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25 Sep 2015 - 4 Dec 2015
Max is always on the move. After leaving the events of Fury Road behind him, Max has his car stolen. As he tries to get it back, he struggles against fierce roadsters and the environment. Has Max gone completely mad?
It's always difficult to do a good movie tie-in. Do you play through the events of the movie, or do you go off and do your own thing? How does that new thing fit with the theme of the character? And is base-building really it?
I've been a fan of the Mad Max franchise for a long time. I've watched all the movies. Fury Road is by far my favorite, but I also really like the original movie. It tells the sad story of a man at the slow end of the world, and the terrible things that happen to him as his life spirals slowly down. Each movie in the series after that I take as campfire tales from other people, making the legend of this mysterious figure grow, spinning stories of how this strange man appeared out of the desert and changed their lives forever.
Here, though, we're playing as the legend himself. And it's a little disappointing that it's nothing all that special. Max seems obsessed with cars and making them go vroom, so it's fitting (though strange) that he find a Gollum-like companion that's even more obsessed, just to make him seem normal. But even though he claims he wants nothing more than to go away, he sticks around to defeat the big bad and help build up settlements in his spare time.
The driving is solid - as I think we have to expect from a Mad Max game. If the driving was horrible, it would have failed one of the main tenants of the franchise. The hand-to-hand fighting takes a lot from the Arkham games, which makes a lot of sense mechanically, but maybe not so much thematically. It makes the fights something to see, but there's no real explanation (in the game or in the franchise) as to why Max would be such a great hand-to-hand fighter. But I think there would be a lot of trouble making a game based soley on driving, so there we are.
And that I think is the real trouble, is that walking a fine line between what's thematically appropriate and where we just throw up our hands and say "rename the game already." If this game wasn't named "Mad Max," and was, instead, I dunno, "RAGE" or something, would it be just as good?
Maybe. I think it would have suffered in sales a little bit for not having the name recognition, but renaming the game and the main character might have done the game a service. It wouldn't have all the baggage associated with the franchise, and would be able to walk away (from the explosion, without looking back) on its own merits.
And looking at it as a generic no-name third-person action game, it's fun. Explosions are pretty, and there are a lot of those. Cars blow up for no really good reason, and that's fun. The gadgets you can attach to your car are useful and fun to use. The races are challenging without being absurd (though the in-story race was frustrating and probably needed some more work). And the sidequests and base-building were diverting and fun to do.
Ignore the tie-in to the movie franchise. It's a solid apocalytpic third-person action game with lots of explosions. Have fun with it.