Mad Max (2015)

…I mean imagine if you combined the combat of Batman Arkham, with the narrative style of a Naughty dog game and the destruction physics of Burnout paradise, add a vehicle RPG system, Ubisoft map markers, a dynamic weather system and ladies and gentlemen you have Mad Max. I completely forgot just how much time I gave this game, I remember playing it near a decade ago at 480p on my shitty laptop in-between classes because I had just watched Fury Road (arguably the greatest film of the 21st Century) and I was fiending for any excuse to stay in Miller’s world. My God this game holds up, it is an absolute crime how little we talk about it anymore.

It’s not perfect I’ll be the first to say. A few missteps show it’s age, so many slice of life fixes that I wish somebody would smooth out. I was hoping mods would have got there already but there isn't a very big community around the game so I have to bear with the fact that you burn fuel cans with the same button you refuel your car with, making the action risky every time. The fact that you have to hold square on every damn body you loot instead of just tapping the button. The fact that the menu boots you out every time you pick an item to install on your car, making an otherwise cool customization system frustrating. The UI is omnipresent instead of fading out and centering this gorgeous world, the hand to hand combat an over-simplistic combination of press triangle to block and press square to punch that never really goes anywhere more interesting than that core loop.

When this game shines though, it’s goddamn blinding. The car combat specifically is just brilliant, they’re moments on the road, the engine of your Opus roaring as you barrel down towards a convoy of enemy vehicles, taking out one after the other, each armored to varying degrees so no one approach will work on all, switching between your shotgun, to your grapple hook, to the spikes on the sides of your tires slowly scraping off the rusted metal on the side of their cars, as war boys jump onto the hood of yours. Peak shit man, FUCKING PEAK!!!!

Sadly, parts of the game were clearly scaled down for other parts to reach the heights they did. There so many ideas here that feel like compromises to systems that could have been much larger, intel gathering and side entrances on camps that could have become full blown stealth systems, ranged attacks, a sniper rifle that could have expanded to include a whole array of weaponry. A whole vehicle collection that could have each served their own purpose but as is works mostly cosmetically. The sequel to Mad Max would have been a masterpiece, an all timer because the bones here are rock solid and the vision was clear from the jump but something went wrong along the way.

Regardless this is special. This world, every aspect of it a reminder of death, pits filled to the brim with bodies, the flesh falling off their bones, rotting at the side or just missing completely, leaving you wondering what monster could have done this, and then second guessing your self as you remember that in a world like this, there is no distinction between monster and hero. The weak died a long time ago, the only people still alive are the ones willing to do monstrous things, inevitably begging the question, where do you stand? What type of monstrous is Max in the face of all of this.

I'm not going to finish this one, but I don't want to give it a bad review, because I put a lot of time into it and had a lot of enjoyment throughout. It's gorgeous and was clearly made by people who give the utmost shit about the franchise. The Arkham style physical combat was satisfying, but it wasn't long before I became OP for virtually every on-foot bad guy. It's the car combat I couldn't get into. For all of the hours I put into this, scrounging for scraps and grinding away at countless camps, I could never seem to get my cars to a level that felt badass. It got to where I felt like I was missing something or doing something wrong, since even the most pathetic villains had these monstrously powerful vehicles but couldn't hit me for shit once I lured them out of their cars (if you've played the game, you know just how bullying and unsatisfying a strategy that was; in my defense, my car, no matter how upgraded, could only take a maximum of three collisions before I'd have to stop drop and roll).

I think these same creators could make an astonishing new Mad Max game, if we lived in a world where people could create any of the games they're truly passionate about. My ideal is that it would be like one of those old-school games whose sequels actually were just top-notch, upgraded, ironed-out versions of the first. There's so many ways this could be amazing. Still, kudos to what's here, and it's nice to see how many people truly were fulfilled by it.

Playtime: 37 hours (all missions completed + all enemies defeated)

Intro

Mad Max is what i call an "Open Playground" game. This is the type of Open World game in which the map is filled with places with generic objects. In case of Mad Max you drive around a sizeable map gathering scrap/upgrades, destroying enemy markers and assaulting camps. Along the way you upgrade Max, his car and friendly strongholds.

The Good

• Really captures the feel of Mad Max.
• You don't look or sound like Mel Gibson.
• Combat is really fun for the first half of the game.
• Some nicely brutal violence.
• Enemies can hit each other by accident.
• Camp assaults are quite fun... for the first half of the game.
• Fast travel is almost always allowed.
• Most unlocks are fairly sensible and painless.
• You eat dog food and maggot. Yum!
• Death is irrelevant, it just respawns you a short distance from where you died. Yay!
• Progress happens at a steady pace... for the first half of the game (starting to notice a pattern here?).

The Bad

• Max is an asshole. Seriously, there's a reason Fury Road was the best movie - he's not the main character.
• No mini-map. Yes, there's a small map. But that's just the world map - not a local map.
• You can easily get lost in camps sometimes because of this.
• Maps don't show distance or verticality either.
• Almost the entire map is sand and rocks with very little variety.
• They have a
• You're stuck with Gollum of the Notre Dame who is an icky representation of a disabled person. He's also very annoying at times.
• Some bugs including non-spawning enemies and stairs with a killzone.
• Max is almost entirely incapable of climbing.
• No option to save car configurations.
• Despite having balloons (their version of AssCreed towers) and survey upgrades there is no way to reveal all locations - especially minefields are hard to find.
• Boring races.
• Convoys (enemies) just race around on a pre-determined path. They don't stop at camps or anything.
• The "requires an online connection" free scrap upgrade was disabled after only three years.
• The sound of the V8 sucks.
• Storms are awful. They just mean you can't play for 5 minutes and anything your were doing gets interrupted.
• Some enemies respawn way too fast. Sometimes even after a only few minutes.

The Ugly

Ooh boy, here were go.

Go for the eyes, Boo!

There are a few too many really dark areas in this game and Max' flashlight suffers from "non-diffusing-light-disease" so you're stumbling around in near total dark. In contrast, the game also puts some nice, big bright exhausts on your car that make using nitro a real joy after dark.

The devs also thought it was a good idea to have a really annoying "background sound" play on a loop in camps. These loops are maybe 10 seconds long and once you notice them they will drain your sanity.

Pointless content

There are pre-determined car configurations called "archangels" which are only used in races and 100% completely useless otherwise. I have no idea why these exist.

Similarly, you can steal enemy vehicles and bring them back to a stronghold to add them to your collection. But you will never use them because they don't have any upgrades so you will miss your weapons, armor, nitro, speed, free repairs and customisation options. In return you get nothing. Enemies will recognise you anyway. Seriously, what is the point?

Sometimes you will meet people looking for water or people wanting to talk. Almost all of this serves no purpose, with the exception of the dozen or so people who give you tips on how camps/convoys. Some of these (unskippable) conversations are just one of a handful of reused NPCs saying "watch your back" or "nice car". Did they need filler that badly?

Finally, there's a huge area of the map with just four quest locations and almost nothing else. Most of the rest are scrap locations. The game has 191 of these and almost all of them are just "tent, enemies, bit of scrap". Again, it feels like filler.

Minefields

So each are has two minefields that you have to find yourself despite scouting with a balloon. After finding them you have to go fast travel to the nearest stronghold, walk to the car, pick select other car, scroll down to the buggy and drive back to the minefield. The buggy has no upgrades, weapons or repair-Gollum. Instead it has a dog that finds mines. You slowly drive around each field guided by the dog to find the three mines.

It's incredibly tedious and boring. It's also required to bring "threat" to 0, which is required for some unlocks. To unlock the best engine you have to dismantle ten minefields. I never even considered doing this.

Generic, genericer, Mad Max

The game suffers from a serious case of "map barf", with hundreds of icons inviting you to generic locations where you do generic stuff. I already mentioned the pitiful scrap camps, but there are also just random other things littering the landscape. Snipers towers, Scrotus towers, ramps, catapults. All of these come across as being procedurally generated or something.

In the same vein there are the enemies. Most vehicles are basically the same. Seriously, i couldn't tell them apart. On foot there's normal enemies in a few colours, jumpy small enemies and bosses. That's it. All bosses are exactly the same. They all have a big two-handed weapon and the same attack patterns. The area always gets locked down by fire or one time by a gate.

Even camps -the only locations they put effort into- are filled with repetitive elements. Very little of it is clever. There are 22 camps and only once was the hidden entrance not a giant gap marked by yellow paint. Honestly, was the budget just very small or something?

Console crap

There are no manual saves. Fast travel is limited to a handful of points, almost half of which have to be unlocked by winning a race. Looting and most other interactions require holding a button. If your character doesn't stop in time you can walk past prompts. Also looting often requires standing in the right place. Ugh.

Also the controls are impressively dumb. Looting requires holding E. Same goes for climbing stairs and opening some doors/chests. Holding E also drops weapons and fuel canister. One time i nearly blew myself up because i dropped an ignited fuel canister next to a chest, which the game decided i wanted to open. So many times you drop your weapon instead of doing the other thing you wanted to do. It's so incredibly stupid, just require different inputs.

But wait, it gets worse. The key to refuel things is F. The key for igniting fuel canisters? Yes, you guessed it. F. Combined with the iffiness where you can bypass prompts or stand slightly wrong this is a potentially deadly and especially idiotic design.

Finally, shoutout to whoever thought it was a good idea to forcibly reset the selected weapon every time you enter the car. Love shooting my shotgun at nothing thinking i have selected the harpoon. Bonus points for putting the slowly equipped sniper rifle under 1 (shotgun is 2), leading to some fun instances where i stop and am stuck in this animation while enemies freely attack me.

"Wow, i'm so glad the game avoided boring tropes"

In the intro video you kill the big bad, but his followers keep his name going. I thought this was a nice little reversal and i expected some infighting and intrigue maybe with someone pretending to be him. But as it turns out, he just survived getting a chainsaw through 10 cm of his skull. sigh And you have to fight him several times because he refuses to die. big sigh And the final fight is a "find the RPG" type thing which was honestly worse than the generic boss fights in the camps.... Bella Swan sigh

There's an unskippable fight as part of the main story that is completely different from the rest of the game. Not only is it tedious, it even has infinitely respawning enemies and super annoying terrain. Yay?

And, of course, it gets worse. At some point you meet a sex slave with a kid. You have to pick up the kid from its keeper. He's dead, of course, but mom and daughter get a happy ending. "Wow, what a nice redemption for Max. He couldn't save his own wife and daughter but kinda made up for it with this. I'm so glad they didn't use them like in some incredibly tired revenge trope". Guess what happens next.

Where's the rest of the content

Mad Max is really fun for about 15-20 hours. The other half of the game gets increasingly dull. It's the same content over and over again. Even worse is how you're already max level (no pun intended) halfway through and combat doesn't change anymore after that. I got so bored with it i started luring enemies in camps to my car for easy harpoon kills. You'll almost always use the shotgun and thunderstick at this point. In fact, you don't even get any other handguns. Not even a pistol or something (Max was a cop i think).

Give my fuel, give me faya

There are 13 balloons that can be used to reveal some locations in each area. After a while you encounter balloons that require removing cables or refuelling. Every single time you need fuel -also to blow things up- there's at least one cannister and usually infinitely respawning ones.

At some point i encountered a balloon with no fuel or cannister. I forgot about it and returned later without a cannister. This happened again because a mission removed my cannister. The fourth time i did have a cannister but, get this, it was nearly empty. Yeah, in a game where fuel plays such a huge role you can't see how much fuel is in a cannister unless you refuel something. It took me five visits just to reveal a handful of locations and unlock this fast travel point. Because the devs fucked up.

Scrap grind

The amount of grinding this game requires to unlock upgrades is truly something else. I didn't think it was that bad until i finally got the V8 and you have to buy each upgrade in turn, with the cost going from 2000 to 4000+ scrap. The average "scrap camp" gives you roughly 50 - if you've fully upgraded the scrap finding skill. Seriously, i rushed this skill, conquered a bunch of camps early (they generate income) and i still didn't have enough for every upgrade after 37 hours!

Conclusion

Despite my long list of flaws, Mad Max isn't a bad game. In fact, right before the above fuel-balloon thing it was sitting at 4 stars. But after that awful situation, the even worse tropey story development and the increasing repetitivity i quickly dropped.

Mad Max is quite fun for about 15-20 hours and an impressive representation of the world seen in the movies - but it just runs out of juice far too quick. You get the idea there was not enough money or time and they had planned to do more with things like the archangels. Maybe the map barf was demanded by the publisher? I have no idea, but it goes from a polished and nicely paced experience to a dreary, pathetic slog halfway through. I don't regret buying this but i'm glad i paid less than €4. That's about what it's worth.

So, here's our favorite post-apocalyptic hero traveling the wasteland

Despite some rather satisfying melee combat, which is very reminiscent of that found in the Batman Arkham games, the game really excels at vehicular combat which I found terrific fun

The environment and graphics are superb.

The stronghold missions can feel repetitive, but still remain fun as you can choose different ways to take down various "warlords". I have mixed feelings about the overall game story

Throughout the game, the primary objective is to upgrade your car with various weapons or armor. You hijack cars and scavenge for parts. You can change the engine, body work, chassis, paint job etc. All this in effort to make you death on wheels. Upgrading one aspect of your car will often result in downgrading something else, so it's up to the player to choose if he will go all out on speed, armor, weaponry, or to strike a balance

In fact a large part of the game is collecting scrap, which admittedly sounds kind of boring, but is essential to the gameplay and after a while just became second nature

You can approach some tasks stealthily, but in this type of game I feel it's more fun to knock some heads together

The area map is divided into regions, each having their own boss and it's own backstory. To make an area safe, you need to put these bosses down, preferably in the most violent way possible

There is a great variety in landscapes and the game features a pretty cool weather system

The savagery of Max's game world mirrors that which is found in the films. I thought the world design was pretty good

The only negative I can find is that there were many opportunities to take this good game and make it a truly great one, but it is what it is

Despite middling reviews from critics and gamers alike I've never recommended this game to anyone and they not have a good experience.

Mad Max is a tough game to rate. On one hand, I felt that it was a solid open world game set in the post-apocalyptic world of Mad Max. Howeve, there were parts of the game that were flawed and did impact my overall experience with the game

Let's start with the positives. Firstly, the car combat is amazing. Over the course of the game, you will receive access to a variety of weapons to use, whilst driving the Magnum Opus. These range from a grappling hook to tear off pieces of enemy cars to explosive harpoons that allow you to literally blow up your enemies. Since you spend most of your time driving around, making the car combat entertaining is important and the developers definitely achieved that.
The other major thing Mad Max excels at is its open world. Too often, I find open world games either try to stuff their worlds full fo activiites and collectibles, making it a chore for players to fully complete; or don't fill their world enough, leaving it empty and quite boring to explore. Mad Max has the right balance. There are a number of different activties and collectibles, which there are usually one or two of each kind in each region; giving the player an incentive to explore the world fully.

Unfortunately, its not all positive. The boss fights are very disappointing. Although there are plenty of boss fights, most bosses have the same attack patterns; which means you spend most of the game fighting the same person, except in a different outfit, making these fights rather repetitive. I will call out the final boss fight, which was very anticlimatic and disappointing. For any developers out there: don't spend the whole game telling the player how strong and 'invincible' your main antagonist is, when in the final fight a player can take the boss down in two attacks.
Speaking of the ending, I found the pacing was very rushed. You play through the first three acts, which will take you several hours to complete, if you are completeling the game fully; but the final two acts only take about an hour combined to finish. It almost feels like the developers were rushing to meet a deadline and decided to cut some narrative corners.

So, as you can see, I have conflicted feelings about Mad Max. On the one hand, I think its a solid open world, post-apocalyptic game; but on the other hand, it isn't a polished game. It is rushed and there are some parts of the gameplay that have been duplicated, like the boss fights, making the game feel repetitive. I would recommend Mad Max if its one sale or if you are a big fan of open world/post-apocalyptic games.

I had a really great time with this game and ended up putting in enough time and effort to get the Platinum trophy.

The story was interesting and fun to experience, but the main draw of the game were the mechanics and the satisfying nature of the game's progression. I always felt like I was moving forward with my progress, either completing story missions, completing challenges, clearing enemy outposts, upgrading Max, upgrading my car, etc. There are definitely flaws with some of the controls and other minor elements, but overall they are far outweighed by the pure satisfaction of playing this game. It's just FUN to drive around and engage in the vehicle combat, and the Arkham-like melee combat is very enjoyable too.

This has me looking forward to next month I believe when Shadow of War will be coming to PlayStation Plus which is another WB published game that has similar open-world features and combat.

Mad Max is an OK sandbox game with some high points but doesn't really do anything new in the genre.

Story - The story is probably the weakest part of the game. You play as Max, the lonely Road Warrior on a journey through a post-apocalyptic Australian Outback. A wasteland infested with insane gangs and raiders fighting over the small amounts of water, food, shelter, and fuel left in the world. In the usual Mad Max fashion your old reliable Interceptor is taken and destroyed by a gang leader called Scrotus who then leaves you to die. You then meet a babbling hunchback engineer who thinks you're a saint sent by the gods to help him build his "Magnum Opus", the car of cars. The two of you team up to make the new vehicle from scratch in order to continue your journey... and that's about it.

It does pick up in the last hour or so but nothing really changes apart from you doing things to upgrade your vehicle. I wasn't expecting a deep, meaningful story from a Mad Max game and it's not really needed but I still feel it's a bit of a letdown.

Gameplay - The game loop consists of you moving from one area to another and helping the not-so-insane wasteland gangs regain control of their lost territory, in exchange for sanctuary and car parts. This is accomplished by eliminating Scrotus’s camps and strongholds, knocking down effigies and watchtowers, clearing landmines, and taking down fuel convoys. The hand-to-hand fighting is similar to Batman’s from the Arkham series. Although more brutal and lethal. There is a rage mode you can build up by chaining attacks that when activated lets you perform stronger attacks and more savage finishers. You also have a shotgun but ammo is pretty scarce so it’s used more as a finisher, shooting out car tires or mid-range targets.

Driving around through the dunes and rocky crags of the wasteland feels great and you can tell the devs put a lot of work into making this feel good. You can use/collect lots of different cars, from small, fast buggies to huge, lumbering trucks but the Magnum Opus is the one you’ll use the most. The roar of the engine and hiss of sand under the wheels is just great. Your car can also be upgraded with weapons like a harpoon for pulling down gates and towers or impaling enemies, wheel spikes for Ben Hur-esque duels, and explosive spears for quickly taking out vehicles or armored walls.

All upgrades to the car and Max’s equipment are purchased with scrap and/or finishing certain missions. Scrap is the currency of the wasteland, almost everything you do earns you a small amount. This is a slow trickle at first which can be a bit annoying, but by the mid-way point in the game I had more than enough. You also level up Max by completing various tasks around the world and talking to an elusive shaman character called Griffa . You can use these points to upgrade Max’s stats like health, scavenging skill, amount of water you can collect and vehicle fuel efficiency.

Graphics- Despite the map being mostly desert and rusted metal the devs have really made the world come to life with different colours of sand and rock depending on the region. Light is used to great effect as well, sunsets and sunrises bloom with shades of blue, pink, purple, orange and red and the way it bounces off the various landscapes make the places feel bleak yet beautiful. The car and character models all look decent, rusty metal and grimy bodies show what a hard life it is to live in this world.

Sound/Music - There isn’t much music in the game apart from when you are in fights or high-speed chases. It’s OK I guess. The sound effects are really well done and adds to the atmosphere of this wasteland ruled by vehicles.

As a sandbox game Mad Max does nothing really new and the story is a bare framework at best. I did enjoy it overall so if it’s been a while since you’ve played a sandbox game I’d say buy it on sale. If you’ve played a lot of sandbox games recently you might want to give it a miss.

I spent 89 hours on Mad Max so there was definitely a lot to like about it. It's got a great world and aesthetic. The combat can be very fun and there's a good sense of freedom. The story is decent enough and the main voice actors are good. It falls apart a bit at the end, but that's not uncommon.

My main complaints are with some design decisions. While the game is best played with mouse and keyboard when you are Max on foot, a controller is necessary to drive the car with any accuracy. I didn't realize this until I was >75% through the game; I just thought the controls were sloppy. This really comes to a head in a mission near the end of the game where you are in a race. There's lots of racing options in the game, but I mostly avoided those. I don't generally enjoy racing games and this was no exception.

The combat (both on foot and car) is good, but a bit repetitive. I would have much preferred a PC style save system, but the save locations are fairly generous.

My biggest beef is the storms. They come up periodically when you are outside and they are just no fun at all. All you can do is wait them out. I eventually would just let my car get destroyed (knowing it could get repaired later) and waited them out while reading the internet on my phone. Not a fun part of the game.

All in all, probably a 3.5 star game. But if you like this type of open-world game and you like the Mad Max world, there's a lot here for you.

Mad Max is a game that starts out with a lot of promise. Though the weak plot, forgettable characters, boring gameplay and repetitive ‘content’ quickly wears thin. The graphics are beautiful and it has a great art style, though it’s too busy to be atmospheric. Overall if you are looking for a shallow and repetitive open world game that you ‘could’ spend a lot of time in then Mad Max is probably pretty good but I’m mostly sick of this type of open world game.

Story

Mad Max takes place in the post apocalyptic world of the film series and set after the events of Fury Road, so it’s good to see a ‘continuation’ of the same narrative of the recent movie though I don’t think it’s the same Max. Anyway, in Mad Max your goal is to free yourself from the torment of your past and to do that Max seeks some sort of paradise or serenity at the Plains of Silence. To get there though you will need to upgrade your car so it can handle the journey, and that is basically driving force of the narrative. Along the way you meet a slew of one dimensional boring side characters and weak villains. You can complete quests for the side characters, though they are incredibly dull and have absolutely no incentive other than the limited in-game rewards. The main questline is thankfully not very long, and I completed it in ~14 hours, and with the exception of a couple of interesting missions it’s completely forgettable full of boring and uninspired tropes.

Gameplay

Time in Mad Max is split roughly equal between vehicle and on-foot combat. In the beginning the vehicle combat is very enjoyable, and in general the game starts off quite strong. You have a couple of interesting tools to deal damage when in the car, of which the most interesting is the harpoon gun. You can use the harpoon gun to rip parts off other cars such as wheels, doors or drivers and it’s quite fun to use, however later in the game it’s effectiveness against other vehicles is very limited because their shielding becomes ridiculous, the same applies to ramming. One of the main objectives is the upgrading of your car, and there is a lot of practical customisation here, however gathering the scrap you need to purchase the parts is a mind-numbing chore.

The on-foot combat is a lot worse than the vehicle combat. It uses an Arkham style melee combat system with very spongy enemies. You have your standard counter and evasive roll, there is also weapons that you pick up off the ground though their effectiveness is very limited considering how little durability they have. The game has tank movement physics and the jump is hilariously bad (and it’s bound to left trigger?). Melee combat is just repetitive boring swarms of enemies with too much health and it’s really really easy.

Mad Max is an open world game, and like many other western open world games it falls into the trap of filling it with useless, dull and repetitive content. You have camps to clear with are basically dungeons and these are ok for a while but wear thing quickly, the other side objectives are even worse though are less time consuming. It’s one of those games where you could spend many many hours if you have the constitution for such things but personally I’ve grown tired of such boring open world forms of content, unless they can do it like The Witcher 3.

Presentation

The presentation is by far the strongest part of Mad Max. I’m not sure of any other game that captures such a great post-apocalyptic world definitely up there with Fallout 3 in this regard. The graphics are incredible and the game offers some really picturesque views and environments. The character and vehicle designs are also really unique and there are several distinct factions that are instantly recognisable. My only complaint about the design is that it’s uncharacteristically busy with enemy towers, camps and scavenging locations and I think many of the games problems would be alleviated by reducing the amount of locations on the map. The audio of Mad Max is a mixed bag, on one hand the sound effects are quite good especially the engine sounds, though on the other hand the music is completely forgettable.

This game has been getting a lot of mediocre to bad reviews, and frankly, I'm baffled. It almost seems like some of the reviewers were just pissed that they didn't get to review the new Metal Gear Solid or Mario Maker, and they took their disappointment out on this totally solid, fun game. In other cases, the reviewers are clearly just tired of Far Cry/Assassin's Creed-style open world games, so Mad Max didn't have a chance. And it does suffer in comparison to last year's Shadow of Mordor, which was similar in structure but brought something fresh to the genre. But all that being said, for what it is, for what it's trying to be, Mad Max is a dang good time.

The bottom line is that the core action loop is rock solid: the car combat is blazing fast, metal-crunching fun, especially the convoy battles; melee combat is a pared-down Arkham--not as good, but solid and satisfying in its own right; the car customization adds a nice twist to the open world genre, and provides a compelling motivation to conquer enemy forts and complete other tasks; each enemy fort has a unique design, with more than one way to approach it; and collectibles are kept to a minimum, and you can either skip them or they actually help you in some way (there are no AssCreed feathers!). In fact, I can't think of any tasks that I didn't like that I was forced to do. I didn't really like the races, but I think only had to do two. Finding and disarming minefields is dull, but you never had to do it.

Which brings us to the bad parts: The boss fights are lame--not hard, just boring and repetitive. The story is mostly lame, especially towards the end when they hamfistedly try to tug at your heartstrings. Some of the writing and voice acting is terrible, especially the random quest and information givers you encounter in the world, Some of Max's reactions to the "history relic" collectibles--which are usually just old photos with messages written on the back--are also awful. The relics themselves are often poignant and provide some needed context for what happened to the world, and often Max doesn't even say anything. It would have been better if he never commented on them.

And I have some nitpicks, like how gas is never really an issue--I literally never ran out, or even came close, so what was the point of including that mechanic? And I didn't really like Max's customization, none of the upgrades to his appearance actually made him look cooler or more interesting. The game can also be really awkward in how it surfaces information. For instance, it took me a long time to understand what the Archangels even were (it turns out that they're just car archetypes, suggested builds depending on what kind of car you want--light, fast, low armor; heavy, high armor, low acceleration; etc.). And they totally squander the role of your faithful dog by relegating him to the minefield missions, which require that you drive a totally different car, one that you would never otherwise drive. Speaking of squandering, the Griffa character is one of the most interesting in the game (think the Outsider from Dishonored, but with more personality), but you only meet up with him a few times, and once you've unlocked all of his perks, you never see him again.

There are two other things I loved that I should mention--this game is absolutely gorgeous, from the changing sunlight to the vehicle damage to the raging sand storms, it's a veritable screenshot factory. And then there's Chumbucket, your companion throughout your journey. He's easily the best character in the game, and provides the only real empathy in the story. His dialogue is well written and his voice actor (Jason Spisak) gives him just the right amount of humor mixed with pathos.

In the end, the vast majority of what you do in this game is very high quality fun. If you like open world games, it's a no-brainer. If you like car and melee combat, this is your game. If you're a Mad Max fan, you might want to give it a try, it does a decent job of presenting that world. Don't listen to the grumpy old critics...who are likely younger than I am, but whatever!