions that all clearly have a lot of differences to make the groups stand out. Characters are detailed with great amounts of gear and grime covering their bodies to reflect their time spent in the game’s harsh environment.

Lighting in gaming has been very good for the last few major releases, and Mad Max is no exception. Much like a desert, unsurprisingly, the day time can become quite bright and shadows highlight objects even more so then they would in a normal environment because of the amount of space in between areas of interest.

Speaking of grabbing your attention, it is no more clear that this game is made by the developers of Just Cause 2 than in the game’s stunning explosions.

I could stare at this image all day long.

Between the high res smoke effects, the scrap flying everywhere, and the highlights of fire, I can’t help but appreciate this carefully composed chaos. And there are so many particle effects just as good as this that go easily unnoticed. There are footprints left within the sand as dust flies up with each step, the cold of a desert is captured in the visuals of your breath, and sewers and filled with whatever this stuff is.

Combat is also highlighted well both in the car and on foot. Every type of impact imaginable is met with its very own personal particle effect that reflects what the player has done or is responding to.

Audio feedback is also done quite well. Engines roar with vengeance as the sounds of metal on metal shredding apart is nearly muffled by the intense wind from an incoming storm. Each impact from your harpoon is met with instant feedback of the weapon piecing an enemy's flesh. Even the less than stellar melee combat (we’ll get to it in a bit) is still paired with meaty crunches that let’s your imagination picture the muscle being pressed against bone that is on the verge of shattering. Looting scrap is emphasized with a very satisfying feedback sound effect of something being placed in a pocket. Different object you pick up also have different sounds associated with them when you pick them up, and of course, when you use them on those who stand in your way.

The music, while maybe a bit too quiet at times, is also surprisingly great. Car crashes are accompanied by a very appropriate score to make every moment feel epic in its own right. Most of your time driving through the wasteland however, will be spent listening to the atmospheric sounds of the world. From the wind, the wheels of your car pushing sand from their path, and the engine of your car shifting gears, you will have more than enough subtle sounds to keep you immersed in the world. 

Likely the most fun you will have is roaming the Wasteland in the Magnum Opus. There are so many activities built around vehicle combat, racing, or a combination of the two. With convoys being some of the most fun you can find from AAA titles in recent memory.

These times only become more exciting as you get more weapons such as the thunder-poon can really take the excitement of taking on 5+ cars pretty intense. But again, if you were looking for a game based mostly on car combat in an open world environment where the actions you will be doing in your car are akin to something like Twisted Metal, then you will love Mad Max. This isn't just a game where your car is just means to get from A to B. No this is the core of the not just how the game plays, but also the game’s story (which I’ll get into more later.) The car combat is also well layered, in more ways than one. Not only do you need to navigate around all these cars by driving well, but you will also need to carefully use your shotgun and vehicle weapons to carefully pull apart the crazy caravan crews.

Thankfully deciding to focus on the car means the developers did in fact take the time to make sure the car controlled very well. While the handling of your car won't start out great, you will upgrade it rather quickly and soon you will be speeding across the wasteland and skidding across the hoods of your enemies!

Mad Max thankfully doesn’t move as nimble as Spidey did (that would be quite silly), but the variations of what you start off with is very limited and doesn’t change all that much in the late game. You basically only get to do the same things more easily. While that progression is still somewhat satisfying, it just doesn't amount to the same level of satisfaction you get from the progression of Spider Man 2 such as unlocking new combos, abilities, and move sets. Couple that with its sorrowful comparison to the stellar vehicle combat and the foot fighting just doesn’t hold up as strong. With that in mind however, it is still worth noting the combat is by no means bad. It had a great sense of weight and feel that many games using this system can miss, but it just didn’t compare to moments like this:

It is very hard to travel through the Wasteland for long without finding something you want to do. That statement alone should paint a pretty good picture of just how well composed this massive desert is for the player. Playing out like a giant level, the wasteland is surprisingly very three dimensional, being quite vertical in places and even requiring players to find hidden objects and entrances here and there. But again, you will find no shortage of jumps, enemies, and more to test out your skills in the Magnum Opus. While the car controls well and the car combat is great, it would not be nearly as fun to explore the world in it if it wasn’t for the carefully crafted wasteland that always has something off in the distance to make you go, “I wonder if my car can jump off that?”

This excellence in design is also seen very clearly in the strongholds and caverns Max will navigate on foot. With plenty of nooks and crannies littered with loot to reward the types of players who love to explore everywhere they can in a level. This may be a bit tedious for some though, as many branching paths do not wrap back around to a starting area, which means some backtracking will need to be done on occasion. For the most part though the game is great at providing a ladder to kick down or a line to grapple on to find you way back on the path to the rest of the level.

A quick Heads up before you jump into the story Section. You may get a few minor spoilers for the game in this section. I tried to avoid them as best I could and I apologize if you see or read anything you did not want too. That said I do give warnings ahead of time in this section. With that said I won't be offended if you chose to skip this section and skip to the Characters Section of the Review :)

I really feel this line from Road Warrior really sums up a majority of this story. For many this game's story is going to be one of the weakest parts of the game. And if you love games with heavy narratives and lots of direct storytelling you may be disappointed. But in a lot of ways that is fairly similar to Road Warrior and even Fury Road. Those films weren't dialogue heavy or completely direct about what their characters were feeling. It was done with visuals, same goes for this game. The most direct story telling comes in the last few hours of the game. And if you hold out till that point, you will be met with a greatly satisfying ending and tons of direct nods to the classic films.

Slight Spoilers in Following Image:

When you think about the structure of the main game’s mechanics of scouting out enemy camps, helping smaller factions, and taking resources from enemies all tie in fairly well to what the story of Road Warrior was. In fact, the whole film is basically about doing that exact same thing to one enemy camp so Max’s allies can leave. Sounds a bit like one particular group you help in this game.

Slight Spoilers in Following Image:

And obviously taking down convoys is something we’ve seen in a few films now and boy did they ever get that right. You also scout enemy strongholds and can get good information on them from people you help out earlier. I do wish we got to meet more villains throughout the journey. Only two named enemies ever really play a large role in the story and you hardly care about them until the climax.

The game does do a great job of exploring Max’s sanity through Griffa’s conversations, which I’ll get too later, and his relations with the people of the Wasteland. Max is never presented to the player as a hero. He is always talking about how he does not see Chumbucket as a friend, only a necessary ally to cross the plains of silence. But naturally things get a bit complicated later on with a few other characters and Max gets a bit tied up. And the final mission will get your blood boiling, and Max will get Mad. Yet I do feel it could be too little too late for some, as you could easily spend up to 60 hours completing all the games activities it has to offer. And when you reach the final showdown it might come off a bit rushed as it can move at a pretty fast pace if you save all the story till the end.

Thankfully much of the plot’s pitfalls are saved by its characters.

I really felt the need to include this extra section as an extension to the game’s story. While the actions and events of the main plot might not excite most, the characters presented in the game are definitely worth celebrating. I am one of those people who could watch almost anything as long as the characters in it are worth watching.

He is as mysterious as he is gripping, you can't help but wonder what this guy's story is and why he cares so much about Max and his strange acquaintance.

It is impossible to say too many good things about this desert. It not only carries the most weight in the game, as it is what you interact with the most, but manages to do so while also being the most imposing danger you will ever encounter in the game. Her valleys are steep, her hill sharp, and her storms will F*** you up. But you will endure the storm, to find treasures within the danger. You will traverse the lands in search of more Guzzoline, and you will respect the wasteland with every step you take.

If you are looking for another game to show off your PC rig, this game will not disappoint. Mad Max not only has every option in its graphics menu you’d come to expect from a good PC port, but it runs incredibly well. You would be hard pressed to find many games that will run at a consistently high frame rate no matter what happens in game. You can also comfortably re-bind any keys you need as well as instantly switch between keyboard and controller simply by using one or the other, much like the Witcher 3.

The menu is organized in a fairly standard fare. All your main tabs are placed in a linear fashion on top with information being presented in a clear and easy to read manner. And I cannot thank the developers enough for making the menu’s as well as the map completely usable with a mouse.

Speaking of the map, I wish a bit more thought went into how the overview of the wasteland was presented.  When you’re zoomed in enough to see all the side activities, all the icons are still the same size. So the icon for the strongholds, hot air balloons, side quests, minefields, and more are all presented with the same importance to the player. I know this is nitpicking, but it really bothered me that I would have to zoom out just to easily find important information. It wouldn’t bother me as much if the colors for all the different types of icons where more differentiated. Minefields, Scarecrows, and Snipers are all red. And it doesn’t help that these red icons are surrounded by what seems like thousands of orange scrap locations, which isn’t enough of a contrasting color to not make them all blend together. Again, I know it won’t bother everyone, but it bothered me. And this is my review!

It is far from a bad game, and does all the things a game set in the Mad Max franchise should be, but in the end it’s a lot like Spider Man 2 (Yeah I’m still talking about Spider Man in a Mad Max review, trust me I think it's weird too.) Another movie tie-in with Arkham Combat (oh wait Spiderman 2 combat, my bad), fairly repetitive mechanics, but an insanely fun way to navigate the world. The issue is that Spider Man came out in 2004, Mad Max came out in 2015 and after the Witcher 3 I will always expect more from open world games. Still, seeing as the last game similar to this that I'd played was Arkham Knight, this feels like hearing Idomeneo after listening to Katy Perry for 15 hours. If you’re like me and are totally okay with a more than decent game that offers a few really fun things to do over a long period of time, this is for you. To be honest, this may be one of my favorite movie related games ever released. I may have beaten Max’s story and seen everything it has to offer, but that doesn’t mean I’ve seen everything I can experience. This is a Wasteland that will always stay with me, and a part of me will enjoy revisiting the dystopian paradise from time to time.