Mad Max

Mad Max <PS4>

• Gameplay 8/10:

I have no choice, but to judge this game from the driving and the ground gameplay separately because the two are like night and day. First the driving: it's amazing and feels like a better version of Twisted Metal. The customization is surprisingly huge having multiple weapon attachments and upgrades to the driving performance of the car. At first I was disappointed by how clunky the driving is, but that's because the car needed room to improve in performance as part of the game mechanics. As I advanced through the game upgrading my car the Opus Magnum felt responsive and handled great both off-road and on asphalt. I thoroughly enjoyed the flamethrower attachment and the harpoon weapon is still my favorite. 

Now the downside: the ground combat is horribly repetitive with punching, punching and more punching. Really, that's it. It might sound cool to take out an entire fortress with just your fists, a shiv and tiny shotgun, but that gets old fast. It felt a bit like the recent Batman games, but it doesn't make sense for Mad Max to do that. They could have easily added more guns or traps or just anything besides punching. Maybe it might make sense because ammo is limited in the wastelands, but they violated tons of other continuity points from the movie so why not give Max more guns?

One last mechanic worth mentioning is the building of a base: there is an option to build up a base/stronghold which will refuel your car, ammo and other essentials which takes away from the frustrating challenge of having to constantly find fuel for the car while on the road. 

• Graphics 9/10:

The PC version looks like shit from what I can see online. However I have a hard time telling the difference from the Xbox One and the version I have on PS4. The graphics are pretty good and make things gross in a good way. I was actually disgusted enough to turn my head when Max ate maggots to stay alive, but that's a good thing because video game graphics are supposed to give that sense of realism. The "luxurious" dog food looked real and the psychotically mutated wastelanders look very deformed and had enough detail to make me question how they developed those scars. I never saw any issues with fps or clipping when traveling the open world. Even with tons of enemies surrounding Max, the frame rate was constant.  

• Sound and Music 6/10:

The music and sounds are nothing special, but they're not distracting or terrible. There really isn't much worth mentioning about the sound except they do take advantage of the PS4 controller's speakers. It's not much, but it's nice to see somebody use the technology Sony worked so hard to give people. Now if they could only find an use for the touch pad. 

• Story 9/10:

This is Mad Max, so the initial story is already awesome, but they manage to add a great story about a creepy hunchback who wants to help Max build the greatest car ever. The main story is that Max has his precious car taken, destroyed and he meets an ugly hunchback, Chumbucket, who offers to help him build the "Opus Magnum", a car that Chum has dreamt of and even worships. There's a massive open world and Max has to blow up fortresses full of gang members so he can make his way to Gas-Town. Obviously the game part of the story is cliche (kill bad guys and level up), but that's unavoidable. 

• Replay Value 8/10:

The open world is gigantic and there is a lot to do. Unfortunately the things to do are repetitive and there's not a huge reason to play again unless you just love being a completionist. I would definitely come back to play the game again though because of the story and the multiple paths of building a car. If you like cars, driving and nasty scenes of eating gross shit like maggots this is a game worth replaying. 

• Originality 9/10:

The story is just a movie made into a game, but there is some originality with Chum Bucket. The game mechanics are something new combined with lots of older games like Twisted Metal, Grand Theft Auto and Batman. Even though I complained about how repetitive the ground combat is, the concept of killing an entire base of bad guys with bare fists is definitely original. Lastly, I still praise the game for using the speaker for the PS4 controller. It really sucks to have that awesome controller, but no developers have taken advantage of it yet. 

• Multiplayer 10/10:

No multiplayer, Hooray! The campaign is great because nobody wasted time or resources building some dumbass head-to-head combat. There is a feature of comparing your scores in races with your "friends", but the races are already a part of the game so this only appeals to the dorks who have the kind of friends they never see or talk to in person about what they do in games. Basically, people with no real friends.