Badass driving machines and survival are the two main themes for the most of the Mad Max films. The game is nothing short of just that. What we were shown at the demo has our man Max starting out in a convoy chase to retrieve a grappling item. The demo displayed how positively gorgeous the next generation hardware can be, as Max’s massively dangerous vehicle looks detailed and deadly. A high speed chase through the wasteland confirmed this pretty quickly, and the brutal nature of the game as well.
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Armed with his friend and colleague (a mutant of sorts) Chumbucket, the demo displayed the teamwork that the duo had going on as they chased down and collided with the three cars trying to stop them from their ultimate goal of requiring the grappling tool. What I found interesting is how well the cars interacted with each other, as well as how smart the AI seemed to be during the chase. The enemies would collide with and try to slowdown Max’s vehicle, though not being very successful in doing it.
The other neat thing during this demo is the shear girth of the wasteland. Getting off track and riding around is probably going to be tempting for a lot of people playing this one. If you could picture a bigger version of RAGE’s areas then you understand what I’m talking about here. The devs did refer to this game as an open world sandbox experience, so prepare yourself to get off track easily.
As with most demos at E3, the devs fast-forwarded, which brought us to sniping/fighting tactics. Max finally got out of his car at an enemy base to dispatch some bad guys via his left/right fists. This is the portion of the demo that seemed a bit shallow. The fighting could be compared to a more refined version of God Hand (yep, I used that as an example), as Max could knock out people, break necks and give them a shotgun to their abdomen. It was incredibly violent and the AI seemed a bit rough, as one enemy member fled the wrong way during one of Max’s fights, only to return a few seconds later to try to kill him. It was humorous to watch, but expected from a ‘still in development’ game.
Once the hand-to-hand combat was over, Max went to hunt down a sniper before he hunted them down. Once dispatched, Max equipped himself with his own sniper rifle, then began knocking down other snipers from a distance. None of it was something special, but it did offer some dimension to a game like this.
Anyway, the action seemed to be fast and furious (no pun intended) from that point on, then it all ended with a video montage of what is to come. I can only imagine that this game is going to be big on an hours scale, as well as sporting plenty of future DLC. On top of this, the multiplayer information wasn’t revealed, but expect it.
All in all, Mad Max looks to be a solid game in 2014 that will not only reinforce and remind people of how great the setting is for the overall story, but also get them excited for Mad Max: Fury Road. Having been raised on Mad Max, color me excited about this WBIE title.