Mad Max: Fury Road was one of the few 2015 movies I saw this year, and like the other couple of dozen people I had heard from, I too thought it was a really great way to spend two hours. The videogame developed by Avalanche Studios (of Just Cause fame, including the upcoming Just Cause 3), will last you a lot more than a couple of hours, but on the whole it might not be as memorable or as satisfying of an experience if I were to try to compare the experiences of the two. Allow me to explain.
As of this writing, I have yet to complete Mad Max’s campaign, and other than Fury Road I know nothing of the franchise. I don’t think that had any effect on my time with Mad Max one way or another though, as the storyline is an off-shoot of the main series and is not necessarily canon. Regardless, in Mad Max, the goal is to get Max to the Plains of Silence, a place that he thinks will bring his mind to some peace that it has not known since the apocalyptic events that took Earth and turned it into a broiling wasteland with sand and heat waves as far as the eye can see. His sanity fading, Max misses his wife and daughter and lives only to survive at this point.
The opening cutscene shows Max fighting Scrotus, the behemoth, deranged son of Immortan Joe who was featured in the Fury Road flick. Despite taking a chainsaw to Scrotus’ head, he lives on and his gang beats the crap out of Max before stealing his car and leaving him for dead. The car was to be used to get to the Plains, and now Max is without a means of travel, but only briefly before he meets the hunchback named Chum Bucket who seems like a character right out of Lord of the Rings or some other fantasy world. Chum Bucket is a master mechanic who claims his mechanical skills are divine. He’s had a vision that someone very much like Max is extremely important and he commits himself to helping Max build the Magnum Opus, a shoddy vehicle to start, but one with about a dozen different customization categories that you build from as you progress the story. The Magnum Opus is almost a character in itself seeing as how it develops side-by-side with Max, becoming faster, stronger, more equipped for combat, and its appearance changes accordingly.
The story is primarily then about working with Chum Bucket to build the Magnum Opus, one that is powerful enough to survive the wasteland that is overrun with Scrotus’ gangs and to get you through Gastown and to the Plains of Silence. As an open world, sandbox type of game, not unlike Shadows of Mordor or the Arkham series, you have your core story missions and then numerous side missions, most of which are optional but nonetheless “encouraged.” The side missions can give you a little more appreciation or robustness to the world of Mad Max, but they’re also very useful for collecting Scrap and other goodies to help you upgrade the Magnum Opus as well as Max himself.
Mad Max has a lot of layered game elements to help you get the most out of the Opus and Max. With Chum Bucket, the right parts, and enough Scrap, you can customize your car in many ways. From sniper rifles to harpoons (for yanking down structures or ripping off doors, and more) to bigger engines, improved tires, suspension, etc., and with multiple upgrades within these categories, you won’t have any issue finding ways to spend your Scrap. The evolution of your vehicle is a primary gameplay element and it’s nice to see it get bigger, faster, and stronger as you progress, making enemy encounters more intense, less dangerous, and more satisfying.
Max’s upgrades are unlocked by earning and spending Griffa points, which you get for taking on optional missions. Griffa is a mysterious character that seems to know all about Max, his past, present, and destiny. These upgrades do things like increase your base health, your strength, time in Fury mode (a special enhanced damage mode during melee), water collection efficiency, melee weapon proficiency, and so forth. The choices here are sufficiently diverse and interesting enough that you’ll always have something to pursue.
Mad Max has a lot of the core design and mechanics of a good open world title down, but what I noticed as I got a few hours in was that I just wasn’t feeling connected to the story or characters, and that repetition was really beginning to take its toll. While there is a lot to do between the story missions and the side missions, the variety within these is not very diverse nor exciting. Many aspects of playing became sort of procedural, and I felt like I was just going through the motions to be doing exactly that, not because I particularly wanted to be there doing what I was doing. Not to draw too many comparisons, but with the Arkham games for example, I was much more interested, invested, and curious about the goings-on, whereas in Mad Max I just felt like I was ticking through a checklist on many occasions, to be blunt. The difference between my tolerance for the repetition that exists in Arkham compared to Mad Max is that I was more enthralled with Arkham and having more fun.
Controls and refinement are part of this separation, too. General controls for environment interactions with Max feel kind of stiff and unnatural. The hitboxes for interacting with objects is kind of small and HUD cues for interaction pop-up often, offering a slight, unwelcomed distraction from the visual experience. Having to hold X to speak to characters or do certain interactions is getting nit-pickey for sure, but it’s part of these several smaller things with the controls and world interaction that, combined, made the game feel more rigid and ‘game-y’ than fluid and polished. Your mileage on something this subjective may vary of course, but for me, while I’m having a hard time explaining it, it just made the game feel somewhat dated and cardboard like.
On the other hand, as a significant positive for the game, is the on-foot combat system. Now, it’s eerily similar to that of Arkham (I know, there’s that name again), but you can’t blame Avalanche for using that combat system because it is so familiar and does work really well. So I have no issues with Square being your attack button, and Triangle being counter, and even the Triangle visual cue is used above enemy heads as they’re about to attack. The combat is visually satisfying thanks to some good animation work and the sort of believable brutality of the bone-crunching and flesh gouging attacks. I especially liked when the environment was used, such as when a wastelander gets his bell rung by having his head knocked into a wall. If you chain enough hits together, Max will enter Fury mode which doles out increased damage for a period of time. Overall, the combat system is cool, and while not as deep or interesting as some titles in its genre, it’s a high point for Mad Max.
Vehicular combat and driving in general is an obvious core element, and it’s also well done. Going off road across the wasteland is fun, with open-engine roars and crazy jumps and sure, even some hilarious wrecks (ok, maybe a lot of wrecks). This gets better as Chum installs Nitrous boosts and other upgrades. Driving controls are bare bones, but the physics are handled well and it’s fun to be able to drive in between enemy camps (that you will often need to dismantle and takeover), although a fast travel option eventually opens up, too.
As far as presentation, Mad Max is a mixed offering. Visually I think it’s pretty good, especially in terms of the environment and the environmental effects, like sandstorms and the sun and what not. Visuals while you’re driving are nice, but on foot, things are less interesting and more repetitive. Taking a step back, a lot of the wasteland is actually pretty barren and sort of boring, which could simply be because structures are no longer a place of civility and beauty, they exist purely for survival from the elements and the other inhabitants of this world. As far as characters, Max is actually kind of boring looking and sounding. He’s not a very interesting character I would argue, and the mystery of Max that was utilized so well during Fury Road is lost in large part in-game because Max talks often even if just in abrupt sentences. The voice-acting for him is just ok, I guess my vision of Max, both visually and aurally, is based up Tom Hardy’s portrayal of him at this point, and the Max in-game is different enough that I didn’t care for him as much. His “friend” Chum Bucket isn’t very pleasant to look at or listen to either, but that’s not a particularly important issue.
Overall, Mad Max is a pretty good open world action romp, but I found it difficult to become very interested in the story and characters. With this limitation rooted, my tolerance for the repetitive nature of the missions due to ‘checklist’ or ‘busy work’ design that describes most of them ultimately kept this from being a thoroughly enjoyable experience. A handful of other miscellaneous issues or disagreements didn’t help, but, good combat and driving gameplay, as well as progressive upgrades to Max and the car, help steer things in the right direction. And while it’s not a game I can see myself doing extended sessions on, played over the course of several weeks, in spurts, it’s not too bad at all.
To the summary…