One of the best movie-to-game adaptations I’ve played…which, however, isn’t saying a lot. The game does a great job in continuing to build off of the Mad Max world that was last left off in “Fury Road.” And despite everything taking place in a dusty wasteland, the designers do a really good job in differentiating the separate areas and providing some specific sense of place to each one. Characters and language are also a good fit for the world. But the gameplay and progression is where it all makes the experience an awkward one. For a world that worships cars and engines to a religious degree, you would think the driving and car mechanics would be on point. Driving can get clumsy and frustrating, especially when you are forced to take the car into tight interiors (for those who have played it, remember going underground or that ONE race?). After Batman: Arkham Knight, I’m getting the sense that Warner Brothers was somehow influencing Avalanche studios to make Mad Max even more like that game with its combat and strange tank segments.

There’s a lot to like here that gets me excited at the prospect of a sequel or something built off of this, but in the end it felt like too much of a grind especially when I just wanted to focus in on the main story quests and the game forces you to complete mostly unnecessary sidequests to meet requirements in order to progress.

EYECANDY: The landscape in Mad Max is wonderful. A beautifully crafted wasteland that feels vast and empty. The particle effects (smoke, dust, fire, etc.) are nothing short of professional and was probably the best looking part of the game. Each enemy camp, cave, blown up gas station, underground cavern are all unique and you won’t notice any repeating interiors. A lot of crafting and detail went into the areas of exploration and it shows. This is easily the best part of the game, the visuals.

SOUNDDESIGN: Sad to say though there’s nothing too special too denote here. The explosions are really the only thing that is hi-fi in this game, or as far as sound goes, stood out and somewhat made you feel it. The soundtrack was a sub-par score. No melodies that get stuck in your head, no catchy tunes to hum along to, just background noise. But I’ll give the voice actors some credit. While you meet wildly different characters, none of them stand out. I think it’s because they’re all far too left field. Each main character is quirky and crazy in their own right, but in a way caused them all to blend together. But what was really cool was when during the most important cutscenes in the game the audio didn’t match up with the video. Not like it mattered because the SFX sucked anyways, but that’s just another tick that takes away from the experience.

GAMEPLAY: Now in this game, there is a lot to do. The wasteland is very big, which is also its drawback. It’s too big, and going from one place to another, collecting scrap for your upgrades, and destroying enemy camps to lower the threat level in allied territory feels more like a chore. Kind of like when your parents would tell you to clean your room. It wasn’t fun and you only did it because you had to. There is a lot of mechanics to be had in this game though. Mad Max is all about the cars, and in this game, there are a multiple of cars you can collect, fight, customize, everything. But what I don’t get is why in the world would you have the main mechanic in your game be broken and wonky as hell. The driving in Mad Max is atrocious. From the seizure-like camera to the street mechanics themselves. You will find yourself constantly doing flips and turns and making bad turns and sharp corners, running into walls and off cliffs and pretty much anything else that constitutes bad driving (refer to the hallway car scene in the first Austin Powers). There was more than one mission that was all vehicle based (not counting the race side missions) and I wanted to quit the game. I say it all the time: There is a very big difference between challenging, and frustrating, and the driving in Mad Max is VERY frustrating. Then there’s the leveling system. You level up Max to earn new abilities, gear, skills, etc. But then there’s some weird prophet guy that reminds me of the happy mask salesman from Majoras Mask where you can level up Max again. So it’s like you level up Max to level him up again. It’s a strange concept. And the fighting is only fun when it works. I know I wasn’t the only one because I brought it up with other people and they said they had the same problems but throughout the whole entire game the engine refuses to read your input and you will die because of unfair mechanics. Warner Brothers has their game formula. A big map with multiple vantage points, and you do stuff within said area.

Conclusion: CONCLUSION: I had to force myself to finish this game. I don’t want to call it bad, but at the sametime I don’t want to use the word good as a replacement. Mad Max is very alright. It was an array of features that wasn’t well executed. It seemed like Avalanche Studios was trying to find a balance between their style of gaming (Just Cause) and Warner Brothers formula for games, and they ALMOST had it. A lot doesn’t make sense within this game, and if I was to recommend an open world RPG in this respect, I would recommend Shadow of Mordor.

The game doesn’t have the greatest story and it steals it’s combat from Batman like every WB game but it is a fun game to play. I bought it at $60 so by now it must be less and if you like action games especially ones involving vehicles you can’t go wrong

Conclusion: Had a lot of fun with it for about 20-30 hours